Telephone Conversation – Reasoning (20+ Questions)

Complete the following sentences by providing a brief reason. Do not write the question.

1. The speaker immediately reveals his race as "African" because __________

2. The landlady's silence following the speaker's confession is significant because __________

3. The speaker stereotypes the landlady as "Lipstick coated, long gold-rolled Cigarette-holder pipped" because __________

4. The landlady asks "ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" instead of using the word "black" because __________

5. The speaker's response "plain or milk chocolate" serves the poem because __________

6. The speaker describes himself as "West African sepia" because __________

7. The speaker mentions his "palms and soles" being white while his bottom is "raven black" because __________

8. Red imagery appears repeatedly in the poem because __________

9. The speaker's tone shifts from polite to sarcastic throughout the poem because __________

10. The landlady hangs up the telephone rather than agreeing to meet because __________

11. The poem uses free verse form rather than regular rhyme and meter because __________

12. The speaker describes the landlady's voice as having "clinical, crushing" quality because __________

13. The setting in a public telephone booth is important because __________

14. The speaker refers to the landlady's behavior as "pressurized good-breeding" because __________

15. The speaker feels "shamed" and pushed to "beg simplification" because __________

16. Soyinka employs both wit and pathos in the poem because __________

17. The speaker preemptively confesses his race rather than allowing discovery later because __________

18. The landlady's interest in skin color variations reveals that __________

19. The poem is titled "Telephone Conversation" rather than another title because __________

20. The speaker asks "wouldn't you rather see for yourself?" because __________

21. This poem continues to resonate with modern readers because __________

Answer Key

i) He anticipates racial discrimination and preemptively addresses it to avoid wasting time.

ii) It reveals her discomfort and internal prejudice despite societal standards of politeness.

iii) Humans stereotypically judge others based on assumptions derived from voice and social markers.

iv) She masks racial prejudice with careful language to maintain a facade of respectability.

v) It uses humor and satire to expose the absurdity of reducing complex identity to simplistic color categories.

vi) It provides a nuanced response that challenges binary racial categories of purely "black" or "white."

vii) To demonstrate that race is not uniform across the body and exposes the falseness of racial categories.

viii) It represents the speaker's emotional intensity, anger, and the visibility of his emotional reaction to racism.

ix) He becomes increasingly frustrated and sarcastic after encountering the landlady's reductive racial obsession.

x) Her prejudicial judgment based on confirmed blackness supersedes any other considerations about tenancy.