reapers in a mielie field

• What are the laborers doing

  ​​ they are havesting mielies ​​
• What equipment do they have

  ​​they have sacks and a tractor and a trailer
• Describe weather conditions

  It is extremely hot and dusty
• What do they drink when they are thirtsty

  they drink home made beer called maheu
• Identify the poetic deviced used in stanza 4 discuss how to contributes to understanding of the laborers working conditions

  wet with sweat -assonance internal rhyme

  rustling -onomatopoeia

  loaded by thick labourers- alliteration

  brine bathed brow- alliteration

  battered cans /bubbling with maheu - alliteration and onomatopoeia
• Identify the personification used in stanza 4 discuss how to contributes to our understanding of the labourers working conditions

  The sun is personified as a slave driver or a prison warden who carries a red hot rod which he uses to lash the workers to force them to keep working. this image evokes extreme pain and suffering. the conditions they work under are dreadful
• ​in the final stanza , the poet states that after a break the men jerk bags like feather cushions/women become prancing wild mares . identify these figure of speech and explain how they illustrate the effect of the break

  men- simile -heavy bags become as light as feathers ,show the renewed energy the men have as a result of the break

  women -metaphor -demonstrates the renewed vigour with which the women return to their task
• mood ?

  oppressive and hints at slavery