The telephone conversation by wole soyinka

Written in the first person narrative point of view, the poem “Telephone Conversation”
by Wole Soyinka is a poetic satire against the widely-spread racism in the modern
Western society. The poem is about a telephone conversation in England between the
poetic persona seeking to rent a house and an English landlady who completely changes
her attitude towards him after he reveals his identity as a black African. The motif of a
microcosmic telephone conversation, therefore, is employed by the poet to apply to a
much broader, macrocosmic level where racial bigotry is ridiculed in a contest of human
intelligence, showcasing the poet’s witticism as well as his ingenious sense of humour.

The poem starts with a somewhat peaceful atmosphere befitting the poetic persona’s
satisfaction for having found the correct house - “The price seemed reasonable, location
indifferent.” He was also happy about the privacy that he believed that he would enjoy,
for “The landlady swore she lived / Off premises.” At this stage, we get to know that the
two were engaged in a telephone conversation, which, however, was to come quickly to
an unpleasant end as the man decided to reveal his nationality - “Madam,” I warned. / “I
hate a wasted journey – I am African.” A sudden, unexpected hush of silence is
strengthened by a caesura in line 6 of the poem to emphasize the impact of the African’s
race being revealed to the landlady. Furthermore, the poet’s use of the word “confession”
to describe an announcement of the persona’s ethnic identity is very sarcastic in that
being an African seems to be a sin which the persona committed, and which he needed to
atone for.

An uneasy atmosphere ensues thereby. Following the caesura, there is “Silenced

transmission of / Pressurized good-breeding”, with the word “silenced” again to reiterate
the landlady’s sudden change, as well as the man’s intuitive sensitivity towards the
unfriendliness on the other end of the phone. There is a foreboding overtone, relevant to
the change of the woman’s attitude she would have towards the African man. And we get
the first indication of the poet’s sense of humour in the expression “[p]ressurized good-
breeding”, too, which is an ironical manifestation of the polite manners landlady was
supposed to have for the job of renting premises. After a considerable period of silence,
the landlady finally spoke again, “Voice, when it came / Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled
/ Cigarette-holder pipped.” It is interesting to note that when the landlady opened her
mouth again, the feeling she gave off is immediately contrastive of what she was like
before, as if her status in society was all of a sudden upgraded, which is indicated by her
voice colourfully and olfactorially described. Such evocative language, which greatly
appeal to our sensory impressions, conveys the poet’s power of imagination dissecting
the sound of an affluent landlady’s voice. And such use of subtly imagistic language is
abundantly rich throughout the rest of the poem.

Tension rises with the explicitly racial discrimination in line 10 of the poem as the
landlady asked “HOW DARK?” The poet uses capital letters here, and a lot more to
come, to accentuate the landlady’s effort in seeking clarification for something that
would have been irrelevant to their previous topic, yet it mattered a lot to her. “I had not
misheard”, the persona reflected. Before he was able to respond, the landlady asked
again, “ARE YOU LIGHT OR VERY DARK?” reinforcing the racist overtone in the
English society today. The woman’s pushy, unequivocal stance in pursuing the answer
dumbfounded the man, who was so confused and so taken aback by the landlady’s
sudden change of attitude that he suddenly appeared to have a blank mind. The
automation imagery “Button B. Button A” that the poet uses here not only vividly shows
the man’s temporary confusion, but also humorously foreshadows the intelligence contest
that is to follow. On a deeper level, the image of the readily available automatic selection
also implies the rampant racial discrimination taken for granted in the western society.

What makes him come to his senses from this sudden dumbfoundedness, however, is
ironically the foul smell of the telephone booth, which the persona humorously refers to
as a facility of children’s play. “Stench of rancid breath of public hide-and-seek”
dragged him out from his dream-like world back into reality. The poet then uses sentence
fragments, “Red booth. Red pillar-box. Red double-tiered / Omnibus squelching tar”, to
describe the persona’s frantic attempt to ascertain the situation. The diction “red”, which
is connotative of terror and disturbance, is used three times to highlight the extreme
mental discomfort of an African man, who referred to city buses, again humorously, as
the idiomatic “omnibus”. Such extensive use of symbolically chromatic images points out
the setting of this poem, for the first and only time, to be London. Thereby arises the
sense of irony as the place where the persona was facing such ostentatious racism is in
London, a city seen as a symbol of the developed western world, where equality and
justice are supposedly valued above all. “This is real!” the persona’s exclamation only
serves to delineate his bewilderment at the situation.

