Analysis on the poem ‘Peaceful Village’ by Francis Nii

By Leonard Fong Roka

Introduction

The discourse explores the personality of the author as shown by the poem.  Firstly, the underlying reason as to why the idea of ‘Peaceful Village’ came about, will be explored. Then, we shall look at the real meaning that is being portrayed in the poem followed by cross-cultural interpretation and what; the general place in the society, Peaceful Village seems to stand on.

In most cases, a literature piece repeatedly intrigues the human mind as it is explored while reading it. So, this essay shall explore the impact, one can  perceive or look forward to in a frame of mind displayed by the author that is  in store for  future readers, as well as the present readership.

As a critic, one cannot deny, the fact that any piece of creative art has tremendous impact on each one of us. The sole reason of being a critic is because we feel the literary sting a poem, story; drama and so on is having upon us as individuals. That is why; we will look at the personal comprehension of the Peaceful Village.

(Peaceful Village is displayed on the pages for you)

The poem, Peaceful Village

Peaceful Village

By Francis Nii

Kunai hut, remember-me-ever

Wooden bed, forget-me-not

Roasted kaukau is always sweet.

Flowers keep smiling

Birds sing unchanged jungle melodies

While country kids dance free for joy

Waterfalls like silver crystals

Early rainbow kiss the dewy treetops

Kids hide and seek,

And mum and dad have endless honey moon.

No gang of boars, intrude.

Stay gentle village,

Peaceful promise land.

The author and the reasons for Peaceful Village

The first two lines of stanza one, and the last two lines of stanza two depicts that the narrator is a drifter of time; lost in a world that is in conflict with a standard Melanesian village life.

His adopted lifestyle, career or dreams have just failed him so he takes a retrospective wade through a pool of imagination, moaning his lost roots that he has impediments all around him to reach and turn on a new leaf. The crisis is well dramatized in the book, Dreadlocks in Oceania by John O’Carroll, in his essay ‘Exiles in the Park’. His words, reads: ‘Especially the end: one day he would take us back to the old kingdom and we will be united with our people. He refused to believe that already this was another incarnation. Things had become permanently unsettled (1997: 65). So, the point is that humanity to Peaceful Village was in a tangle.

Peaceful Village stands out as a poem of expressing these grievances to those still not affected by the new lifestyle—obviously, city life or broadly, cultural clashes—that is now inflicting negative impacts on the life of the narrator.

He tries to create a new world in his misery, as Chinua Achebe puts it: ‘…art [poem] is an effort to create a different order of reality…or second handle on existence’ (1988: 95-96). He creates this world as a raft to keep afloat in an ocean of injustice.

Intrinsic Meaning

Here, when exploring the symbols employed, this poem has double-sided impact—romance and the beauty of the rural life. Francis Nii doubles the two approaches to celebrate the problem. Using romance as part of the narrative is a powerful weaponry to attracting our readers to our cause.

His major character—first person singular, the ‘I’—is in a current that is sweeping him away against his will. He moans not to be neglected by the beautiful roots—the village life and so on; his heart sings praise in a biographical setting to the tranquillity and freedom that is also, being susceptible to negative changes if, the society is not conscious of its values that actually moulded us as Melanesians. Both worlds—the village and the narrator’s— are fighting for a pure atmosphere of existence—that is, the past.

There is, also another angle of approach to this poem and that is, from the past experience, we reconstruct our present lives then, predict the future for a better contemporary co-existence. Re-wording the words of the Bahama-born international motivational speaker, Dr Myles Munroe into the situation of Peaceful Village, this can be noted. To the Nigerians, he stated, ‘if you want to want a new Nigeria, you have got to go back to the old ideas. In the old ideas lies the redemption of Nigeria’¹. The idea is, in the past there is restorative change to one’s life.

The truth is that, we are a lost people fighting to save our culture that is also, under threat.

Cross-cultural nature

Peaceful Village outlines a situation that is experienced in many cultures of the Third World. People seek high standards of living through education, employment and never return home, but are consumed by the unpredictable spells of westernization.

For example, once a person gets employed, he lives his village and pursues his career with utmost good faith and there is not much time for interacting with his culture and traditions. Gone with the wind, he is.

In the Pacific, every literature piece is readily acceptable because of our experiences in the colonial era, and people, today seem to be standing at the cross-roads and Chinua Achebe stated this clearly, ‘We lived at the cross-roads of culture. We still do it today; but when I was a boy, one could see and sense the peculiar quality and atmosphere of it more clearly’ (1988: 22-23). So, Peaceful Village has that flavour of calling to revive our degrading past; and of bringing back the spiritual realities of the pre-modernization country culture.

This is a shared problem throughout the Third World, especially, thus Peaceful Village has a place across cultures and peoples.

Impact

In our society, ‘modernisation’ is a change that no one person or state, can avoid; but, we have to cling onto our traditions that kept our kind of civilisation intact long before the arrival of Europeans. Loosing grip of our past is the problem depicted in Peaceful Village.

People are today, hotly pursuing higher education and culture that as created our present contemporary society. And in Peaceful Village, a critical reader shall identify the voice that is calling, that ‘All problems in the world are connected, however disparate they appear on the surface. There are no unrelated or unique problems. We isolate them from each other only because it is easier to deal with them separately (Dreadlocks in Oceania 1997: 162).

But, still Peaceful Village stands out to the intellectuals’ world simply in a voice of moaning irredentism, saying: ‘Without the past, you are nothing’.

Use of romantic symbols, attracts more young readers for amusement towards Peaceful Village that can breed reawakening.

Me and the Peaceful Village

The narrator in the poem is a lost person longing to be in the gone-world but just could not make it as he is trapped; not so free to decide his destiny, that is, to him deserting his present status shall have other negative consequences.

This is the situation in Papua New Guinea today. People have left looking for betterment in towns and ended up in the squatters. They cannot, for some, make it back since they had already become “no bodies” of their former society. For the employed, he cannot resign from his job in love of the village life, because, the culture he as adapted into will have far reaching impacts, example, job lost can affect his family income.

Society in itself, today, has turned into a hive of self-pitying shell. At the end of the tunnel there is light; but how, can one let go the beauty of one culture at the expense of the other? This is a failure!

Jeffery Febi, in his poem, Wings of Hope celebrated the good of airlines, but taking his words for our cause, it still sounds the trumpet. We are consumed today into a journey of no return (as stated), so we, from down there turn to celebrate the lost past as depicted:

O how they grace the skies,

And hope they bring to the many

A forgotten soul who, under

Cloud cover and thick jungles

Speak of dreams of hope.²

How our eroded past was high in beauty; and brought hope to forefathers, as we just feign that tranquillity from our rumble. Deep underground we seem to be, and looking up a long tunnel and admire the azure heavens that is, our past.

Summary

In the final analysis, this poem is bemoaning a lost chapter in life and call for the care of the value of traditional culture. It celebrates the common problems of all societies. With a little taste of romance, readership is apt to be bothered by its wishes and we cannot avoid that because of the problems depicted, they are considered worst in PNG.

Reference

·         ACHEBE, C., (1988), Hopes and Impediments, Heinemann International, Great Britain.

·         1-http://thenationonlineng.net/

·         2-http://jefebi-whispers.blogspot.com

·         Mishra, S. and Guy, E. (Eds). 1997. Dreadlocks in Oceania, Department of Literature and Language, University of South pacific, Suva, Fiji.