
The pole the slaves were chained to as they rowed the slave ships. The limbo beam which the dancer has to go beneath as well as. The place outside of heaven and hell where babies who have not been christened go if they die “Stick” =. Onomatopoeia = “knock” Many other sound related words that are almost like onomatopoeia but not precisely such as “stick”, “hit” and “whip” Pun: “Limbo” = Loose rhyme pattern where most lines end with “me” or: o Lines 10-13 = “ready” and “steady” o Lines 21-23 = “slavery” and “slavery” Release / Joy (“and the drummers are praising me”, “and the dumb gods are raising me”, “and the music is saving me”) STRUCTURE 24 stanzas of varying length No punctuation except final full stop at the end Loose structure and rhythm involving single lines or couplets followed by “chorus” of “limbo limbo like me” except from lines 32 to the end where the “chorus” is replaced three times by the actions of the dancer (“down down down”) Heavy beat to first line of some the couplets by using monosyllabic words without conjunctions (“stick hit sound”) followed by the more flowing next line that does use conjunctions (“and the ship like it ready”) Rhyme:. There is no real sense of anger at slavery as you might expect but rather the sense of it, like the limbo stick, is an obstacle that can be overcome.
Suffocation and being overwhelmed (“the water surrounding me”, “the silence is over me”). If the limbo stick represents the shackles of slavery or life, then the dance is an act of liberation and a way to be free of these ties (figuratively and literally) (“up up up / and the music is saving me”) Feelings:. Although the limbo dance is now thought of as a spectacle for tourists, its history comes from the exercises slaves used to do to keep themselves fit on the slave ships Attitudes:.
“stick knock” (“ck” sound again like something being struck) Alliteration:.“stick hit” (harsh “i” sound like something being struck).“and the music is saving me” Sound Patterns Assonance:.“long dark deck and the silence is over me”.“stick is the whip / and the dark deck is slavery” Personification:.“long dark deck is the silence in front of me”.“And limbo stick is the silence in front of me”.
Slaves brought from Africa by these European countries to work in the sugar cane fields and other crops SURFACE MEANING During a customary limbo dance the dancer is reminded of the history of Afro-Caribbeans as slaves LANGUAGE Imagery Simile = “limbo like me” – either join me in this dance or I am in limbo Metaphor:. Colonised by European countries in the 18th century.