‘Once Upon A Time’ by ‘Gabriel Okara’.

‘Once Upon A Time’ by ‘Gabriel Okara’.

Introduction about the poet:-

 

Cultural conflict is one of the most striking points in African poetry. In African what is culture and tradition that seems uncultured or peculiar to the western. African poet Gobriel Okara focuses the ice-cold attitude of Europeans to the African culture.In African what is traditional and cultured and humorous to Europeans. They also represent the African culture in humiliated sense. Gabriel Jibaba Okara was born on 24 April in 1921. He is a Nigerian poet and novelist who were born in Bomoundi in Bayelsa state, Nigeria. He was awarded the commonwealth poetry award in 1979.

About Poem :-

This poem is written by African poet ‘Gabriel Okara’. In this poem we found that conversation between father and son. Poet deals with impact of globalization so called civilization. The life of human becomes mechanical and robotic life. All people run behind money. And in this race human becomes robot. Here in this poem poet talk about that the relation is remain formal, lake of trust and aspens of feelings. Even smiles also became plastic smile or artificial smile. 

Humans are doing all this things like hospitality, charity and other things only for sake of doing, not from their heart. People becomes formal some word are only for speaking like good bye, I really enjoyed your company, nice to meet you, come again and many other thing are spoken by for formality, not from heart. People use to wear mask, we found this kind of duel face rather we can says malty face of human being. 

They stared change emotions like they change their cloths (makeup of mind). Poetic persona tells his son about his glorious past and what is present. Poet try’s to connect past and present, also generation gap of life of father and the life of son.

 Father says that “Once Upon A time I was like you.” Child is innocent and happy, his smile is original and he enjoyed his life, whereas father cannot do all this things through his heart. Inn past father also use to smile with their heart but now he cannot smile with heart, he smile with teeth. 

All this things are happened because of money and civilization. Poetic persona asked his son to teach me how to smile. He also longing for original and real life but he can’t. In this poem we found impact of civilization.