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Half Caste Tom Leonard Analysis

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‘Half-caste’ by John Agard deals with the satirising attitude shown by the protagonist towards a man who insults the protagonist for having parents from two different races. ‘Unrelated Incidents’ by Tom Leonard deals with a BBC reporter who announces that if he read the news in his native accent, people would not believe it. Both John Agard and Tom Leonard get their point across by writing their poems in their native dialect (their native accents), in order to show equality for all cultures. John Agard and Tom Leonard share two common audiences. Both poets lived in Britain and wrote about the difficulties of having a native accent which caused the protagonist in the poem to be discriminated. Agard was discriminated for having parents from two different races (English and Guyanese). Leonard was discriminated for having a thick Scottish accent instead of an English one and wrote the poem of a BBC reporter who struggled with the same issue. That is because, it was said that news that was spoken ‘properly’ was truthful news. Their poems have the same message, and that is ‘that there is more …show more content…

This line refers to how Picasso (a very famous painter) mixed his paints to make his best paintings, so wouldn’t that be called a half-caste? Making the purpose of the poem to show how being half-caste does not make you less capable but more unique. The purpose of Tom Leonard poem was said through lines 5 - 15; “thi reason a talk wia BBC accent iz coz yi widny wahnt mi ti talk aboot thi trooth wia voice lik wanna yoo scruff.” This sentence explains the reason the BBC reporter is talking in his native accent rather than the usual BBC accent. The BBC reporter tells us in a joking manner that he is speaking in a BBC accent (when it clearly is not) telling them talking in a BBC accent will make the news more believable rather than when he speaks in his native accent. The purpose is to show that honesty does not come from the accent you

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