Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka

Tele call up communion by Wole Soyinka is about, as the title suggests, a conversation over the telephone between twain people a westbound African art object and a British land bird. The spring was aspect for a place to sustain in London. He felt that the expenditure pull inmed reasonable and the location nonmaterial in the sense that it was impartial. The landlady claimed that she lived off premises mayhap indicating that it was a source of income for her. The poem is in free verse and appears like a conversation, like an active telegraphic dialogue.It is a poem that takes the support of irony to nonplus across a point strongly, that is, illogicality of racism. The poet has taken this creative idea to begin his anger over how society gives undue importance to a mans burnish and not this culture or intellect. The opening lines of the poem introduce the report which rests on the irony of the word indifferent. The vocalizer wants an apartment and in this affection he c all tolds the landlady to speak to her. He finds the value reasonable and the location indifferent. unbiased here possibly indicated impartial to run and tint.The landlady emphatically says that she lives off the premises the apartment is a source of income for her. Ein truththing seems alright and the speaker feels that he should tell the lady that he is an African. He does this to avoid a atrophied journey because he has an apprehension that when the lady sees him she might react negatively and refuse him. Hence there is the need for this self-confession. He has not done any prostitute that he should confess yet he seems apologetic. The response to this self-confession is ironically a telling silence a pause that transmuted right breeding of the lady.She is possibly caught unawares. The African is in addition breaked and hurt to react instantaneously and therefore, the heavy silence is broken with call into questions How dismal? and Are you light or very d ark? She wants to roll in the hay the colour of his tegument. This was an absurd notion followed by the whites they thought that the igniter shades of the dark-skinned people were better than the darker ones. The speaker is suddenly conscious of the fetor of rancid breath of the public booth, its rose-cheeked colour, the loss pillar box and the red bus all Red.It is an evocative understand that brings out the reality if the prejudice against him. The colour red here symbolises the extent of shock and anger of the African. He is the one looking for acceptance and belonging, and lodging. The colour might besides refer to the branding of cattle, where each of them has a red mark on its bole that makes it easier for its master to identify them. The mans silence is an ill-mannered silence eloquently interpreted as bad dexterity by the landlady. She politely tones down the avidity of her question save nevertheless seeks to know how dark he is.The poet calling her considerat e is an irony because she does not rephrase her question sen tauntively and considerately, nevertheless it is considerate as so far she converted the phrases. revealing came when the African realised that the whites shall never hear the opprobriouss as human beings as themselves. The African replies in a childish way, resigning himself and simplifying the choices of the landlady. He says, You mean like plain or milk chocolate? All his anguish, bruise and anger takes recourse and he forces to see himself through the eyes of the lady.She answers him in unhealthiness and then, adjusting himself with the wave-length of the white lady, apparently complying with her, he says, West African sepia from down in his passport. This is again an irony, as the African in reality faces rejection in europium by the whites despite having a passport. This depicts that the colour of the skin is an absurdly important parametric quantity for describing humans according to the whites. The answer of the African does not satisfy the lady and she feigns not to understand whats that? is her question.He replies that it is similar to grizzled and she immediately clarifies that thats dark. Now the man has had enough of her insensitiveness. He disregards all constraints of formalness and mocks her outright, saying that he isnt all black, the soles of his feet and the thenars of his hands are completely white, but he is foolish enough to sit on his bottom so it has been rubbed black due to friction. But as he senses that she is about to slam the receiver on him, he struggles one last meter to make her reconsider, pleading her to at to the lowest degree see for herself only to have the phone slammed on him.Exasperated by these indifferences he is sharp to tell her that but for his brown skin he is like any early(a) normal human being with palm of the hand, soles of his feet a peroxide blond. He realises that she wants the details to be able to reason him. But the process a ngers him and provokes him to describe how the bottoms farrow black and asks her to judge for herself. The lady had already sent the receiver rearing on the thunderclap. She had disconnected. The telephone conversation has concluded but the man has to have the last word. He asks if she wouldnt rather see for herself.