Income Inequality Due to Uneven Wealth and Power Distribution Experienced in Lagos, Nigeria - Free Essay Example

Lagos, Nigeria is home to 21 million people, making it the most populous city in Nigeria and the largest city in Africa. Lagos is home to a variety of ethnic groups with the Yoruba being their dominant ethnic group followed by over 250 other ethnic groups who migrated to Lagos from other surrounding countries as well as from different parts of Nigeria. While Lagos handles a big portion of Nigerias imports and goods, the majority of the population is living in poverty. Nigerias five richest men have a combined wealth of almost thirty billion dollars, and within Lagos there are also a good variety of millionaires. Yet, around 66% of Lagos population is currently residing in slums. Due to this vast gap in economic distribution, my focus for this paper will be on the income inequality, and the severe effects it has on those who reside in Lagos, due to the uneven wealth and power distribution. Over the last two decades of the 20th century, Lagos has been plagued by a quality of life that seems to be deteriorating as life passes. Their population has lived with high levels of poverty, over congested road systems, massive floods, proliferation of slums, environmental degradation, disrupted sewerage system, and an increasing crime rate that does not seem to be slowing down any time soon. If we retract to Nigerias pre 19th century colonization, we can see that the country as a whole was flourishing with empires, towns, cities, and kingdoms that would resemble something out of one of todays well established urban places. However, once the colonizers established a system of urbanization within Lagos, Nigeria, much of how their system was previously run, had disappeared. Where, there was once a flourishing city, built with residual wealth between their people, there is now extensive social inequality within these new age megacities. Once these megacities were built, the majority of the population was seeking work in these multiplying industries and began to abandon their occupations within the farmlands. While, others fled to these new megacities due to their medical debts that were hardly being covered within the farmland industry. This rural-urban migration ended with much disappointment when individuals found that moving to cities was not enough to secure a job. These individuals migrated for the hope that they would find work opportunities that were not, otherwise, available to them back home. The problem with this is, that many of these job opportunities were not all they were painted out to be, they tended to exploit their workers because they knew that most of them didnt have many other options. They had to find work, and when it proved to be a relatively competitive market, they failed to secure a lucrative employment and began to struggle. This struggle manifested itself into what we now identify as slums. The more people who migrated in hopes of finding stable income, the more proliferation of slums was brought about. More than half of the workforce in Lagos city is drawn from neighboring slums. There is currently a poverty issue occurring within Lagos, and the evidence of this issue lies within Ajegunle, which can be described as holding similarities to what we would consider a mega slum. In the Planet of Slums by Mike Davis, he describes slums as any given area which has fallen into decay or being in despair, has poor ventilation if any, a very low amount of sanitation facilities, overcrowding, scarce building management, all of which pose a threat or risk to the health of living individuals within that space. While, Mega slums emerge as shanty-towns and squatter communities that merge in continuous belts of informal housing and poverty, usually on the urban periphery. (Davis 2006, 27) The trickle-down development approach that was established within Lagos led to much of the uneven wealth and power distribution, which in turn led to the majority of the population being forced to live in poverty. This development led to economic growth benefiting the non-poor and furthering the inequalities and poverty experienced by the poor. There is evidence that income inequality is a strong indicator of poverty within a place, not so much that there is a decline in the average income being made but more so that the income being made is not being distributed evenly amongst a population. The higher the level of inequality, the weaker the linkage between poverty reduction and growth; and the higher the growth rate needed to reach a given target of poverty reduction. (Ohwotemu 2010, 13) Developing countries such as Nigeria deal with much poverty and income inequality issues and it has been a long-standing battle for Lagos as well, because this inequality and its rise will threaten the growth and poverty reduction targets. Lagos handles eighty percent of Nigerias imported goods and Nigeria holds the greatest concentration of export and government revenue dependence on a natural resource commodity (Ohwotemu 2019, 23) and yet somehow the increasing income only allows for the further rising of poverty due to the uneven distribution of income. Nigerias economy thrives from a growing technological sector, agriculture, and oil exports. So much so that the 521.8 billion dollars of their gross domestic product is dependent on these attributes. This has since been a major development objective to understand how an entire country can become rich. It is evident that in order to move forward with the developmental process within Lagos, Nigeria, there needs to be an uplifting of the economic troubles experienced by the less well off. The only way to achieve this economic growth for the