English Literature Poems :: English Literature

English Literature Poems Compare the methods that ‘Presents from my Aunts in Pakistan’ employs to highlight the importance of cultural identity with another poem? I have chosen to compare ‘Presents’ and ‘Hurricane’ as both poems highlight the importance of cultural identity in society. Both poets ‘Alvi’ and ‘Nicholas’ employ many different and similar methods to illustrate the importance of cultural identity. The poem ‘Presents’ is about the writer herself at a younger age feeling insecure as she is of dual heritage (mixed race) ‘in my English Grandmother’s dining - room. In the poem the poet begins to conflict with herself as she believes that she is not of one set race ‘I was there of no fixed nationality’. Throughout the poem the poet begins to show her insecurity as she begins to respond to the presents her aunties bought her from her native land negatively ‘I could never be as lovely as those clothes’. A t the end of the poem the Alvi is unable to resolve her problem as she finishes the poem feeling rather down saying ‘I was there of no fixed nationality’. The poem ‘Hurricane’ is rather similar in the way that it is again autobiographical. In the poem the writer is also in conflict with herself as she has left her motherland Guyana to move to England. At first the poet dreaded England but as soon as there was news of a Hurricane she began to feel much at home as hurricanes happen often in the southern equator. The writer shows her relationship with the hurricane by referring to it as her ‘sweeping a back home cousin’. At the end of the poem the writer resolves her problem which is her conflict with herself as she misses her homeland ‘Come to let me know that the earth is the earth’. The similarities of the poems are that they both involve the same situation which is conflict with another culture. Both poems ‘Presents’ and ‘Hurricane’ are autobiographical as ‘I’ is used which is a first person pronoun. Even though the poem ‘Presents’ begins with the third person pronoun ‘They’ however the poet uses many first person references such as ‘me’, ‘I’, and ‘My’. The poem Hurricane also uses third person references such as ‘her’ which is employed to distance the character. ‘Presents’ is structured to show the conflict of the characters culture and identity. In each paragraph each sentence is aligned differently however in ‘Hurricane’ it is structured differently. In ‘Hurricane’ the poem is structured to show to build up the climax. The first stanza shows the emotional detachment of the author to the hurricane.