Thinking Activity : You laughed and laughed and laughed

Hello Readers , 

This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity and this activity given by Yesha mam.In this blog i would like to talk about the poem ' You laughed and laughed and laughed ' by Gabriel Okara.

First of all throw some light on Author's Introduction ;

Gabriel Okara :

Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (24 April 1921 – 25 March 2019) was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. 

The first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005).In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery,and he has been called "the Nigerian Negritudist". According to Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, "It is with publication of Gabriel Okara's first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun."Okara's equally well-known poetry is also poised between European and African modes of expression.

                         Let's talk about the poem ;

     You laughed and laughed and laughed

This poem is written in 1950, it was later published in 1957 in the influential Ibadan University-based African literature periodical Black Orpheus and has remained one of his most widely read poems.

In this poem you means white people and laughed and laughed and laughed means white people are making fun of dance, colour , culture, sounds and actions of black people.

This poem focuses on how white people laughed at African people. There is loss of happiness due to conflict of the African cultures with the Western cultures, subjugation of the African people accompanied by loot, rape and pillage, the loss of identity of the African people, their homes being devastated, the imposing of the cultural norms of the colonizer on the colonized and the imposition of the colonizer’s language on the colonized. The literature of the African people talking about their state of freedom in the pre-colonial times contrasted with their state during the colonial times and then the promise of freedom in the deplorable state of affairs holds for them. Here is the poem,

You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed

In your ears my song

 is motor car misfiring stopping with a choking cough; and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

In your eyes my ante- natal 

walk was inhuman, passing your "omnivorous understanding" and you laughed and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my song, 

you laughed at my walk.

Then I danced my magic dance 

to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but you shut your eyes and laughed and laughed and laughed

And then I opened my mystic inside wide like the sky, instead you entered your car and laughed and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my dance, 

you laughed at my inside. 

You laughed and laughed and laughed.

But your laughter was ice-block laughter and it froze your inside froze your voice froze your ears froze your eyes and froze your tongue.

And now it’s my turn to laugh; but my laughter is not ice-block laughter. For I know not cars, know not ice-blocks.

My laughter is the fire of the eye of the sky, the fire of the earth, the fire of the air, the fie of the seas and the rivers fishes animals trees and it thawed your inside, thawed your voice, thawed your ears, thawed your eyes and thawed your tongue.

So a meek wonder held your shadow and you whispered; 

"Why so?" 

And I answered: 

"Because my fathers and I are owned by the living warmth of the earth through our naked feet." 

Gabriel Okara's poem consists of 10 stanzas and describes the interplay of different interpretations of the same sounds, sights and dance.The interaction that takes place within the poem is commonly thought to be between a white colonialist and an African native.The poem follows a trope in African literature of " The White Man Laughed " , which embodies the nation of dismay and cynical derision of the beliefs, practices and norms of an African.

However, Okara's poem can be seen to transcend and acceptance of the derision of the white people and present a wiser African intellectual.

The major themes of the African literature are culture, conflict, religion, colonialism, modernism and racism. Nigerian poet Gabriel Okara's poem 'You laughed and laughed and laughed' brings out an emotion, feeling and pain faced by black people. This poem also brings out the sufferings faced by black people.

In this poem author describe the difference between white people and black people walking style. Black people have a huge body than white people say black people are walking like pregnant lady. They making fun of that's walking style.Every white people has a one type of mentality they are superior in everything.

Black people are not materialistic people or living luxurious life.They have warmth in their heart- they are not behaving like white people.

White people has attitude towards black people and black people has attitude towards white people .

The poem concludes with the African man teaching the white man of his ignorance and helping him realize that the native beliefs of the African are not primitive nor removed from intellectual thought.

As summarized by Pushpa Naidu Parekh, "In 'You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed,' the colonizer's mockery and contemptuous disparagement of indigenous African culture and worldview are confronted and ultimately silenced by the warmth of the native's 'fire' laughter."

Thank you