AFRICAN POETRY
How does Rubadiri present the destructive force of the thunderstorm in “African Thunderstorm?”
Explanation
The poem presents the destruction wreaked by a violent African thunderstorm on both people and nature itself. Rubadiri uses a lot of poetic devices to portray the storm as an agent of destruction in a most vivid way:
1.(a) Similes: There is the use of several similes in the poem. In the second stanza alone, there are two of such similes. The poet compares the gathering rain clouds to “a plague of locusts” emphasizing its destructiveness.
(b) Simile is also used to express the manner in which the storm tosses up everything on its way “like a madman chasing nothing.”
(c) Then, we are told that the threatening clouds and the storm hover over everything and everybody “like dark sinister wings.” This presages doom and disaster.
2. The use of personification invests the thunderstorm with a peculiarly destructive personality; everything gives way before it. “The wind whistles by”, Trees bend to let it pass” as “the pregnant clouds/Ride stately by” and cause a lot of inconvenience to all around. Both animate and inanimate objects are affected; clothes were “like tattered flags” and women’s “dangling breasts” are exposed.
3. Onomatopoeia abounds in the poem. “Clinging”, “dangling”, Rumble”, “tremble” and “crack” all convey a sense of force and noise echoing the various sounds made by the thunderstorm in its bids to destroy.
4. Repetition of lines like “The wind whistles by”, “trees bend to let it pass”, adds to the power of the thunderstorm.
5. There is also the apt choice of diction. Words like “hurrying”, “turning” express in their continuous tenses the immediacy of the impact of the storm on things around.
6. Contrast: The 3rd stanza sharply contrasts the behaviour of children and women to the storm. The children, on the one hand, in their blissful naivety welcome the storm while the women, on the other, rush madly moving things out of the destructive storm’s way.