poor, is for the growth to be bias in favor to them. However, evidence suggests that the wealthy believe that they will only stay wealthy if the poor remain poor, and this toxic mentality is what will continue to lead Lagos, Nigeria to increased levels of poverty and despair. Nigeria has all the resources at hand to make sure their population remains well off, yet lack of resources is obviously not the problem, but the way they are being used, the embezzlement and disbursement of them, is. The corrupt political figures of Nigeria are disconnected with the average income and below poverty income population of Lagos. These elite do not relate to them, and in turn do not work to find resolutions to adhere the poverty population with abilities to rise above their situation. The goal is for Lagos to develop a society where ending the poverty rate will improve the poors well-being, where no persons is disadvantaged when it comes to basic humans needs such as nourishment, living long and healthy lives, or babies dying from being born prematurely. The poverty-stricken population lack resources that allows them to meet their basic human needs, which is why the well-off population maintains their above average status. When these populations of poor individuals are not able to have an education, they struggle with finding good jobs that will allow them to feed their families and themselves. This lack of education leads to struggling financially, which in turn leads to falling ill. When these individuals are not getting their proper nutrition, they began to get sick and get sick fast. Within these poor communities and slums, there are little to no proper health sanitation facilities, and this leads to them not attaining the proper care they would otherwise rece ive if they were well-off. Per the World Health Organization, from Jan. 1 to April 15, 2018 1,849 cases of Lassa fever were found in 21 states in Nigeria, with Lagos among them. (Kellogg 2018) Lassa fever usually virally infects individuals through rats and whom live in places with poor sanitation. There are also women who become pregnant while living in these poor and disease filled conditions and struggle to make it to term with their children, many of them deliver premature babies because they dont have access to proper nutrition. Yet many of the premature children dont make it past a couple of days due to their lack of medical attention. Included in this devastating cycle, are mothers who die during childbirth because they arent healthy and dont have access to a medical team. The unequal distribution of wealth is only a fraction of the problems faced by the larger portion of the impoverished individuals within Lagos. Among those problems are unequal access to basic infrastructur es as well as a drought in job opportunities. The high unemployment rate being experienced by the youth of Lagos is a direct correlation of the misconduct of the resources within Nigeria. The slums in Lagos depict the contradictions inherent in unequal capitalist interrelationships between the rich and the poor in symbiotic relationships. (Adejare and Akanle 2017, 5) All the corruption within Lagos boils down to one, openly known fact, the rich are powerful enough to remain above the law while the poor continue to be powerless. This is evident in the case of riverbank community Otodo-Gbame, a slum, being demolished and getting rid of its residents by teargases and bullets at the hands of law enforcements, who were following the requests of Nigerias elite. The elite make enough revenue to lift the poor out of slums and a life filled with poverty, for the annual wealth they accumulate in those 24 months, they have enough to lift two million people out of their economic crisis. Yet the y seek to do the opposite, their greed and corruption is fueled by the desire to build luxury hotels and high-rise buildings, leaving 300,000 Nigerians without a place to call a home. They do not feel that the life of the poor is adequate enough to suffice any losses of wealth to themselves. The wealthy are fueled by greed and desire to attain more wealth, without ever stopping to think about the struggles faced by the majority of the population whom faces unequal distributions. The well-off are stripping these communities of the only homes they know, many of them who have called the same house home for years after the independence from colonization. These poverty-stricken individuals have already struggled enough as is, while trying their hardest to find any way to make money in order to survive. Yet, many of these wealthy individuals could care less, and decided they needed that land to build their buildings that will produce them with future revenues. There is still a debate occurring wondering whether economic growth is enough to suffice a reduction in the poverty experienced within Nigeria. It is evident that throughout history, the wealth of nations has relied upon factors such as population growth, the social, physical and human capital accumulation, and structural change such as technological progress. Overpopulation is something critical that Lagos is trying to deal with because they do not currently hold enough economic opportunities to suffice the ever-growing population they are faced with. People are migrating to Lagos from all parts of the country and they are making their way there blindly, with no jobs in sight and not enough housing available to them. This is increasing the homeless population and furthering the economic troubles of those already there. This rural-urban migration leads to much of the congestion that Lagos is currently experiencing and it usually leads to degeneration of a society fighting be the ones to survive within the