A Structure of Conflicts in the Poetry of Dennis Brutus

Abstract

Much has been commended about the poetry of Dennis Brutus the anti-Apartheid South African. A unique feature ofthe poet, which this paper investigates, is his binary vision of the conflicts in his pre-independence society; conflictsinvolving two ‘parts’ in opposition, reflective of the perennial conflicts between the forces of Apartheid on one hand,and the oppressed on the other. Brutus’s vision finds eloquent expression in the binary structure of his poetry, astructure executed especially in his images that often involve two opposing parts, or comprising two parts related atthe same time as they are paradoxically opposed. It is the poet’s stylistic projection of his context, as well as thecommitment of his art to social cause.