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Mark Cockcroft
Professor
American Studies
December 2014
Cultural Analysis Paper
Imagery in Jean Toomer’s “Reapers”
Jean Toomer's poem, "Reapers" (1923) contains many darkly powerful images, physically and metaphorically, based largely (although not entirely) on the poem’s repeated use of the word “black”, in reference to both men doing harvesting work in the fields, and the beasts of burden that help them. Within this poem, Jean Toomer effectively employs repetitions of key words, phrases, and ideas, thus evoking within the reader feelings of both monotony and starkness, as the “Reapers” of the title go about their work. Toomer also creates, through the poem’s images, a sense of unceasing mechanical motions (i.e., motions by human beings as well as by the sharp harvesting machinery itself), and equally mechanical, unfeeling scenes of death, such as when a field rat is chopped up by a mower drawn by black horses. The rhythmic, monotonous feeling of the poem is strongly reinforced not only by the fact that the poem has only one stanza, but also by Toomer’s deliberate and skillful imagery that melds human labor; mechanical movement; and death into one. In this essay, I will analyze how Jean Toomer’s
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. . is written in rhymed quatrains, rhymed so insistently, in fact, that it is possible to read the poem as having only two rhyming sounds for its eight lines. It is also rendered in complete, conventional sentences, and it has a fairly consistent iambic rhythm. . . . The rhythmic repetitions of the form stand for the repetitive nature of the work, which appears most obviously in the nearly perfect iambic line that represents the resumed swinging of the scythes” (“On
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
The constant rhythm throughout the poem gives it a light beat, like a waltz; the reader feels like s/he is dancing. The rhyme pattern of...
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
Jean Toomer's family was not typical of migrating African Americans settling in the North, or fleeing the South. Each of his maternal grandparents were born of a caucasian father. But a "speck of Black makes you Black." Thus, Toomer's grandfather, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, was a free born black, a Union officer in the Civil War and was elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor and later Acting Governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction. The Pinchback's retired north and settled in the Negro community of the capitol. Thus, Toomer was born, as Nathan Pinchback Toomer into an upper class Negro family in Washington D.C. on December 26, 1894. Shortly after Toomer's birth, his caucasion father deserted his wife and son, and in 1996 Toomer's mother, Nina Toomer, gave him the name Nathan Eugene (which he later shortened to Jean). At the age of ten he was stricken with severe stomach ailments which he survived with a greatly altered life. He showed strength early - when faced with adversity, rather than wring his hands and retreat further into himself, Toomer searched for a plan of action, an intellectual scheme and method to cope with a personal crisis. Toomer writes in Wayward and Seeking, "I had an attitude towards myself that I was superior to wrong-doing and above criticism and reproach ... I seemed to induce, in the grownups, an attitude which made them keep their hands off me; keep, as it were, a respectable distance." Eugene and Nina and a new husband moved to New York in 1906; however, upon Nina's death in 1909, Nathan moved back to Washington and his grandparents.
When I read examples of alliteration like spade sinks, gravelly ground, tall tops, buried the bright, squelch and slap of soggy and curt cuts I almost find myself, at times, reading quicker. The amount of imagery in this poem is immense. “When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down” I can almost see myself watching the spade dig into the ground while the speaker is digging into his writing. While reading this poem multiple times, I notice different types of rhymes. The first two stanzas consist of slant rhyming; thumb/gun, sound/ground/down. I think having the first five lines rhyme creates a rhythm. It is very noticeable; one could not read the opening lines with noticing the rhymes. This grabs the reader’s attention right away. The other type of rhyme’s Seamus uses is internal rhymes. Rhymes like knee/firmly; men/them. These, in my opinion, are like “sneaky” rhymes. They don’t slap you in the face and aren’t completely obvious, but It is a repetition of sound. I like how the author uses all these types of rhymes, it makes me stick along with the story. These sound effects seem to emphasize the detail the speaker is using to describe what he is daydreaming. It takes us through what he is seeing and what he is feeling, it’s an emotional
The author of the poem relies a multiple combination of uses of figurative language including using alliteration, assonance, and usage of parallel structure. Alliteration was presented multiple times through the poem, with the usage of musical rhythm and the flow of the overall writing. The usage of alliteration made every stanza stand out to create a flow with reading the poem. The first type of alliteration that is present in the poem is the repeated sounds in the beginning
... syllable lines, which gives the effect of a balanced beat, or something one can dance to. Additionally, it seems that he uses the same verse at the beginning and at the end of the poem, in order to create a “frame” which is relative to the actual painting.