community. Consequently, this systematic approach leads to another issue Lagos is currently dealing with known as urban traffic congestion which results from too many people using the same road systems, especially when trying to commute to and from work or school. This leads to people heading out for the roads before the sun rises and not arriving home until long after the sun sets. Megacities such as that of Lagos, tend to deal with constant stress from traffic congestion due to lack of proper road network systems, and this is something they will continue to deal with until the roads become sufficient enough to hold the growing population of commuters. Moreover, the attributing complication of urban gentrification shows evidence that the wealthy make no plans to attribute help to the poor population but in fact have underlying motivations to eradicate the chantey community. As I previously discussed, the corrupt wealthy investors living within Lagos have been fueled by greed to move forward with desires of waterfront lands. They achieve such not only by demolishing slums located within the areas they hanker after, but then building lavish edifices that leave no choice but to push below well-off populations out from there. The relatively poor inhabitants can no longer afford homes or lifestyles near these new communities and are left to fend for new homes and new communities. This style of gentrification leaves the well-off with new lands and the less wealthy with no accessibility to these communities. Per the World Data Bank statistics, 62 percent of Nigerians live on less than $1.25 per day. (Hughes 2015) This is not nearly enough to survive after being uprooted from your home due to corrupt political instability. Although many promises have been made in regards to the ever-growing gap between the wealthy and the poor in Lagos and how it will be eradicated, little has actually been done to fulfill these wishes. In fact, since the 1970s Nigeria has helped produce over $400 billion dollars from oil revenue yet Nigeria is also more disadvantaged today than it was forty years ago. Sources believe this is due to the constantly growing society that produces ethnically polarized communities. These societies then show behaviors of competitiveness and desires to have their society function in a way that they believe is best, even if it differs from their neighbors opinions and beliefs and this leads to social conflict. This can be transcended into circumstances such as new policies, educational topics, infrastructure, and so on. Prior to the colonization of Lagos, societies worked together to function and ensure success for all parties involved, because they believed that the uplifting of one another w ill equate to overall prosperity within the given society. However, upon post-independence, different ethnic groups began to fear the control of a dominating group, which led different ethnic groups to only provide for themselves. This is where certain wealthy investors and well-off populations continued to climb the economic latter, by looking out for themselves, while the poor were left out to fend for themselves with what already little amounts of resources they had. No one wants to mix themselves with the poor, they believe that no matter how humble you are or appear to be, once you make it out of poverty, you must not associate with those in a lower class than yourself. Now, here we are in 2018 and no changes have been made to eliminate this dangerous cycle that is being lived out in Lagos. Sure, elite political figures have made promises of how to save Nigeria billions of dollars from foreign exchange by producing refineries in Lagos that will aid the structural issues that Nigeria has been dealing with for many years. Chairman and chief executive of a company looking to build this refinery, Aliko Dangote, believes that with the production of this industrial project, Lagos will be able to invest more funds within their community. However, this is hardly a solution from the point of view of those living in impoverishment, because no matter how much revenue is kept within Nigeria itself, no amount of new or old wealth will pass onto those individuals. As the rich get richer, the poor will progressively become poorer. The only solution to the income inequality being felt by the below poverty community is to diminish the wealth gap and to redistribute the power of the politicians and elite. Sadly, no effective policies have been put forth to allow such a plan to be acted out. The amount of planning that needs be invested into these future policies is abundant, and needs to be delivered by politicians looking to create a society in Lagos that equally thrives, not just on the back of the economically well off. Should you look at Lagos, Nigeria from the outside in, it will be easy to believe that the city as a whole is thriving economically due to all the fortunes they have acquired through their oil based resources and fellow endeavors. For this reason, no one has implemented change within Lagos and their economy. Granted, the growing poverty rate in Lagos is astonishing seeing as 65% of Lagos population is living in slums and settlements, with no attainable possibilities of making it out. The endles s work these individuals put in to migrate into mega-cities in hopes of finding work leads them to no avail since these job opportunities they set sail to find are nonexistent for the growing population. Greed and corruption of the wealthy population is amongst the leading factors behind the growing poverty rate within Lagos, with no end to the corruption in site. So long as the wealth gap exists, so will the growing poverty population, in turn creating more slums and only benefiting the rich.

