Poetic Analysis of Piano and the Drums – SS1 Literature-in-English Lesson Note (Third Term)

Piano and the Drums is a poem about a speaker caught between his African roots and Western culture, shown through the sounds of jungle drums and a piano.

• Poet: Gabriel Okara, a Nigerian poet.
• Subject: the speaker hears jungle drums that recall his African childhood.
• Turn: a piano then draws him towards a foreign, complex music.
• Ending: he is left in a dilemma between the two cultures.
• Devices: diction, imagery, metaphor, enjambment and alliteration.

Behavioural objectives

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

1. Summarise what happens in each group of lines of the poem.
2. Describe the different effects of the jungle drums and the piano on the speaker.
3. Identify diction, imagery, metaphor, enjambment and alliteration in the poem.
4. Explain what the title of the poem symbolises.
5. State the theme and mood of the poem.

What happens in the poem?

The poem moves from the drums and childhood memories, to the piano, and then to confusion between the two.

Lines 1 to 8: the jungle drums

• Setting: the poet stands by the riverside in the early hours of the morning.
• Sound: the sound of jungle drums flows through his ears.
• Message: the drums bring a deep message to his heart.
• Comparison: the message rushes in like blood out of the flesh of a suddenly killed animal.
• Memory: the drums take him down memory lane to his childhood at home.
• Hunting scene: he pictures a leopard that bares its teeth and poses for war.
• Hunters: they gather with their spears, ready to kill.
• Effect: the drums arouse the people into forceful action and tense the atmosphere.

Lines 9 to 16: the return to childhood

• Blood: his blood gradually returns inside him.
• Mother: the ancient drums carry him back to his mother’s lap as a suckling child.
• Bush paths: he remembers walking the bush paths of the olden days.
• Paths described: they were ungraded, untraded and gutterless.
• Walk: the drums force his mind to walk again along narrow paths made by people’s feet.
• Mood: he moves hastily and gladly through the blooming vegetation and flowers of the dark tropical forests.

Lines 17 to 25: the piano

• Entry: the sound of the piano pierces the poet’s ear.
• Sound: it seems to sing and cry at the same time.
• Lone voice: the piano has no supporting drums.
• Message: it speaks of many things and ways of life that are hard to understand.
• Alien speaker: it talks of faraway places, strange experiences and knowledge.
• Tone: the voice rises and softly falls.
• Attraction: whether high or low, the tunes slowly draw him closer to liking the music.
• Sudden stop: the music ends without a final conclusion.
• Pain: the stop hurts him as if a dagger has pierced his flesh.

Lines 26 to 29: the dilemma

• Memory: he is taken back to the riverside in the years gone by.
• Confusion: in those ancient days nothing seemed clear to him, and he stood dumbfounded.
• Swinging mind: his mind moves unsteadily between the magic flow of the drums and the difficult piano.
• Result: he does not settle with either side and remains in a dilemma.

How do the drums and the piano differ in the poem?

The drums stand for the speaker’s African home, and the piano stands for foreign Western culture.

What are the theme and mood of the poem?

The main theme is culture clash, and the mood shifts from nostalgia to confusion.

• Culture clash: the speaker is pulled between African and Western ways of life.
• Nostalgia: he longs for the simple life of his childhood.
• Identity: he does not know which civilisation to follow.
• Mood: warm and eager with the drums, then painful and uncertain with the piano.

What poetic devices does the poet use?

The poet uses diction, imagery, metaphor, enjambment and alliteration to convey his message.

Diction

Diction is the poet’s choice of words.

• Simple words: much of the language is easy for an ordinary reader to understand.
• Difficult words: some words need a dictionary.
• Examples: ‘panther’, ‘crouch’, ‘furrowed concerto’, ‘coaxing’, ‘diminuendo’, ‘crescendo’ and ‘labyrinth’.
• Effect: the hard musical words match the complex, foreign nature of the piano.

Imagery

Imagery is language that creates pictures or sensations in the reader’s mind.

• Water imagery: the speaker comes from a riverine area, so he uses words like ‘riverside’ and ‘torrents’.
• Blood and flesh: the message of the drums is compared to blood from a freshly killed animal.
• Example: ‘and my blood ripples, turns torrent, topples the years and at once I’m in my mother’s lap suckling’.
• Symbol: the title symbolises the clash between Western and African civilisation, and the results of mixing the two cultures.

Metaphor

A metaphor is a direct comparison in which one thing is described as another.

• Mist: the speaker uses mist for what is hard to remember or see clearly.
• In the last stanza: ‘morning mist’ shows he does not know which civilisation to follow.

Enjambment

Enjambment is the running of a sentence from one line into the next without a pause.

• Use in the poem: the thought moves from line to line without a break in sense.
• Effect: it copies the steady flow of the drums and the speaker’s rushing memories.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the start of nearby words.

• Example: ‘turns torrent, topples’ repeats the t sound.
• Effect: it adds to the musical flow of the poem.

Evaluation

1. What does the sound of the jungle drums bring back to the speaker in lines 9 to 16?
2. Why is the stopping of the piano painful to the speaker?
3. What does the title of the poem symbolise?
4. How does the poet use mist as a metaphor?
5. Name two complex words from the poem that a lay reader may need a dictionary to understand.

Assignment

1. Write a short answer in two parts. First, describe the speaker’s feelings in lines 26 to 29. Second, explain the use of water imagery in the poem.