English poems

• Poem title: You laughed and laughed and laughed
• Poet


  Gabriel Ogara
• Poem structure


  1. 10 stanzas

  2. No defined meter

  3. No consistent rhyming scheme

  4. No specified length or formal requirement

  5. Repetition of title at end of first 4 stanzas and in stanza 7
• Poem


  • Explores themes of racism and culture
  • Tone is humiliating and offensive
  • Mood is strength and resilient
• In stanza 1, the speaker describes the attitude of white people towards African songs as harsh and loud, which they do not understand
• In stanza 2, the speaker describes how white people laughed at the work of Africans, which they considered 'inhuman and omnivorous'
• In stanza 3, the speaker summarizes how white people mocked Africans for their song and work
• In stanza 4, the speaker describes how white people shut their eyes to avoid looking at the African cultural dance and laughed at it
• In stanza 5, the speaker describes how white people preferred their cars and material world over the nature and culture of Africans
• In stanza 6, the speaker emphasizes how white people laughed at everything that mattered most to Africans, which is their culture and dance
• In stanza 7, the speaker describes how the continuous laughter of white people froze their ability to empathize with Africans and understand their culture
• In stanza 8, the speaker indicates a change, where it is now the turn of Africans to love, but their laughter is not mocking like the laughter of white people
• In stanza 9, the speaker compares the laughter of Africans to the fire of the elements of nature, which can melt the frozen hearts of white people
• In the final stanza, the speaker concludes that despite the humiliations, Africans are still warm-hearted people who are close to nature
• The key themes of the poem are racism and culture
• The poem uses various literary devices such as repetition, contrast, and imagery to convey its themes
• 4tor camistry Scar backfires7
• sping with a sholing count
• Clash been an
• of 43 lives of inequal
• The pain of an african math being
• Sampean colonialist
• nd you laughed and laughed and laughed. Oorhemah in water IFFTOR
• White man views
• in your svis my ante y he was.
• Galt was inhuman, passing
• interpret african seviga
• sounds as a song but
• his way of life
• Papping swar the must be to
• our omnivorous understanding understanding everything indiscriminately (atency.
• and you laughed and laughed and laughed
• ou laughed at my song,
• u laughed at my walk
• We danced my magic dance
• the rhythm of talking drums pleading
• but you shut your eyes
• snd jaughed and laughed and laughed.
• and then opened my mystic
• grady very hungry.-creates idea but white