What Ultimately Caused Jemmy’s Persona Flip - Literature Essay Samples

All people go through change over the course of their lives, some fast, some slow, for better or for worse. Often events in one’s youth can be traced to be the origin of such change in direction. In many cases teenage years are the catalyst for the beliefs brought into adulthood. Such appears to certainly be the case in Jemmy. In Jon Hasslers novel, the protagonist, seventeen year old Gemstone Opal Stott or ‘Jemmy,’ goes through a major transition between two personalities. The central question in this narrative is why does she change, and how should we interpret that change? What does this transformation signify? In the beginning of the novel, Jemmy is providentially rescued by a couple, Otis and Ann Chapman during a massive snowstorm and is chosen by Otis, an artist, to be painted as the basis for The Maiden, a public mural in downtown Minneapolis. According to local legend The Maiden was a young Indian girl who killed herself by jumping off a cliff known as Eagle Rock because she fell in love with someone from a rival tribe, and could not face the burden of living a life without her lover or suffering the shame of her family. At first, Jemmy happily appears to embrace the persona of The Maiden. This can be attributed to her heritage. Jemmy is half-Chippewa— though she muses about being two half persons,(Hassler 23). she definitely feels more Indian than white. Jemmy is the Chippewa-Irish daughter of a deceased mother and an alcoholic father who neglects her and the other two children. Having been pictured as a quintessential representative for this legendary Native American heroine makes Jemmy feel infinitely more in touch with her ‘Indian half’, and she is clearly proud of it. On Jemmy’s visit to Otis’ house for her first modeling siting, Otis begins painting Jemmy on a canvas. Jemmy rapidly becomes flustered and amazed, â€Å"she was fascinated by the replica†(56). as if â€Å"Otis skill with shadow and color had given form to her soul.†(56). â€Å"It looks so real it gives me shivers to look at.†(56). she said. â€Å"Never in a photo, not even in a mirror, had Jemmy seen herself so clearly.†(57). Jemmy is stunned, wide eyed, and in awe at the painting and at this new view of herself. Jemmy appears to fully accept and become The Maiden. She has adapted The Maiden as herself, and feels it has given her a new identity. The Maiden persona also entices Jemmy because of her quality of life. She can relate to the hopelessness that ruled The Maiden. coming from extreme poverty, Jemmy is told by her alcoholic Irish father to quit school to care for her motherless younger brother and sister. Since most Indians leave school much younger, Jemmy has few misgivings, although this was expected, it still signifies the end of any advancement beyond her current status, even at a school whose white principal equates ill-fitting clothes and poverty with a lack of response to the precepts taught in health class. After a number of painting sessions, Jemmy and her siblings attend a party hosted by Otis and Ann, so they can show Jemmy to friends and other artists, to see and admire the girl he chose for the mural. Here, Jemmy eagerly takes on the role of an important display piece acting as the beautiful artist’s model, the main attraction of the event. Jemmy shows signs of vanity in a way she had never done before. As many people make remarks about Jemmy appearing fancy, like a true model, â€Å"Jemmy held out her glass for more champagne.†(82). She gladly shows her and her little sister off to everyone there, posing with her as she â€Å"put her arm around Candy’s waist.†(83). During these two scenes, Hassler has Jemmy come into The Maiden, showing one personality and one perspective on life, right before Jemmys understanding of both The Maiden, herself, and her view of life begins to change. With the mural nearly complete, while in the car with Otis Jemmy argumentatively remarks â€Å"Ive never found it easy to believe in the Maiden of Eagle Rock.