Application Exercise 1

1. -Someone is looking down on another person polishing a door handle.

    -They are the same person and he looks up at him self in a mirror.

    -His fingertips bunch together.

    -He brings his hand to his forehead.

    -He extends two fingers and wiggle them.

    -It is said that the man is being watched.

    -The man makes an arc similar to a watch hand with his free hand on his opposite hand.

    -Someone speaks from around the corner.

    -He turns and the hand making the arc returns behind his back.

    -A black fist is in the mirror.

2.- You learn that the man is perhaps crazy because he has been coped up for so long. He feels as if someone is watching him at all times. And he is most likely a Black male because of the fact that a black fist shows up in the reflection of the mirror.

- He most likely does what he does because he has been alone for a very long time with not even a glimpse of the outside world.

- He wants to speak.

- Nothing.

-Because he has no freedom.

3. -The situation makes a South African prison seem like pure nothingness, a place where you have nothing and get nothing. The only thing you can do to try and keep yourself sane is by cleaning your surroundings but it will most likely not help.

- It makes the work even more emotional and dreadful.

4. -I react to this poem with a feeling of somberness and helplessness. 

- It makes me feel depressed in one hand and in the other it makes me feel free because I am not in that chamber.

- The only time I have felt that way is when I have been kept at either school or work for too long and a break was not in the near future.

5. -The title suggests that you make a prison a prison with your actions and thoughts but the only reason why you are there in the first place is because of other people.

-The title fits the poem exactly because that is basically a quick summary and exactly what the author meant for the reader to get out of it.

-I do believe the assertion the title makes because it is what could happen to anyone and it is what happens to most people. It is not the walls or the smell of a jail that makes you crazy it is you.