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ENG2603 Assignment 1 Memo | Due May 2025. 2 Essays provided for both questions. Question 1
Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
1. In the first paragraph of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, the main character Tambu states that the novel is about her “escape”. In the same paragraph she goes on to use the word “entrapment”. She uses these words because they refer to patriarchy, oppression and freedom which are central in the plot of the novel.
Write an essay in which you discuss the idea of women’s ‘entrapment’ and ‘escape’ within the context of the novel’s incidents. In your essay, refer closely to the following women:
(i) Tambu
(ii) Maiguru
(iii) Lucia
(iv) Nyasha
Question 2
The New Century of South African Poetry edited by Michael Chapman “Could you not Write Otherwise?” By Alan Paton
Could you not write otherwise, this woman said to me, Could you not write of things really poetical?
Of many-coloured birds dipping their beaks Into many-coloured flowers?
Of mine machinery standing up, you know, Gaunt, full of meaning, against the sky?
Must you write always of black men and Indians,
Of half-castes and Jews, Englishmen and Afrikaners, Of problems insoluble and secret fears
That are best forgotten?
You read the paper, you post your letters, You buy at the store like any normal being, Why then must you write such things?
Madam, really, since you ask the question, Really, Madam, I do not like to mention it But there is a voice that I cannot silence.
It seems I have lived for this, to obey it To pour out the life-long accumulation Of a thousand sorrowful songs.
I did not ask for this destination
I did not ask to write these same particular songs.
Simple I was, I wished to write but words,
And melodies that had no meanings but their music And songs that had no meaning but their song.
But the deep notes and the undertones Kept sounding themselves, kept insistently Intruding themselves, like a prisoned tide That under the shining and the sunlit sea
In caverns and corridors goes underground thundering.
Madam, I have no wish to be cut off from you I have no wish to hurt you with the meanings Of the land where you were born.
It was with unbelieving ears I heard
My artless songs become the groans and cries of men. And you, why you may pity me also,
For what I do when such a voice is speaking, What can I speak but what it wishes spoken?
1. The poem is about an attractive exterior of unpleasant content. Argue in support of or against this observation. Motivate your answer with references to appropriate aspects of the poem, including its imagery.
TOTAL: 50 x 2 = 100 marks
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