†(147). She seems now to disagree with Otis’ view of her and the mural altogether. She no longer believes suicide is an answer. â€Å"I’d rather be saying dont give up†(147). Through contact with the wider world, with Otis and Anne, socializing with other artists, and brand new discussions with her father Jemmy comes to an understanding of her own artistic talents and the extent to which she can influence her own life. Jemmy meets people who support her. One is a reformed alcoholic who levels with Jemmys father about his drinking. Jemmy suggests AA to her father and refers directly to resistance to alcoholism. Jemmys father decides to begin work again and stop drinking, but needs one drink every evening to ease the effects of withdrawal, still seen as highly promising. Jemmys inner composure and the o verseeing encouragement of three adults are the sources of help. After coming to the realization that Jemmy can improve her life and the lives of the people she cares about, Jemmy sets out to do so. Jemmy doesnt believe in the mural’s story anymore and she doesnt approve of it’s theme and moral of tragedy and hopelessness romanticized now that she doesnt think that is all there is to life in some cases, as with her own life. Jemmy is not inspired by who she understands The Maiden to represent anymore. Jemmy wants to portray something else. Jemmy has now been given tangible hope, and a way to work with what she previously deemed as hopeless, and refuses to be a martyr. Finally, in the last scene of the novel, Jemmy stands on the edge of Eagle Rock looking down. She watches an eagle fly up and away from its nest below. An eagle soars by, a symbol of freedom achieved by flying up and away from the cliff, not leaping from the top of it. Jemmy then simply â€Å"turned and went down the hill to her car.†(159). A clear signal she is walking down off her high horse, down from The Maiden. Then, â€Å"she drove home to make breakfast for her family.†(159). to Jemmy, family is more important than anything. In the end she turns away from the cliff and the Maiden persona, and away from a possible suicide. She doesnt want to be the girl in the mural on the canvas anymore. Jemmy has switched to an almost opposite persona, no longer paying little mind to art or heritage, but rather to making an uncompromising effort to work hard to care for her family. Through such a metamorphosis Jemmy found her way both in the small town she lives and within herse lf. Jemmy has gone from a believer in a tragic suicide as end to a failed romance as something to aspire to, all the way to choosing to make the pragmatic, selfless effort only to care for her family as a result of maturing and experiencing the understanding she has the power to change her own life for the better if only she has the courage to do so.

Women s Rights During The 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration...

The women of America have struggled to gain the same equality as men. The 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were two documents showing the mistreatment and the unfairness of women in the work place and America as a whole. Some people did not believe women had the same rights as men, but women thought otherwise and wanted their voice heard. The aspects of equality in the American Dream were unavailable to women because women were not given the same rights as men. Similar to the Declaration of Independence which showed the unfair laws Britain placed upon the colonies, the Seneca Falls Declaration explained the rights not given to women by men. One of the grievances in the Seneca Falls Declaration stated, â€Å"He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she had no voice† (Stanton, Anthony 57). In other words, women had to obey the law s just like men did, but women did not have the right to vote. Women had no voice in which laws were passed but they understood that by being citizens of America they should have a say in the government. The Seneca Falls Declaration clearly stated, â€Å"Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, there by leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides† (57). Women saw the inequality being given to them and they wrote theShow MoreRelatedThe Women s Suffrage Movement889 Words   |  4 Pagesthe campaign for women’s suffrage during Wilson s administration. 2. NAWSA: National American Woman Suffrage Association. Founded by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony to secure the vote for women. 3. True Womanhood: (1820s-1840s) Idea that the ideal woman should possess the traits of piety, purity, domesticity submissiveness. 4. President Woodrow Wilson: Was against the women’s suffrage movement. 5. Jeannette Rankin (Montana): In 1916, before women could legally vote, she became the

