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poem Vultures by Chinua Achebe

The ppt includes an anlaysis of the poem and some critical thinking activities

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poem Vultures by Chinua Achebe

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  1. Chinua Achebe

  2. Facts about Vultures • Vultures are scavengers • Vultures usually have one mate per year. • They feed voraciously and indiscriminately, chiefly on carrion; because they have weak beaks and lack the strength of other birds of prey • Vultures have acute eyesight, muscular legs and sharp bills. • The vulture specializes in eating the bodies of the dead. • They are quite ugly looking birds that symbolize death.

  3. The indication of the title • Do you think Achebe chose this title intending to describe the vultures? • Could vultures be a symbol for something crucial? • While reading the poem think of whether it makes a difference to talk about vultures or any other vicious animal or bird?

  4. In the greyness and drizzle of one despondent dawn unstirred by harbingers of sunbreak a vulture perching high on broken bones of a dead tree nestled close to his mate his smooth bashed-in head, a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross feathers, inclined affectionately to hers. Yesterday they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full gorged they chose their roost keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes ...

  5. The setting In the greyness and drizzle of one despondent dawn unstirred by harbingers of sun break • The opening lines of the poem are dark. • The time isn’t definite and the weather is a combination of rain and mist. • It indicates extreme unhappiness and severe depression In the greyness and drizzle of one despondent dawn unstirred by harbingers of sun break

  6. Contradictory Images a vulture perching high on broken bone of a dead tree nestled close to his mate his smooth bashed-in head, a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross feathers, inclined affectionately to hers. Yesterday they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full gorged they chose their roost keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes ... Yesterday they picked the eyes of a swollen corpse in a water-logged trench and ate the things in its bowel. Full gorged they chose their roost keeping the hollowed remnant in easy range of cold telescopic eyes ... a vulture perching high on broken bone of a dead tree nestled close to his mate his smooth bashed-in head, a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross feathers, inclined affectionately to hers.

  7. Images • Achebe’s description of the tree as broken and injured symbolize death. • The vulture's description is repulsive and arouses feelings of disgust. • Surprisingly Achebe gave these hideous creatures human attributes and emotions. • Why does Achebe give the vultures human characteristics and then describe them in horrid details?!

  8. Death and Decay Strange • How can love make its home the charnel house or the tomb? • Love doesn’t belong to this place ,but it’s a proof that love may exist in the least expected places. • Love is personified as a woman finding shelter in a tomb. indeed how love in other ways so particular will pick a corner in that charnel-house tidy it and coil up there, perhaps even fall asleep - her face turned to the wall!

  9. Bergen Belsen • A Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War for enslaving and exterminating the Jews.

  10. Paradox of love and evil ...Thus the Commandant at Belsen Camp going home for the daywith fumes of human roast clinging rebelliously to his hairy nostrilswill stop at the wayside sweet-shop andpick up a chocolate for his tender offspring waiting at home for Daddy's return ... • Weird • Achebe depicts the affectionate love that doesn’t go with the evilness and harshness displayed in the concentration camps. • What is Achebe's purpose?

  11. Achebe’s message Praise bounteous providence if you will that grants even an ogre a tiny glow-worm tenderness encapsulated in icy caverns of a cruel heart or else despair for in every germ of that kindred love is lodged the perpetuity of evil. • Achebe believes that we should pray that even the worst of creatures has a little goodness inside. • The love of one’s own kind and relations permits the perpetuity of evilness. • Though of their evil nature the vultures are capable of love their own relations.

  12. How do you feel Achebe wants us to leave the poem - with hope because love can exist in even the most evil creatures, or with despair because, despite that love, they cannot stop committing evil?

  13. Which is better to be like the vultures outwardly evil and good from the inside or like the commandant inwardly evil and good from the outside?

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