Limbo Analysis By Edward Kamau z6w3y

Edward Kamau Braithwaithe emerged into the world at the 20th century, where slavery still persists and laws and orders were unreinforced until the 1950s and 1960s. This poem was a huge metaphor itself, written to recount and narrate his feelings and expressions, and also display his beliefs of manumission in slavery, profoundly also showing the similarity between a limbo dance and the transportation of African slaves to the West Indies. Despite being engulfed and consume with pessimistic and negative points, it still however resembles part of his identity in the poem, being the fusion of suffering and delight in one’s life. Overall, symbolism is to be seen generally thorough out the poem. The author starts and ends without full stops and commas, literally just starting with a capital letter at the 1st line and ceased with a full stop at the end of the poem. This is to resemble the commencement and contents with continuous and never-ceasing suffering and convulsions of what the slaves experienced. The poem ends with a full stop, showing halt to the journey of the slaves from Africa to America. Few of structures can be found and annotated here. The poem itself is mostly lyrical and consists of distant rhymes among the stanzas, as it was to be sung or dance accompanied with to drown the slaves’ intense sorrow in their adventures to America to be sold to their “future” owners. Multiples repetitions and alliterations are being equipped to show emphasis in the lines of the poem to encourages readers to be in their shoes and feel for their plight. The first of the 3 starting stanzas stanza began with an unrhymed couplet. The 1st line ushered a metaphor “And limbo stick is the silence in front of me”. The limbo stick represents the shackles and confines of slavery, defining and unveiling the Limbo dance as a

possibility of liberation and deregulation from the prejudicing and unsymmetrical law, studiously creating imagery of miseries and contempt emitted by the slaves towards this disparity among the people. In the other hand, this metaphor contains acute potential to be a symbolism, as this can symbolises the limbo stick as oppression towards the slaves in the ship and the silence specifying the language barrier as slaves that were brought in are consisted from different tribes with different languages and dialects or the interpretation of loneliness in the dark with no social communication with each other. The second stanza is a repetition of alliteration and a simile in a rhythmic pattern of abab. Limbo here, use the definition of the Roman Catholic beliefs of heaven and hell, but more to the devilish hell as appointed by the author. From this context to the ending, the author repeats the phrase “limbo” and simile “limbo like me” to show awareness to readers of how such a prolonged and lengthy time had been spent down at the ship being tortured and tormented in their journeys being prisoned and encased in the ship. The seventh line last of the three interconnecting and relating stanzas rhymed with the first line of the poem. Here, the “and limbo stick” are being substituted with “long dark night” and end with the same phrase, evidence of repetition. Seventh line suggests the captivity and despair of the slaves in the ship, with “silence in front of me”, again showing the language barrier preventing them from communicating to each other in the dark abyss. The next two couplets are rhymes. These are a long repetition with only one syllable except for the last of their line. Both the “stick hit sound” shows the cranking and the wood creaking sound of the wooden ship as this shows evidence to the sail of the ship by sea. “and the ship like it ready” of the eleventh line presents constant

tilting rise and fall of the ship never endingly and also showing the might and strength of the slave ship, showing the bias and uneven high rankings of the western people compared to the Africans. The thirteenth line, “and the dark still steady”, resembles the utter silence that remained throughout the entire trip. If intensely studied, the “dark” here could symbolises the black men and women of the African countries and the “still steady” links back to the previous interpretation of silence among the slaves, explaining the muteness among the Africans. Again, at stanza 6, there is another repetition of the two famous couplets to show how much time had ed over and over. After that, the seventh stanza yielded repetition of long dark deck and repetition of long and dark. The poet uses them to create imagery of the surrounding atmosphere of situation in the ship. “the water surrounding me” and “the silence is over me” shows the loneliness of each individual slave in the ship as if the “water” is silence and the “silence” resembles the gesture of being solitarily lonely. This linked to the statement of stanza 4 and 5 above, as these lines show complete muteness and nothingness. Followed by another similar repetition of limbo, stanza 9 and 10 are composed of repetitions of 2 personifications and assonances, “stick is the whip and the dark deck is slavery”. This line showed how the slaves were abused and not took cared off, being treated like animals by western barbarians. The “whip” is a certifying onomatopoeia, which redes the high level of intense unagitated and motionless solemn peace and quiet. After another akin attitude of repetition, the personification “knees spread wide and the water is hiding me” delineate of how a female woman was being assaulted and raped multiple times. The

other personification, “and the dark ground is under me” s the cruelty of being raped endlessly. This intentionally demonstrates the paramount utmost in deficiency of respect when treating the black people. The repetition “down down down” in stanza sixteen stood of possible alternative definitions. One of the standings is that the slaves were being forced into the lowest decks of the ships in straggles of black people. Other than that, as they were being forced down, this could also show the start belief of the black people of being sent to hell’s gate as they were being sent deeper into the ship decks. The “drummer” of the thirty-seventh line is a symbolism, showing the western white men, bellowing strict orders in the billowing ship. Again the limbo repetition emerges, but at this point, this could carry different literal meanings. The poet uses “Limbo”, the region between hell and heaven, to show what the slaves there would have thought in their anguishing stay in the lower decks as they were once in the open air where skies, resembling heaven, vanished. As time slipped into distance, their final days in ship ended with a night, the “sun” is “coming up”, shewing the presence of day out in the sky in the eighteenth stanza. Once again, the “drummers”, the western white men, called and waked them out into the first deck of the ship under the phrase of “praising me”. To the following adjacent stanza, tells the mini tales of going up into the first deck of the slave ship with the utilization of the phrase, “up, up, up”. This phrase could also be applied to show the imagery of the Africans of having hope and going into heaven.

The third last stanza consist of one personification, “and the music saving me”, describing the feeling of being resurrected and reborn into the world after numerous amount of days being in despair and being severe infliction in the dark and loneliness in the decks of the ship but not in relieve. The final two stanzas, the poet wrote “hot slow step on the burning ground”. “Hot slow step” defines steps taken nearer and nearer to the West Indies land which is described as “burning ground” because they were brought there to work for the Europeans for their crops without pay as slaves.