Can Tony Harrisons Poem V Be Considered An Elegy For A Passing Culture - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 8 Words: 2268 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Literature Essay Type Argumentative essay Level High school Did you like this example? When first broadcast on Channel 4 in 1987 Tony Harrisons long poem v. caused a furore, mainly in the popular press. Famously, the Daily Mail condemned it as featuring a torrent of four-letter filth (Harrison, 1989, p.40), and a number of other, principally tabloid newspapers published critical articles and columns which helpfully totted up for their readers the number of swear words used in the poem. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Can Tony Harrisons Poem V Be Considered An Elegy For A Passing Culture" essay for you Create order In the House of Commons an Early Day Motion was proposed on 27th October 1987, calling upon Channel 4 not to broadcast the poem on the grounds that it featured a stream of obscenities (Harrison, 1989, p.60). For a brief period Harrisons poem was a battleground fought over by conservative and liberal opinion concerning freedom of expression in the media. That so much attention was paid to the use of bad language in the poem may be at least partly explained by Harrisons innovative development of the film poem medium (see Harrison, 1995), which meant that v. gained the sort of exposure otherwise closed off to contemporary poetry in Britain. This suspicion is to some extent supported by the observation that the poem had appeared in print in 1985 and caused not much of a stir beyond the fairly small readership for contemporary poetry. However, the main point here is that such a focus upon the controversial nature of the language of the poem might distract us from its main concerns and strengths. In a newspaper article written in support of v. Blake Morrison described it as a real state-of-the-nation poem (Harrison, 1989, p.57), and said that the real shock delivered by the poem is that it describes unflinchingly what is meant by a divided society (Harrison, 1989, p.56). Such an assessment identifies the political character of v., a poem written at the time of the Miners Strike in 1984-5, which is often considered to be not only the most bitterly fought industrial conflict of the post-war era in Britain, but also the event which brought about the end of that era and of a whole class and its way of life, especially in the North of England. It is for this latter that v. may be said to be an elegy, an elegy which has both personal and collective dimensions. Traditionally, as a genre the elegy has been seen as providing consolation to those who have lost someone they have loved or valued. According to Jahan Ramazani, the elegy has had the propensity to translate gr ief into consolation (1994, p.3). Ramazani cites such examples as John Miltons Lycidas and Percy Shelleys Adonais as elegies which end with their subjects affixed in the firmament or in the landscape as permanent, transcendent entities whose light will never fade (1994, pp.3-4). Much the same tendency may also be found in Rupert Brookes self-elegy The Soldier (1914), in which the speaker offers the compensation that after his death theres some corner of a foreign field/That is forever England (see Ramazani, 1994, p.70). For the purposes of a discussion of Harrisons v., however, it is arguably the most famous example of the elegy in the English language which has the most relevance Thomas Grays Elegy written in a Country Churchyard (1751). That relevance is partly founded on the fact that Grays poem was apparently prompted by the writers contemplation of the churchyard in Stoke Poges where his mother was buried, just as Harrisons poem arises from a visit made to the family plot in H olbeck Cemetery in Leeds. Moreover, like Harrisons, Grays poem is a self-elegy concluding with a self-composed epitaph for the speaker, as well as being an elegy for the nameless rude forefathers (Price (ed.), 1973, p.662, l.16) mouldering away in their unmarked, or crudely inscribed graves in the churchyard. In these ways, Grays poem combines both personal and impersonal or collective elements. Tony Harrison has explicitly acknowledged his use of Grays Elegy in discussions of v. (see, for example, BBC, 2011). In doing so, Harrison focusses upon his use of Grays metre, stanza and alternate rhyme scheme (although, it should be said that he employs rhymed iambic pentameter organised into quatrains in many of his best known poems). For Harrison, to write using such versification is important in making his poetry accessible to a wider audience, but also it may be said that he employs such forms for subversive purposes à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" to take the traditional forms of poetry and fil l them with explicitly political, if not confrontational content. In an interview with John Tusa on Radio 3 in 2011 Harrison talked of v. as a rage in an urban churchyard (BBC, 2011), and of his purpose being to find a voice for that rage rather than melancholic reflection. If the humble dead scattered about Stoke Poges are for Gray largely anonymous, for Harrison they are family, or substantial people, in more than one sense. However, in the poem Harrison communicates his sense of division with regards to his relationship with the people who occupy the grave-plots in Holbeck