2. Explain connections in the poem: red-tongue-blood, white-bone-sceleton, blue-sea-sky. Comment on the coneection between the words red-white-blue and black-night-word
3. Discuss the last sentence "Think one beginning" at the end of the poem
See also the questions on the page.
1. The poem is ment as a way to see everybody as "one", that we are all the same. a Theme could the body, another one the world.
ReplyDelete2. The colour mentioned are of course the colours in the Union Jack.
We are all alike, we all have each our tounge we,are all made from flesh and blood, we are all made from bones wich forms our skeleton. We all live under the same sky and the sea is nobodies.
In the night we are all black nobody can see if we are black,white yellow or purple. The only diference is our word/language.
3.
I see this wish for a new beginning without prejudice where we all stick together no matter race or creed or gender.
I think John Agard want us to see all of us as one. As René says we are all made from flesh and blood and bones. Deep down all human beings is the same.
ReplyDelete1. / 2. / 3.
ReplyDeleteJohn Agard puts the Union Jack under a magnifying glass, associating it's colors with attributes of humans and the world (tongue and skeleton, sea and sky.) In this way he tells the reader that the English people are one, that all people are one (and, then, they are one with the world, too); and that all people stem from one and the same beginning. What he is trying to say by the black-night-word sequence could be interpreted in different ways. One way of seeing it could be: we all came out of the black night, together. We all speak words with the same tongue, though the words may be different. Thus, there was one beginning. The other poems of his focus on the different ways of speaking English (dialects), but conclude the same thing: that though the English coming out of the Carribian's mouth may not be the grammatically correct English of the Queen, still he is as human as she.
- Bastian, Sasha, Samuel, Michelle
I agree with the first few comments. John Aagard's message here is that we all are of the same blood and bones, we are brothers and sister.
ReplyDeleteThe message however seems to be directed at the British people since he is making use of the Union Jack. He uses the colours of the flag to give the flag a symbolic meaning. The colours on the flag are not just there to look pretty, they have meaning...
For instance in the beginning Aagard uses the red and white colour in the flag to almost make The British people check/feel themselves to make them see that they all have what class them as humans (same tongue, blood and skeleton). Then after the reader has concluded in the mind that he/she is human, Aagard uses the blue colour to tell that we also live on the same piece of land surrounded by the same sea and under the same sky. There has to be room for all...
His background Carribean background also backs this up. "Aagard's poetry reflects on the linguistic and cultural clashes between immigrant and British Culture". he probably has/had a fitting in and kept feeling like an immigrant since he was from a colony himself.
Just going to repost as it was a bit rushed and unnamed
DeleteI agree with the first few comments. John Aagard's message here is that we all are of the same blood and bones, we are brothers and sister.
The message however seems to be directed at the British people since he is making use of the Union Jack. He uses the colours of the flag to give the flag a symbolic meaning. The colours on the flag are not just there to look pretty, they have meaning...
For instance in the beginning Aagard uses the red and white colour in the flag to almost make The British people check/feel themselves to make them see that they all have what class them as humans (same tongue, blood and skeleton). Then after the reader has concluded in the mind that he/she is human, Aagard uses the blue colour to tell that we also live on the same piece of land surrounded by the same sea and under the same sky. There has to be room for all...
His Carribean background also backs this up. "Aagard's poetry reflects on the linguistic and cultural clashes between immigrant and British Culture". he probably has/had a problems fitting in and kept feeling like an immigrant since he was from a colony himself.
- Alexander
I also thinks that Agard uses the sponsorship effect when he speaks of word and one beginning.
ReplyDeleteIn the bible more specificly in John, 1:1 it says : "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God"
maybe he is pointing out that all language came from the same in the beginning?
Well I agree with the other comments and think they got it all about the theme is us being one.
ReplyDeleteBut maybe the sentence "Think one beginning" also could mean that we all come from the same beginning, that far back we all come from the same place and are all related. So even though we may look deferent on the outside we are the same on the inside. Maybe John Agard want us to think of that the next time we see somebody with a different skin colour.
You are such nive and kind-hearted people... Hasn't anyone thought that there could be something "violent" in the use of words like: blood, sceleton, bone, black and night? If that is the case, might we see it as "The Empire Writing back"?
ReplyDeleteYou may want to check out his "Alternative Anthem" on youtube.
1. The title; "Therapeutic Exercise with the Union Jack", has its connection to the poem in that the poem is a description of the colours of the flag.
ReplyDelete2. Reading the first couple of replies I thought I had totally misunderstood the poem. Here's what I thought of when reading it.
