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WOLE SOYINKA
(b. 1934 – still alive)
I. INTRODUCTION
1. Wole Soyinka [pronounced wo lay (stress on the first syllable) shaw ying kuh
(stress on the second syllable)] was “the first black African writer to receive the
________ Prize in Literature” (Ramazani 2:627).
2. Born in western Nigeria, he received most of his upper-level collegiate
education in England, taking his doctorate in 1973, when he was 38 (627).
3. Not just a poet, he has written significant dramas and novels (626).
4.
His work has denounced “both the degradations of Western
_____________ [in Africa] and the . . . [African] _______________ and thugs”
who replaced this colonialism with brutal, repressive regimes (627).
5. Soyinka’s “courage has landed him repeatedly in Nigerian ________” (626)
or forced him “into exile” (627).
6. Stylistic devices of his poetry: wit, verbal ambiguity, satire, punning, and
violent juxtapositions (627).
II.
“TELEPHONE CONVERSATION”
A. STRUCTURE
1. Stanza one (1-9): An African who is living in London, England,
telephones a landlady who has advertised an ________________ (called a “flat” in
Britain) for rent. Knowing that many people in England discriminate against Africans,
he quickly tells the landlady, “I am ____________” (5).
2. Stanza two (10-17): He expects an outright rejection or acceptance
concerning the apartment, but her answer surprises him. She asks, “ARE YOU
___________ / OR VERY __________?” (10-11).
The implication is that she will accept him as a tenant if he is a lightskinned African. Her question offends him more than an open ____________ would
have: He marvels to himself that what she had asked “was ________!” (14).
3. Stanza three (18-26): In the last part of the conversation, he slyly
makes _______ of the landlady, showing her to be not only bigoted but also ignorant.
For instance, he uses a word which she does not know, “__________” (22).
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4. Stanza four (27-35): His closing list of the different ___________
of the areas of his body shocks the landlady, who slams down the __________, finally
aware that she is being made _________ of.
B. THEME
1. The poem is a protest against discrimination on the basis of _______
color.
2. The petty nastiness of racial _______________ is shown through a
person being denied an apartment because of the color of his/her skin.
C. IMAGERY
1. Many color words are used.
2. Red is the color of the telephone “________” (13), the pillar-box (13,
the British term for mailbox), the bus (13), and presumably the lady’s imagined “lip_________” (8). Thus red seems to be identified with racism.
3. The other colors are those which the African uses in describing himself:
“__________” (22), brunette (26), “______________ blonde” (30), and
“_________ black” (32).
4. The key color word is “__________________” (23), since a
spectroscope is a scientific instrument for studying color bands.
5. The word prepares us for the band of colors which the speaker implies
makes up every person’s _____________.
6. It also goes back to the distinction insisted on by the prejudiced
landlady, who would need such an _________________ to distinguish the lightness
or darkness of a prospective tenant.