Instead of describing the justifiable indignation that the poetic persona was supposed to
have felt at the moment, the poet chooses to characterize him an a pacifist, or a humble
and meek man who would rather not stand up to face the situation. The telephone
conversation between the two conversationists continues as the African man hoped to get
on with their previous topic instead of starting a new, awkward one on a politically
sensitive issue – “Shamed / By ill-mannered silence, surrender / Pushed dumbfoundment
to beg simplification.” However, regardless of his thoughts, the landlady, who was
unequivocal in seeking the clarification, continues to question him, “Considerate she was,
varying the emphasis – “ARE YOU DAARK? OR VERY DARK?” The African man,
now probably fuming with anger inside, remained silent, while the ruthless landlady
continued with her racist inquiry: “You mean – like plain or milk chocolate?” The limited
choice of words as well as the simple object of comparison that the poet uses to describe
the landlady suggests her to be a linguistically impoverished character despite her
affluent economic status. Furthermore, her tone was cold and bordering on
aggressiveness, as is established by the persona’s interpretation accurately brought forth
with clarity and specificity - “Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light /
Impersonality.”
Deciding not to stay silent for any longer, and as if answering a passport control officer,
he replied “West African Sepia… Down in my passport”, which was then responded with
the landlady’s “silence for spectroscopic/Flight of fancy.” Here, the character of the
poetic persona is seen to undergo a rapid development as he started to react against the
landlady’s racist comments, by first forcing her into submission with his superior
vocabulary. The double alliteration of “s” and “f” produce a special sound effect, making
the atmosphere almost fearfully spooky, illustrating the mental status of the landlady
whose turn it was now to feel dumbfounded. Also worth noting is the metaphor of
spectroscope, hilariously befitting not only the skin colour of the persona, but also the
specific locale of England, where modern science and technology still inexplicably
intermingle with superstition. Either the case, the instant victory he had over the landlady
in this part of the conversation demonstrates the obvious difference in their education and
knowledge, also illustrating the fact that beyond the landlady’s lavish exterior, she was
simply a shallow judgmental racist.

The contrastive images that the poet has so far established of the persona of the African
origin and the landlady of the western European society serve to increase the tension in
the atmosphere, precipitating the conflict to its climactic moment. Although the African
man had already provided an answer, the landlady did not understand as she was not only
bigoted, but also definitely under-educated, as compared to the poetic persona. She
continued asking rudely, “…till truthfulness changed her accent / Hard on the mouthpiece
“WHAT’S THAT?” conceding / “DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” Paying no
attention to the landlady’s disrespect for him, the persona started to turn the table
completely against her, as he took a firm control over the conversation, defending the
dignity and integrity of his ethnic identity from the ruthless onslaught of the racist
landlady. To effectively show this, the poet juxtaposes various major European hair
colours together in a deliberately confusing manner, suggesting that although being an
African, the persona is nonetheless a person no different from any Europeans – “Facially,
I am brunette, but, madam, you should see / The rest of me. Palm on my hand, soles of
my feet / Are a peroxide blond. Priction, caused – / Foolishly, madam – by sitting down,
has turned / My bottom raven black – One moment, Madam!” Sensing the landlady’s
“receiver rearing on the thunderclap”, which indicates the landlady’s slow but finally
furious realization that she had been outwitted, he rushed to ask sarcastically, “Madam,
……wouldn’t you rather / See for yourself?” The quasi politeness of the tone the poet
uses here can hardly conceal the ultimate insult, which shows how indignant the man was
as he outwitted her by inviting her to see his bottom, thus ending the poem with a
tremendous sense of humour, apart from the obvious sarcasm.

To conclude, through his poem “Telephone Conversation”, Soyinka is able to satirize the
racist society in the west. By showing that a dark African persona is eventually capable of
confronting the racial discrimination aimed towards him, and retaliates against it by
outwitting the landlady, the poet sends out a clear message - dark skinned people are no
less intelligent than people that are lighter in skin colour.