The red goes from being the colour in the flag to symbolize the tounge/language to symbolize the English bond of blood.
The white to symbolize the bones/skin of a the English to the structure of English society.
The blue to symbolize the seas connecting the English empire to the sky that is the same everywhere in that empire.
The black, night, word part I'm not sure about. It just had a really negative impact on the whole thing. I'm guessing black is the colony natives and night is the shadow, which the treatment of colony natives has cast on England and word is the weapon used against the natives. I'm probably way off though.
"Think one beginning" made me think of how all people origin from the same hairy cavemen, but according to the rest of the poem now treat each other as if they were totally different creatures.
I think the main themes of the poem are nationalism/patriotism and racism.
1)The title idicates that, we are all under the same nation and we are all being fooled by it.
ReplyDelete2)On this point i agree with rene. Its symbolyzing or union world and all the people living in it or on it.
3)My oppionen about The ending sentence`"think one beginning" is that, he is just saying that we all comes fromn the same place, we were all made by god or what ever that created us. we just came from the same place, so we should act like it.
- Mikael
1. The connection to the union jack is of course the colors mentioned in the poem
ReplyDelete2. I think the colors are a symbol of death. First he mentions blood and tongue which I see as the death of the England language, and then he talks about skeletons which are like the decay of the language. “Think blue, think sea, think one sky” I see this as a form of restart for Britain. Not sure about the thinking back part though..
3. Again, some sort of restart for Great Britain.
Janus
Kristina:
ReplyDeleteThe message seems to be for the whole English people in the way he connects things to the colors in the Union Jack.
The last sentence "Think one beginning" at the end of the poem seems to say that he wants a new beginning for the people - a new beginning where everyone no matter color and culture could stand together as one family.
I think that almost all of the comments about the theme/message is right, because Agard is making it pretty clear that he thinks we are all made from the same blood and bones, that we had a joined beginning. It's like when we talk about unity in class.
ReplyDeleteThe name of the poem is made to make us think about our unity. Agard is using the colours of the union jack to represent an overlying picture: We all as humans come from the same beginning, as a union, but somehow and somewhere, we lost track of that unity.
The colours in the poem are from the Union Jack, and since Agard is making a therapeutic exercise with this particular flag, of course he uses these colours. The red symbolizes the tongue and by extension the language, but it also represents the blood, that we all have running through our veins. The white, likewise, refers to the white bones, that holds each one of our bodies and form our sceleton. The blue represents both the sea, which also gives a refrence to the Caribian seas, and the sky above us all. The black-night-words refrence I think is about the beginning, we all stem from the same beginning represented as the black night, and in the beginning our forefathers all spoke with the same tongue.
I think the sentence Think one beginning refers to the same thing. That we we're once all united as one, and frome there we spread out across the world. At some point in time, we forgot our common starting point, and forgot to threat eachother as equals. I think that Aagard wants us to think of our joined beginning, so that we from now on can create a joined future.
- Minna.
But what about "Black...night...word"?
ReplyDeleteDon't you see references to voodoo in the blood and skeleton part?
Am I the only one who sees something ominous in this poem?
- If it is all about how we're really all the same, then WHY use the Union Jack as semantic pattern/symbol/mindset????
Because UK is and has been a super power for a long time and practically everyone in the world knows how the Union Jack looks like and what it resembles.
DeleteEven the USA is a result of the UK colonizing.
i think its a way to tell us about history and races. reading the first part about red-tongue-blood. I think he is speaking about the indians. also called the red man. and through history people have said they had a strange tongue, meaning a strange language. when he speaks about blood. he could be talking about the bloody battle between "the red and the white man"
ReplyDeleteAs Chanett says when he talks about skeletons and bones, he could be talking about woodoo. They where canibals, and performed the dark art of magic.
He speaks about the blue, the sea and the sky. could have something to do with sea travel, mabye it could be compared with the first 3 lines, connecting it to the indians.
"Think black. Think night. Think word." here he could be talking about black people, about how the white man used black people as slaves,and this could be combined with my thoughts about sea traveling, because the english did bring slaves to england using boats. "Think words" might be a refference to verbal use of racism.
My point is that he uses the union jack, because all of this history has somethingn to do with english history. that the colours match the text is ofcource a smart little trick aswell.
1. I think the title refers to how the English government uses the Union Jack as some sort of hypnotic symbol to foreigners. Being under one flag connects a people, yet the "Therapeutic Exercise"-part is making me think of mantras. You all remember the commercial: "Du er for lækker, Karen-Marie. Lækker, lækker, lækker!" right? That sort of thing. The more you use the Union Jack to describe your current nationality, the more "true" it gets... ish.