Cemetery and to his origins in the working class community of Beeston Hill in Leeds more generally. It could be said that v. is an elegy for his parents (both of whom had died only a few years before the poem was written), and is also an elegy for the working class community and culture from which they and Harrison came, a community slowly dying from the process of de-industrialisation hastened along by the Tha tcherite economic policies of the 1980s. However, in addition it may be said that the poem constitutes an elegy for the poets own lost connection with and belonging to the community and family in which he was brought up. At the beginning of the poem the speaker takes us on a tour of the tombs and memorials of the solid citizens who made up the community of Beeston Hill in the past à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" Wordsworth, who built church organs, Byron, who tanned/luggage cowhide in the age of steam (1989, p.7). Of course, Harrison makes effective ironic use of these names, playing with our recognition of them as the names of central figures in the canon of English poetry, whilst simultaneously pulling the rug from beneath the feet of our expectations. As Helmut Haberkam points out, Harrisons description of himself as bard in the opening stanza of the poem suggests the romantic idea of the vates (1994, p.92), or prophetic poet, which was popularised by the likes of Thomas Gray in the 18th c entury (Gray even wrote a poem of that name). However, Harrison immediately undermines this (quite literally) in the following stanza by revealing that the graveyard sits above the galleries of an old coal mine which one day in the future will cause his grave and those of the distinguished dead to drop/into the rabblement of bone and rot (1989, p.7). So, rather than being set apart as a figure with a specially privileged vision, Harrison implies that he in fact will end up where he began, amongst the rabblement of butcher, publican, and baker (1989, p.7), thus, according to Haberkam, validating the idea of the poet as a socially responsive and responsible contemporary (1994, p.92). However, the scenario developed in the poem by Harrison from this point on radically puts into question his entitlement to represent poetically the community and culture to which he used to belong. We learn that whilst his father would come home with clay stains on his trouser knees every week after ha ving tended his mothers grave, Harrisons visits to their graves have been more sporadic and of shorter duration (odd ten minutes such as these (1989, p.12)). What seems to be implied is that the work of remembrance is precisely that à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" a matter of the hard graft of ritual and routine, of tending graves in practice but also, by so doing, maintaining links with the past and the dead by making them part of our lives in the present. Although Harrison is horrified by the obscene and racist graffiti he finds sprayed on the graves, he is forced to ask the question whos to blame, the drunken Leeds Utd fans who rampage through the graveyard, or people like himself, who left Leeds for work or fuller lives (1989, p.12), people whose relationship with their origins might be said to be, at least, ambivalent. In order to convey this ambivalence towards his origins and his sense of loss, Harrison à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" whose first successes, it should be remembered, were as a dramat ic poet à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" employs dialogue and character. The sight of the racist and obscene graffiti causes the anguished Harrison earnestly to question their meaning and their cause: But why inscribe these graves with CUNT and SHIT? Why choose neglected tombstones to disfigure? What is it that these crude words are revealing? What is it that this aggro act implies? Giving the dead their xenophobic feeling or just a cri-de-coeur that man dies? (1989, pp.16-17) However, at this point another voice à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" that of an unemployed skinhead interjects violently: So, whats a cri-de-coeur, Cunt? Cant you speak/the language that yer mam spoke (1989, p.17). From this point in the poem onwards, Harrison is engaged in an increasingly desperate dialogue with the skinhead (his alter ego (1989, p.31)), who taunts the poet for his claim to represent people such as himself: Dont talk to me of fucking representing/the class yer were born into any moreà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦/Who needs/yer fucking poufy words. Ah write me own. (1989, p.22). For a poet who throughout his writing life has documented his struggle to give voice to the experience