The speaker's grandma (&
her generation) play outside,
read books for information
& talk to friends on a
landline
Poem begins with "toe"
(when); often used to
start a story
Prepares reader for
narrative nature of
poem
Poem tells us about 3
different generations
of women in a family
(grandma, mom &
daughter - speaker)
"My" indicates 1st-person speaker
Speaker's grandma lived on a farm, played outside
with her friends, shared pomegranates in the orchard,
read books & talked to friends on the landline.
Long 'ee' sounds ("speel", "deel" & "lees") & 2
long verse lines in stanza 1 slow down tempo
Creates sense of peacefulness of farm life
Stanza 1 is shortest stanza;
showing simplicity of farm life
Stanza 2:
As a child, the speaker's
mom lives on a large plot,
watches TV & dreams of
travelling the world. She
knows people who've gone
oversees, her cousins in
the city see movies & in
matric she sees the first
cellphone
Living space changes from
open plains of farm to
spacious plot of mom's
childhood house
Mom lives in a
town, not a
farm like her
mom
The mom sits in front of
the TV & doesn't play
outside like her mom did
The TV makes the
mom dream of
travelling the world
She knows people
who've gone
oversees, which
strengthens this
dream
"wye wereld te
swerf" (alliteration)
emphasizes wide
open lands to explore
Comparison with
world wide web
(more alliteration)
Watching
movies in
cinema is
popular
She sees the
first cellphone
before she's in
matric
Stanza 2 is
longer & more
cramped than 1
Suggests world's
becoming more
complex (in terms of
technology) & world is
becoming smaller
Stanza 3:
The speaker had access to the
internet & can bring the outside
world into her house. She uses
Facebook to keep in contact with
people & the internet to get
information. Her 'world' is bigger
than her mom's & grandma's,
even though it can fit into her
small room.
The living space changes
to the speaker's room in
present time
No spacious plot or
wide open plains - no
real garden
Her space is physically
smaller (like how the
world's become smaller)
With technology the
speaker can bring the
world into her room
"web" (internet) used as
metaphor like the farmland
for her grandma
Gumtree's a
metaphor for a tree
she'd play under
outside
The people who the speaker
socializes with on facebook partly
hide their identities