ReplyDelete2. I'm pretty sure no one are surprised to hear this, but all the colours - except black - resembles parts of the Union Jack.
Yet the red, tongue and, not just blood as many of you are pointing out, but ONE blood. Now this makes me think of how the different languages between colonists and origins led to slaughter of origins. Therefore only their tongue (language) and the ONE blood (their blood) was the only right thing.
White, bone and skeleton is pretty obvious. Only white is right. The bones are the leftovers of the slaughter - but the ONE skeleton is the difference of the two nations. We all know how the skeletons of white people and black people are different, right? Well...
The blue, the sea and the sky could resemble the ocean dividing the nations. Again - and maybe this is me over-interpretending - I'm sort of a pessimist. The sky is connected to the theme, the Union Jack, and once again it says ONE sky, not just sky; meaning the Englishmen think the sky belongs to them and their Union Jack and by that there is only one sky: theirs.
How the HELL could ALL of you miss the "one" in the last sentence of the three verses AND the last line? It's like highlighting an important part and none of you saw it.
Now the black, night and word might be - and I'm very unsure about this - a referring to another piece.... Deep Purple's "Black Night". The song is about the right to be who you are no matter where you're from and what you do... and in this verse there's no ONE and therefore no indication of one or another being more right.
But yeah, that's just my thought on that one...
3. The one beginning refers to - surprisingly - the origin of man. ONE beginning, meaning that we're all the same and we are all as right and true as everyone else.
Wow, rambling sure is an epic skill of mine... Crossing fingers - hope I'm right about some of it.
Even though we have different colours, we are as one Union Jack. All the colours somehow meet each other as one . No fight within the country, cause we all are equal, let's begin fresh and stand together.. This is how I see it .
ReplyDeleteTharsan
I think the theme of the poem is about unity across races. Using union jack as a symbol due to Englands massive influence in uniting many people from many places under one flag.
ReplyDeleteThe connections between the colours and tongue, blood, bone ect. Is to describe how that we are all speak together, are all of flesh and bone and all united under one sky. The part about black I think is about that in the night we all look the same. When he says think one word then it's about how a word is the same to everyone.
And with Think one beginning then it's about people living and talking together in unity.
the title is connected to the poem because its about the colors of the union jack.
ReplyDeleteRecognition of, and respect for national identities are an essential ingredients for effective union. The Union Jack symbolizes all this, respect for individuality within a closely knit community.
"Think one beginning" should remember all of us that we are all the same.
Kristian Jensen
"Damus Petimus Que Vicissim (We give and expect in return)"
ReplyDeleteI found the phrase from one of Guyana's previous used flags.
I assumed that I should associate the colors used in the poem, with the English flag.
But that the poet/author John Agarad was grown up in George town, I saw the flag symbolism interesting.
check this page out: http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Guyana.htm
May 26, 1966 Guyana achieved independence from the British imperialists.
On that occasion they got a new flag, were the British flag does not occur anymore.
The poem is from 2006, it means that it is 40 years ago that Guyana got their independence.
So I think in a way, it is his way to honor the 40-year anniversary.
His message is to show how paradoxical the British imperialists saw the world. ("one blood, one skeleton, one sky)..etc.
On the one hand, you see a previous flag with colonist boat with the motto: Damus Petimus Que Vicissim (We give and expect in return)
On the other hand, what is the point? When "they" do not see, any other than themselves as human beings?
A whimsically eccentric interpretation
S. A. R
"Damus Petimus Que Vicissim (We give and expect in return)"
DeleteI found the phrase, from one of Guyana's previous used flags.
I assume that I should associate the colors used in the poem with the English flag.
But when the poet/author John Agarad grew up in George town, I saw the flag symbolism interesting.
Check this page out: http://www.worldstatesmen.org/Guyana.htm
May 26, 1966 Guyana achieved independence from the British imperialists.
On that occasion they got a new flag, were the British flag does not occur anymore.
The poem is from 2006, it means that it is 40 years ago that Guyana got their independence.
So I think in a way, it is his way to honor the 40-year anniversary.
His message is to show how paradoxical the British Imperialists/Colonists/Commonwealth saw the world. ("one blood, one skeleton, one sky)..etc.
On the one hand, you see a previous flag with colonist boat with the motto: Damus Petimus Que Vicissim (We give and expect in return)
On the other hand, what is the point? When "they" do not see, any other than themselves as human beings?
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ReplyDeleteTherapeutic exercise
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