Singh song Flashcards
Themes
Romantic love
Family relationships
Needing to earn a living
Difference between the generations
Context
Poets middle name is Singh and he is a Sikh
Many issues with clashes of cultures
Most of his relatives has saved enough money by working hard in the 60s and 70s to be able yo buy a shop after immigrating to Britain
He wrote Singh song as he says it describes an important part of the British story’
Writes in a form of ´Punglish’
´Whispering stairs’
L: personification - gives a sense of secrecy, the shop at night becomes a romantic destination
‘you’ e.g. ‘where you bin?’
L: pronoun
Positions the reader as one of the customers, contrast between ‘you’ and ‘we’
Regards his customer as an inconvenient interruption to the time he can spend with his wife
‘daddy’
L: immature diction - father still treats him like a child
Father is in charge of the son
R: we feel sympathy for the speaker as he doesn’t want to work at the shop but his father makes him
‘effing’
L: colourful language - she is disrespectful to her husbands parents
C: a Sikh wife would be expected to be respectful
R: the reader might be angry that the wife disrespects her husbands family when it was them who had to work for the shop initially
‘my bride’
suggests he is proud and admires her
D: he must respect his parents in running the shop and she rebels against them by being disrespectful which is his revenge to his dad and she encourages him to lock the shop
‘red crew cut’
C: Sikh belief in the 5 Ks - Kesh: don’t cut hair as it is god given
Shows the wife is rebellious nature
‘vee share’
L: ‘vee’ - inclusive pronoun which shows they’re emotionally close
He envisions them as one
‘rowing through Putney’
D: shows they have a vigorous sex life but are also very close
‘priceless baby’
L: mercantile lexis of business
D: shows that his wife and her love is important to the speaker and more valuable than money
‘tartan sari’
I: 1)Signifies that the wife is part of both cultures tartan: British, sari: Indian
2) she wants to show off to others the fact she is from two cultures
R: reader is happy that she hasn’t completely forgotten her family’s culture and wears clothes from both cultures
Structure
L: chronological structure - starts with the morning and ends with the night shows how they have long days in the shop
L: stanzaic structure changes to couplets to show their close bonds as a couple
Mood
Rebellious- ‘making fun at my daddy’
Affectionate - ‘tummy of a teddy’
Romantic - ‘late in di midnight hour’
