Analysis of the Poem “Africa” by David Diop Within the...

Analysis of the poem â€Å"Africa† by David Diop within the context of Anthills of the Savannah. Chapter 10 of Anthills of the Savannah, entitled, impetuous son, opens with a stanza from David Diop’s poem Africa, which is where the title of the chapter gets its name from, and from my initial instinct, is the key phrase in the poem, but the key question is what does this poem have to do with the social context of the story other than the fact that its named after the continent in which anthills is set. I also assume that this poem has some sort of relation to Ikem’s Hymn to the sun earlier on in the play. Focusing for a moment on the word ‘story’, I notice that this poem has an element of the notion of storytelling within it, right from the†¦show more content†¦One question however, is, who is the slave driver? Or should I say, who is the poet referring to as the slave driver, and is it the same person or people within the context of the story? In performing some research into the poem and David Diop, I found out he was a revolutionary writer, focusing on the colonial period and the freeing of the African nations from the clutches of the European colonists, he also died in 1960, before many of the colonies were freed, and the dictatorships sprang up, so obviously through the poem he is referring to the colonialists as the slave drivers, but this is manipulated in the context of Anthills, to be His Excellency and the government, who live in luxury whilst the majority of the population live in poor, almost slave like conditions. The eponymous name of the chapter, â€Å"impetuous son† relates to the line in the poem, â€Å"impetuous son, that tree young and strong†, a line which holds significance within the story of anthills, because it symbolizes His Excellency and it is where I believe the poem links back to the Hymn to the sun. Impetuous can be defined as impulsive, done without care, or even violent. And the word son, could synonymously and characteristically stand in for the word sun, which relates to the â€Å"undying eye of god† the deadly African sun that is destroying the country, but in the poem, literally takes the form of His Excellency since â€Å"son† is