and culture of the community in which he was brought up (in the well-known poem Them and [Uz], for example (Harrison, 2003 (3rd ed.) pp.102-3), the skinheads question is a crucial one, and one for which the only answer Harrison has seems to be to re-enact that struggle dramatically and poetically. Michael Thursto n writes that whereas Thomas Gray can peacefully contemplate his elegiac resources in the quiet context of graveyards, Harrison is called on to defend both poetry and his own poetic practice against claims lodged by a spokesman for historys victims (2009, p.148). By this reckoning, the traditional compensations made available by the elegy form à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" the assurance offered by the poet that the subject of the elegy will achieve a permanence and a transcendence in the shape of the elegy itself à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" are dependent upon a tacit agreement that the poet may legitimately represent the absent subject. This assurance, however, is denied to Harrison, for whom all the versuses of life (1989, p.11) the political conflicts that divided Thatcherite Britain, class v. class as bitter as before,/the unending violence of US and THEM,/personified in 1984/by Coal Board MacGregor and the NUM (1989, p,11) à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" these conflicts extend into the graveyard itself and into the poetry and the language employed by Harrison. According to Terry Eagleton, Harrison is a natural Bakhtinian, for whom language itself is a terrain of struggle where opposing accents intersect (1991, p.349). The skinhead with whom Harrison engages in the poem may well be alienated from the community which spawned him (from both its past and its present) but, unemployed and xenophobic as he is, he may also be more representative of that community than the poet could ever hope to be. Moreover, the skinhead sees Harrison himself as the class enemy, as one of those who speaks down to him, treats him like he is dumb (1989, p.19). He has his own words and way of expressing them, which in the end may be just as valid as those brief chisellable bits from the good book (1989, p.10) engraved on the gravestones which the graffiti obscure, or those of Harrison himself. However, although the conflict enacted by Harrison in the poem would seem to put into doubt his right to commemorate and to speak for the community which the skinheads very presence would appear to mark as having past, this in itself is rendered ambiguous by the revelation that the foul-mouthed disaffected skinhead and the polyglot cultured poet are one and the same (He aerosolled his name. And it was mine. (1989, p.22)). The words that the skinhead has spoken throughout the poem have been Harrisons, and the skinhead himself, as Harrison has made clear, is what he may have become if he had not benefited from the 1944 Education Act which enabled him to go to Leeds Grammar School (BBC, 2011). So, in the end, the skinhead is revealed as the ghost of the life that Harrison did not lead à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" one where he stayed in Leeds, found himself subject to social and economic forces beyond his control or understanding, and was ultimately dumped on the slag heap. The poem has been, by this account, an elegy for that lost life. Bibliography BBC (2011) The John Tusa Interviews: Tony Harrison. [Online]. Available from https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00nc89r [Accessed 30th October 2015] EAGLETON, T. (1991) Antagonisms. In ASTLEY, N. (1991) Bloodaxe Critical Anthologies: 1: Tony Harrison. Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books (pp.348-50). GRAY, T. (1751) Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. In PRICE, M. (1973) The Oxford Anthology of English Literature: The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press (pp.661-5). HABERKAM, H. (1994) These Vs. are all the Versuses of Life. In BARFOOT, C. (ed.) In Black and Gold: Contiguous Traditions in Post-War British and Irish Poetry. Amsterdam: Rodopi Press (pp.79-94). HARRISON, T. (1989) v. (2nd Ed.). Tarset: Bloodaxe Books. HARRISON, T. (1995) The Shadow of Hiroshima and other Film Poems. London: Faber and Faber. HARRISON, T. (2003) Selected Poems (3rd Ed.). London: Faber and Faber. RAMAZANI, J. (1994) Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy fro m Hardy to Heaney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. THURSTON, M. (2009) The Underworld in Twentieth-Century Poetry: From Pound and Eliot to Heaney and Walcott. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

The Cognitive Theory Of Emotion - 1379 Words

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