Carpet Weavers Poem

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In the poems, ‘Carpet-weavers, Morocco’ By Carol Rumens and ‘Muliebrity’ By Sujata Bhatt, slavery and religion are scrutinised. In ‘Carpet-Weavers’ Rumens depicts how the children are compelled to work and how their childhood is being stripped away however in ‘Muliebrity’ Bhatt shows how the girl is graceful and happy while she is doing her work. Sub-themes of slavery, religion, childhood and development are portrayed through a plethora of literary devices to illustrate the central theme of the effects on the children. Labour and slavery is shown in ‘Carpet-weavers, Morocco’ as the children are portrayed as happy and willing to work but are working instead of going to school. The metaphor ‘loom’ describes the children as machines who work to put together the ‘carpets’ and have no opportunity for freedom and work.There are two different connotations of the word loom, it can be seen as a noun as well as a verb. Furthermore, visual imagery is used to describe how ‘their braids are oiled and black, their dresses bright’, which shows that all the workers are females of all ages. Rumens uses irony to depict the atmosphere as bright and cheerful, but in reality, …show more content…

The persona explains how she thought about the girl ‘who gathered cow-dung in a wide,round basket’. This is used to show that the ‘girl’ that picked up the cow dung was young as Bhatt remembers her as a significant memory from the past. Bhatt describes the girl by using positive visual images to describe how feminine she is as she moves her “hands and her waist” and “scoops” cow dung in a graceful way. As Bhatt is Indian, she may be linking her culture and experiences to a young girl who is doing something that others who are not Indian will not understand. The title of the poem ‘Muliebrity’ adumbrates womanhood and womanly qualities, so the title of the poem is trying to elucidate how powerful and empowered women can

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