VANITY BY BIRAGORA DIOP FULL ANALYSIS/SUMMARY, SETTING AND FIGURES OF SPEECH

SETTING

This is another African poem that talks about culture in Africa society, the setting 
can be trace to one of the old French empire called Senegal, the temporal setting is the Era of colonization and before independent it is this period the educated elites among the Senegal want to be part of French citizen in the name of forsaking their culture, the black in this scene are totally craze and have Hugh lust for civilization and change in culture, psychologically, it was a time when many of the new educated elite grappled with cultural complex, an inferiority complex for that matter.

Summary/Analysis

The poem is encouraging the people of the land not to just their culture out in the name of making and imbibing a new civilized one, he tries to make them understand that this has been their roots and their fathers’, he further said with the need to foreshadow the remedy to solve the circumstances face by the continent African as a whole, he make the people of that culture know that turning deaf ear to their ancestors will do them no good than to exercabate the thing on ground, the poet in some successive lines of the poem make readers know that if this trends is not call off  or give a reversal, African as a whole will be the subjected to laughter by some big children which means big organizations like UNO, EU or big countries like American, Britain, Germany and more.

In the poet style of repetition, the rhetorical asked questions is that will anyone on earth pay attention to our Complain and anger, which he seems to be unjust, he even likened it to a tumor that grow in our plaintive trought.

Stanza 15-24 tends to be the longest verse in the poem, he stress it here that who will be to listen to their pains and clamoring, we are inform by the writer that their ancestors gives this people a lot of signs just for them not to go astray and forsake the culture of their fathers, but still this people are unworthy sons who turns deaf ears to them. Even with all their plead we remain deaf to their entreaties. We refuse to see just as we have refused to listen to our progenitors, for this reason the poetry have no choice than to tag us with deaf and unworthy son.

The last verse in the poem recap all that has been talking of in all the rest lines, it Made it clear that we declaring our problem for no one to hear is cause by we ourself trying to imbibe other people’s culture just in the name of tarnishing our own. The poet make us realizes that we also are not qualified to be answer to for our clamoring and crying because we also could not listen to the precious voice of wisdom and warning.

Themes

1. The forsaking of the ancestral or traditional way. 
2. How mush wisdom of the ancestors are valuable
3. Warning to renegade
4. The pain faced by the obstinate ones
5. The repercussions of leaving one own culture to imbibe another