How Nothing’s Changed and Two Scavengers deal with social injustices Essay

Both â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† and â€Å"Two Scavengers† deal with social injustices, however, there are some big differences between them. â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† is set in Cape Town, Africa and focuses on the segregation of black and white people, after an apartheid was made. It is an autobiographical poem by Tatumkhulu Afrika. The poem is about how District Six used to be a place for blacks and whites to live together. But when that changed, Tatumkhulu left in anger (and prison). Now he has returned to his old home after many years and has discovered that the segregation has gotten wider and worse. The social injustice in the poem is the black and white segregation. On the other hand, â€Å"Two Scavengers† deals with the social segregation between the classes in America. At a set of traffic lights, early in the morning (9am), a garbage truck has stopped next to a couple in a Mercedes. The garbage men then ponder on the class system and how they are less respected by people like this couple. They wonder if they’d ever be seen as equals as they wonder if the democracy of America really works. The social injustice in the poem is the way the different classes are each treated differently. The first stanza of â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† is setting the scene as the writer walks towards his old home. We can tell that the area is now a wasteland by what the writer treads over (like the cans and weeds) on his walk back home. We can tell he’s angry from how his old home has turned out from when he says, â€Å"The hot, white, inwards turning anger of my eyes†, as he knows he has returned home. Although all of the stanzas use commas a lot, the second stanza uses â€Å"and† after each comma. I feel that the commas are used to in order to add more expression as you read, and as you pause at each comma, you wonder what’s coming next, thus creating suspense even though, in my opinion, the poem is not that exciting or interesting enough for it to have any use. On the other hand, the â€Å"ands† that are used throughout the second stanza, instead picks up the pace as we experience what he is going through at the same time that he is going through his feeling, since the poem is wrote in first person, as if he is actually reliving these memories, making us feel more emotional and connected to the writer. In the fourth stanza, there is only one line, but one that I feel is a very important line for comparing the poems.†No sign says it is: but we know where we belong†.This line shows us that although no one is saying that whites are treated better (new restaurant) than blacks (working man’s cafà ¯Ã‚ ¿Ã‚ ½), this line shows us that the blacks know that the segregation is still there. The writer says of how his, â€Å"Hands burn for a stone, a bomb, to shiver down the glass† of the whites only restaurant. We know that this is the same reason why the writer was sent. to prison all those years ago, but we are unsure whether this is that memory he is â€Å"reliving† or if he is speaking of the present day.The next and final sentence of the poem has the writer commenting that, â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†. This, I’d like to believe, tells us that, either way, the writer is willing to risk prison (or worse?) in order to vent his anger at the segregation. The first stanza of â€Å"Two Scavengers† sets the scene by introducing us to the characters and telling us what they are doing.The garbage truck is described as â€Å"bright yellow† while the garbage men are described wearing â€Å"red plastic blazers†, both of which would stand out anywhere in San Francisco at nine in the morning. I feel that this tells us that no matter how hard the government might try to â€Å"hide† the garbage men, they are going to get noticed at some point. The writer says of the garbage men, â€Å"one on each side hanging on†, in reference to where they are on the garbage truck (back stoop).This makes me think that the writer is trying to make out that the men are struggling to hold on to this job, even though it is such a looked down upon job. The writer then says that the two garbage men are â€Å"looking down into an elegant open Mercedes with an elegant couple in it†. In that section, the writer has took the literal meaning of â€Å"looking down† but we also think of the figurative meaning and then are meant to wonder if the garbage men are in fact better people than the couple and so their position should be swapped. From the fact we know that the couple are heading to his architect’s office while the garbage men are on their journey home, shows us that the couple and garbage men are like night and day, both there, but never at the same time. This emphasizes the segregation between the different classes. In the second stanza, the writer describes the older of the two garbage men as some â€Å"gargoyle Quasimodo†, Quasimodo being the title character of â€Å"The Hunchback of Notre Dame†, the main theme of the book being the cruelty of social injustice.Quasimodo led a tragic life, being kind and loving despite his ugliness. However, he dies of a broken heart. Quasimodo means â€Å"almost finished† or â€Å"half made†.From this, I believe that the writer is backing up my point about the garbage men perhaps being better people than the couple and that what we are seeing of the garbage men is only the tip (no pun intended) of the iceberg. In the second stanza, the writer describes the older of the two garbage men as some â€Å"gargoyle Quasimodo†, Quasimodo being the title character of â€Å"The Hunchback of Notre Dame†, the main theme of the book being the cruelty of social injustice.Quasimodo led a tragic life, being kind and loving despite his ugliness. However, he dies of a broken heart. Quasimodo means â€Å"almost finished† or â€Å"half made†.From this, I believe that the writer is backing up my point about the garbage men perhaps being better people than the couple and that what we are seeing of the garbage men is only the tip (no pun intended) of the iceberg. The last stanza is made almost entirely of a metaphor, one part of which grabs my attention because it is an oxymoron, the part being â€Å"small gulf†.The metaphor describes how even though there is not much of a gap between the two vehicles, making it easy for one person to climb into the other vehicle, they’ll never be able to do so because of the class system and how, because of it, they are always going to be looked down upon. Of course, the two poems are similar in the way that they both deal with social injustices (Class system and Segregation), but, in the same way, different because the two place settings (San Francisco and Cape Town) are so far apart. In â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†, as previously mentioned, the writer uses a lot of commas to slow down the pace in order, I believe, to add suspense.On the other hand, the writer of â€Å"Two Scavengers† doesn’t use any punctuation, instead stopping the line whenever he wants the reader to stop and let what they’ve just read sink in. Because of the punctuation, the structure of â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† looks less pre-prepared and more â€Å"straight from the heart†, as the plot would suggest.However, â€Å"Two Scavengers† is neater in it’s construction, despite the lack of punctuation, thus giving off the opposite feel to â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†. After studying both poems, although I feel that I wouldn’t need to, it’s obvious to me that â€Å"Nothing’s Changed† shows far more anger, raw as it might be, than â€Å"Two Scavengers†.The reasons for this being that in â€Å"Nothing’s Changed†, there is a constant reminder of how angry the writer is as he walks around his old home, in the end, of course, wishing he had a bomb to blow up a white’s only restaurant.But, in â€Å"Two Scavengers†, the two garbage men look at the social injustice in hope rather than anger, as seen by when they wonder if they’d ever be able to reach in to the Mercedes and start a normal conversation with the couple, like old friends.