Major theme in “Telephone Conversation” by Wole Soyinka and “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds

M5D2: Major theme in “Telephone Conversation” by Wole Soyinka and “On the Subway” by Sharon Olds
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The poems Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka and On the Subway by Sharon Olds deal with racism but from different perspectives. In the Telephone Conversation, a potential tenant who is black phones a landlady, and he states that he is African, and the landlady responds by asking how dark Soyinka is. This sets the tone for the poem as Soyinka uses his humor to get around funny questions and the awkward moments. On the other hand, On the Subway, relates to the white female writer who is afraid of being mugged by a black man. “He has the casual cold look of a mugger, alert under hooded lids (Lines 8-9). The plays highlights that prejudice is often accompanied by racism with the use of setting and tone highlighting this.
The setting of Olds’ poem is on a subway, and this setting shows that even in a mass mode of transport, the prejudice is still prevalent between Caucasians and the African Americans. Soyinka’s poem setting is in a telephone booth, where the two characters can communicate without having to see each other, it is symbolic of the technology found at the time and disconnect among people of different races whose conservations are uneasy even in t...