Allusiveness, Language and Imagery in Francis Moto's Gazing at The Setting Sun

Abstract

Francis Moto is a Malawian writer who has published poetry both in vernacular (Chichewa) and in English. His poetry in English appears in a collection titled Gazing at the Setting Sun published in 1994, the year Malawians voted Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda and his Malawi Congress Party (MCP) out of power. Besides recording the suffering of Malawians during the autocratic leadership of the first post-independence president, Dr Banda, and remembering the author's childhood experiences, the poetry also celebrates Malawi's political transformation from one party rule to multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. In the poems, Moto also looks to the future with a sense of hope for a better society where human rights and the rule of law will be respected. This article analyses Moto's poems with the aim of celebrating his successes as a poet. This is done by focusing on his more successful poems in terms of style. It is argued in this article that the success of some of Moto's poems in Gazing at the Setting Sun depends on his allusions to and evocations of dictatorship and political change in Malawi. These evocations and allusions depend on his imagery and choice of words and expressions. In the analysis of the poems, close reading with a particular focus on style is done. The discussion is in two parts. The first part discusses Moto's poems that allude to the dictatorial reign of Dr Banda in Malawi and the second part provides a discussion of Moto's imagery in relation to his evocation of political change.