Vultures – Chinua Achebe
CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION
About the poet:
Chinua Achebe was born in Nigeria, in 1930. He studied at the University of
Ibadan in Nigeria, and taught at various universities in Nigeria and the
United States of America. Achebe wrote novels and essays, as well as
poetry. His novels trace Africa’s transition from traditional to modern ways.
Achebe believed that a good work of art should have a purpose, an idea that
originates in the oral tradition of storytelling in Africa. He died in 2013.
His body of work looks at the relationship between African mysticism and
modern Western culture.
About this poem:
• He addresses the evil in humans that creates a lack of respect and
consideration for one another.
• Chinua Achebe is a Nigerian writer who would probably be familiar with
the sight of vultures. Vultures are scavenging birds, feeding on the
remains of a dead animal. This is the image that he explores in the first
section of his poem entitled 'Vultures'
Bergen Belsen was one of the many notorious Nazi Concentration Camps.
Unlike the Death Camps such as Auschwitz it did not have gas chambers.
Instead prisoners were worked to death on a starvation diet. Conditions
were appalling and the cruelty was unspeakable. By the time the camp was
liberated by Allied troops 50,000 European citizens had been killed within
its fences. Many of the dead were piled into mass graves; others were
incinerated in giant crematoria. One of its most famous victims was the
diarist Anne Frank.
IMAGERY
METAPHOR – lines 9-12: ‘a pebble on a stem rooted in a dump of gross
feathers’ depicts the revolting appearance of real vultures and the fact
that they feed on the dead, waiting on the weak to die in order to prey
on them.
Lines 30 – 35: ‘going home for/the day with fumes of/human roast
clinging’ is a reminder of the Commandant’s job and creates the same
revulsion as that for the vultures. He has the capacity to kill
indiscriminately which highlights the horror of the capacity for humans
to be evil.
Lines 36 – 40: ‘and pick up some chocolate/for his tender offspring/
waiting at home for Daddy’s/ return …’ shows the contrast in human
nature, as the same murderous commander is able to treat his children
with the greatest of tenderness, which emphasizes the human potential
of having both evil and love co-existing within any person.
Lines 48 – 51: ‘for in the very germ/of that kindred love is/lodged the
perpetuity/of evil.’ Suggest that love and hate reside within all of us and
highlights how the speaker is perplexed by the paradox of this human
condition. The word ‘perpetuity’ suggests that this paradox will continue
to exist as in is an integral part of our humanity, and is dependent on the
choices we make in life based on our set of morals and values.
ALLITERATION - in the second and third line “drizzle of one despondent
dawn” but this is an enjambment line and so doesn’t give the ebb and
flow usually associated with alliteration but helps to achieve the bleak
tone and depressing atmosphere the speaker wants to convey.
PERSONIFICATION –
Lines 2-3 ‘despondent dawn’ is the personification of the rising sun as
being a despondent person, devoid of hope like the prisoners in the
camp.
lines 23 – 25 suggests love as changeable and able to exist along with
evil, dependent on the choices that people make.
The fact that love is given human characteristics shows that love
struggles to survive in the presence of evil. Where evil rules like at
Belsen love will eventually be diminished.
STRUCTURE
• Free verse using enjambment that allows the narrative to flow from one
image to another.
• Importance of the VISUAL LAYOUT:
THEMES
• The strange co-existence of gross evil and tender love.
• The human potential for evil
• Humanity’s capacity to love