Assonance—the repetition of the same or similar vowel sound, especially in stressed syllables—can also enrich a poem. Assonance can be used to unify a poem as in Roberts' poem in which it emphasizes the thematic connection among words and unifies the poem’s ideas of the humanoid and nature. Roberts indirectly links certain words and by connecting these words, he calls attention to the imagery that helps communicate the poems theme of how different mother nature and humans can be. In addition to alliteration and assonance, poets create sound patterns with rhyme. The conventional way to describe a poem’s rhyme scheme is to chart rhyming words that appear at the ends of lines. Naturally, rhyme does not have to be subtle to enrich a poem. Rhyme can also be classified according to the position of the rhyming syllables in a line of verse. Poets, too, create rhyme by using repeated words and phrases. “The red flats are uncovered, mile on mile" (31). Meter, the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables that govern a poem’s lines, largely creates poetic rhythm. This gives readers the “beat” of the poem and approximates the sound of spoken language. A way of varying meter is to introduce a pause in the rhythm often created by a caesura--a “cutting” within a line. Both Brooks and Bradstreet use caesuras to complete individual thought and to add to the beat of the poem.
The poem is composed of seven stanzas each consisting of eight verses. The rhyme scheme is, “A – B – C – B – D – E – F – E”. In other words, the poem rhymes with every second and sixth verse. Thus, it has a traditional rhyme scheme. In each line, there are three iambs and the rhythm is, “u–u– u–“. Each verse consists of six syllables, which means that the same rhythm occurs throughout the whole poem. The rhythm is regular and it creates the sense of soldiers marching off to war.
There is no consistent rhyme scheme to the poem, and almost all the stanzas in the poem have run-on lines to the following stanza. The effect these create is a general atmosphere of inconsistency and disorder. The run-on lines also place an emphasis upon the last word of the stanza and the first word of the following, helping the poet impress upon the reader the significance of words such as “river”, “tongues”, “snakes”, “shapes” and “rules”. The atmosphere of inconsistency and disorder that is created can also be linked to the free, uncontrollable movement of the snakes.
In relation to structure and style, the poem contains six stanzas of varying lengths. The first, second, and fourth stanzas
of the poem’s design. His control of the poem in the light of rhyming is
Rhyme scheme follows quite a loose A, B, A, B pattern. The reason for the description of loose is that some lines end without true rhyme. For example, 'her fate' (l.2) then 'she sat' (l.4) does not follow the pattern which has been set out for most lines such as 'to bemoan' (l.1) and 'alone' (l.3). Furthermore, dialect may also interfere with pronunciation, especially with the end words of 'tongue' (l.6) and 'wrong' (l.8). This reoccurs later on with 'strove' (l.33) and 'love' (l.35) as well in other areas of the poem. However, seeming as this was composed in the 17th century, diction would have been different to that of the contemporary reader, meaning the form of the poem, in terms of reading aloud, may have had the correct rhyme intention.
William Shakespeare’s “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore” is an English sonnet about the nature of time, in which Shakespeare both follows and deviates from the traditional sonnet form. Reading the poem with this in mind gives the poem an additional dimension, bringing the reader to consider why this has been done, and how it impacts the poem’s meaning. Shakespeare has modeled the external structure of the poem to coincide with this message that time is a destructive force whose wrath is unavoidable, and this is evident upon examination of his use of a consistent rhyme scheme, his employment of occasional trochees and spondees, and his adherence to the structure of three quatrains and a couplet.
While analyzing a poem, a reader notices many things, things like rhyme scheme, word choice, different levels of a poem, and sentence structure. Each one of these things is an ingredient for the four main components of the formalistic approach to poetry. In the poem "Ozymandius" by P.B. Shelley, structure, style, form, and imagery, allow the reader to look deeper into the poem.