I believe that Arthur Nortje’s poem, “Waiting”, is about the speaker’s struggle to find meaning and purpose in his life when confronted by “a hole in the mind’s foundation”- the possible decimation of all that he believed to be true about the anti apartheid struggle on which he has based his life. The actions he has felt compelled to undertake in order to realize his hopes for his country have come at great cost to himself, resulting in exile from the “roots” that nourish him. The idea that that these actions may have been based on nothing but flimsy sentiment and have ultimately achieved nothing, as purposeless as an empty warehouse, is the source of the speaker’s present attitude towards his exile. It is this attitude of bitter disillusionment that I wish to explore in this essay and I would also like to focus on his use of imagery, particularly the interplay between imagery of darkness and light, and what I believe these images represent.
In line four, the speaker refers to night as being the “beautifier.” It transforms the wharf, which in daylight is usually fairly unattractive, into a place of dancing lights. The implication is that darkness hides the ugly reality, and thus provides escape into illusion. I believe that t
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He could thus be expressing his disillusionment with the movements’ weak and ineffectual nature. Thus, his “waiting”, for validation, is tangible. If the idiom is to be believed, when ones emotions are exposed it is referred to as ‘wearing your heart on your sleeve. In the face of the reality of separation from their source, these words no longer inspire, are relegated to the impersonal pages of “dead journals” and computer hard drives, and are therefore a betrayal of the profound emotion that stirred them. A New University Anthology of English Poetry. The run on sentences also affect the rhythm of the poem, making it slow and heavy, thus lending a mournful tone. Continuing with this idea, in the last line of the poem, the speaker tells of the “ash on my sleeve”. Therefore, when we leave the speaker looking out at the waterfront, we are challenged to appreciate its significance to him. The putrid decay envisioned by his words “maggot-fattening sun” metaphorically reveal what remains of his hope, rotting under the glaring truth of his perceived failure and the failure of the anti apartheid movement. The images of death, the hollow, empty sockets of the skull and the suggestion of the mass devastation of the earth by nuclear weapons, signify the death of his expectations and the death of his reason for being.
Approximate Word count =
1065
Approximate Pages =
4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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