Checking Out Me History Flashcards
Contrast between non-italic stanzas and those in italics
Highlights contrast between what the speaker has been taught at school and what he learns through ‘checking out me own history’
Non-italic stanzas contain a lot of repetition of ‘Dem tell me’
The repetition conveys a sense of being bombarded, brainwashed even by a biased education system in which it is ‘Dem’ (a collective group) against ‘Me’ (an individual powerless to ‘tell’ anyone anything)
Stanzas in italics
him now ‘tell[ing]’ ‘dem’/ the reader about important aspects of history that have not been taught in school; the roles are reversed and he now takes on the role of educator; we often use italics to emphasise things, so this information is visually emphasised – by being in italics, by being set in/ indented on the page. Agard is giving the stories of slaves, black people, women their own separate space on the page
Short lines in stanzas in italics
Slows the pace of these stanzas down (particularly evident when you hear Agard read the poem when these lines are read more slowly and spoken, not sung as with the other stanzas)
Contrast between references in the non-italic stanzas and references in the italicised stanzas
References in the non-italic stanzas are inconsequential – children’s stories such as Dick Whittington, or nursery rhymes such as ‘de cow who jump over de moon’ – whereas in the italicised stanzas, we learn about great leaders such as Toussaint L’Ouverture or moral heroes such as Mary Seacole
an excess of rhyme in the non-italicised stanzas (eg. ‘balloon’, ‘moon’, ‘spoon’, ‘maroon’; ‘Waterloo’, ‘Zulu’, ‘1492’, ‘too’; ‘lamp’, ‘camp’, ‘soul’, Seacole’)
makes the history he was told by ‘dem’ seem over-simplistic – like the nursery rhymes of the dish and the spoon and ‘ole King Cole’; metaphor for the way in which colonisers often infantilised those they colonised
Use of phonetic spelling throughout and no punctuation
This is a poem of rebellion, in which Agard/ the speaker now uses his own voice – making the reader speak the way he speaks, not the other way round, and refusing to write using the ‘norms’ of poetry/ written language
imagery of damage early on in ‘bandage’ and ‘blind’
Emphasises the damage that can be inflicted by a biased education system; it’s a metaphor for cultural oppression (an image of disabling those not in the cultural majority – ‘blind[ing]’ them)
‘and all dat’
(like the ‘etcetera’ in ‘Bayonet Charge’) implies a dismissive attitude to what he was taught in school
imagery of light in contrast to image of ‘blind[ness]’ earlier on – in relation to characters he wants to teach us about: Toussaint – has ‘vision’ and is a ‘beacon’; Nanny de maroon is a ‘see-far woman’, and Mary Seacole is a ‘healing star’ and a ‘yellow sunrise’
It’s as if he is in the process of restoring his (and his culture’s) sight in terms of revealing the truth about a history that has been hidden from them to allow them – and the reader - to ‘see’ it
natural images of ‘mountain’, ‘fire’, ‘stream’, ‘river’, ‘star’, ‘sunrise’
all these natural images are associated with the history he is now bringing to light – emphasises the ‘natural’ power of this (previously hidden/ suppressed) culture
imagery of ‘carving’ his identity at the end
makes it sound difficult and time-consuming (like carving a piece of wood to make something), but also worthwhile as the process of carving usually results in something of beauty
