This question is based on General Literature Principles and Literary Appreciation. Ocol rejects the old type. He is in love with a modern woman He is in lov...

Okot p'Bitek's Song of Lawino is a dramatic monologue in which Lawino, the narrator, exposes and satirises her husband Ocol's wholesale rejection of traditional Acholi culture in favour of Western ways. The quoted lines describe Ocol's preference for a "modern woman" who "speaks English" over the "old type."

The writer, through Lawino's voice, ridicules Ocol's value judgment. The tone of the poem is ironic and critical. By cataloguing Ocol's shallow criteria for admiring a woman - modernity and English fluency - the poet invites the reader to see the absurdity of judging an entire culture as inferior simply because it is traditional. The writer is not praising English speakers (the poem treats that preference as misguided), not merely describing the rejection of a traditional woman (that is what Ocol does, not what the writer endorses), and not specifically criticising modern women (the criticism targets Ocol's attitude, not the women themselves).

The key to understanding this passage is recognising that Lawino is an unreliable narrator by design: her apparent simplicity is itself a satirical tool p'Bitek uses to expose the hollowness of Ocol's Westernised values.