Analysing Blessing and An Old Woman` Essay -- Poetry Imtiaz Dharker Ar

Analysing Blessing and An Old Woman Poetry from other Cultures Question 2 Culture means the beliefs, traditions, and customs of people within a society. Fundamental aspects of a culture are faith, values, and history. People that share a culture also share its beliefs and ways of life, which are different to others. Poetry is an effective way of describing and exploring a culture, and events within it, because certain aspects can be expressed with vivid descriptions, and imagery that would be unsuitable in other types of text. Some cultures have also used poetry as a form of storytelling, describing events that happened to their ancestors, or even themselves. Poems can be concise and leave some details to the imagination of the reader, therefore they are easier to remember, and remain in the readers mind for longer, which makes them more memorable. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The two poems that I have chosen are 'Blessing' by Imtiaz Dharker and 'An Old Woman' written by Arun Kolatkar. I selected these poems because they are both set in poor, third-world countries, and the people within their communities value so strongly items that are take for granted in developed countries. In 'An Old Woman', a beggar woman is trying desperately to get 'a fifty paise coin', which is equivalent to less than 1 pence, off a tourist. This amount of money is frequently, and carelessly dropped on the floor without a second glance, in countries such as our own, yet in India an elderly woman needs this to survive. In 'Blessing' water is highly valued, and every drop is precious because their community is so short of such a substance. However, people in our, more developed, comm... ...tent and happy with the life that they live. However, in 'An Old Woman' this impression is not given. The beggar does not appear to be content with her way of life and is worn and tired as a result of it. I think her discontentment is conveyed in line 20-21 "bullet holes she has for eyes". I believe this, because she has to hide her true feelings from the outside to prevent anyone knowing what she really feels, and therefor her eyes seem to just glaze over and hold no feelings. I think she does this so that she can concentrate on trying to earn a living to stay alive, in doing this though, all her feelings are trapped inside and she is unable to overcome them. In doing this, it appears that she has no feelings and is completely isolated from the rest of the community. This is illustrated in line 29-30 "round the shatter-proof crone who stands alone".