Prayer Before Birth Sociology Analysis
EXPLORE THE POETS’ PORTRAYAL OF SOCIETY IN THE POEMS ‘Prayer before Birth’ (by Louis MacNeice,) ‘War Photographer’ (by Carol Ann Duffy,) and ‘A Mother in a Refugee Camp’ (by Chinua Achebe) in more detail, as well as ‘Telephone Conversation’ (by Wole Soyinka), ‘Once upon a Time’ (by Gabriel Okara), and ‘Still I Rise’ (by Maya Angelou) in less detail.
The ideal society is defined by Oxford University Press as: the aggregate of people living together in an ordered community. However, the following poems ‘Prayer before Birth’ by MacNeice, ‘War Photographer’ by Duffy, ‘A Mother in a Refugee Camp’ by Achebe, ‘Telephone Conversation’ by Soyinka, ‘Once upon a Time’ by Okara, and ‘Still I Rise’ by Angelou, all depict the society we live in as corrupt and chaotic. While the first four present society in an extremely negative light, the next two have more optimistic views on this society. These views are portrayed through the character’s personas, language, structure and poetic devices. ‘Prayer before Birth’, ‘War Photographer’ and ‘A Mother in a Refugee Camp,’ will be analysed in more detail. Two poems that depict society as being cruel are ‘Prayer before Birth’ and ‘War Photographer’ by Louis MacNeice and Carol Ann Duffy respectively. ‘Prayer before Birth’ is a dramatic monologue, the poem portray society as extremely cruel and pessimistic, the persona of an unborn child, describes the people of the 20th century as being dishonest and he prays to “God” to regain the respect and
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