In the 1900s, the United States was a nation that took part in racism and, eventually, took part in the lynching of African Americans. “Strange Fruit”, a poem written by Abel Meeropol, and the song being performed by Billie Holiday, is a poem that demonstrates the horror of the author to discover the happenings of a lynching and to see the image of one taking place. The poem was widely known as a song sung by Billie Holiday in 1939 and was written and published by Abel Meeropol in 1937 being the first literary writing to publicly object lynching. Abel Meeropol was a Jewish man and an English teacher for 17 years. He adopted two children, Robert and Michael, after their parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed. The literary works were …show more content…
In “Strange Fruit”, the author uses a metaphor throughout the poem, as the poem itself would be considered a metaphor. For example, in “Strange Fruit”, the African Americans are being referred to as strange fruit throughout the poem. Meeropol puts into writing the following: “Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” (Meeropol 4). In this metaphor, the African Americans being lynched are being compared to fruit on trees. In addition to this, in “Strange Fruit”, Abel Meeropol uses imagery all the way through the poem. One particular instance where this is used is where the author describes the looks of the black people’s faces when being lynched. “The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth” (Meeropol 6) portion of the poem is stated by Meeropol in the poem. This clearly shows the appearance of the black personages being lynched in the image that inspired Meeropol’s protest, the poem “Strange Fruit”. Further use of literary and poetic elements includes the author’s use of personification. An example of the use of personification is clear when Abel Meeropol uses fruit to define the black people being lynched. “Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck” (Meeropol 9) is communicated by Meeropol. In this exemplar, the black people being lynched are being substituted by the words strange fruit because ordinarily, it is fruit that is growing and hanging from trees and crows eat eat them, but here, African Americans are hanging and are being given a nonperson epidemic, because of this difference, are being related to strange fruit. The people watching may be picking on, or plucking when compared to crows, the people being lynched. These literary points being made make the poem bring a deeper meaning and adds an emphasis to
There are multiple examples of visual imagery in this poem. An example of a simile is “curled like a possum within the hollow trunk”. The effect this has is the way it creates an image for the reader to see how the man is sleeping. An example of personification is, “yet both belonged to the bush, and now are one”. The result this has is how it creates an emotion for the reader to feel
Authors use many different types of imagery in order to better portray their point of view to a reader. This imagery can depict many different things and often enhances the reader’s ability to picture what is occurring in a literary work, and therefore is more able to connect to the writing. An example of imagery used to enhance the quality of a story can be found in Leyvik Yehoash’s poem “Lynching.” In this poem, the imagery that repeatably appears is related to the body of the person who was lynched, and the various ways to describe different parts of his person. The repetition of these description serves as a textual echo, and the variation in description over the course of the poem helps to portray the events that occurred and their importance from the author to the reader. The repeated anatomic imagery and vivid description of various body parts is a textual echo used by Leyvik Yehoash and helps make his poem more powerful and effective for the reader and expand on its message about the hardship for African Americans living
The first two lines of the poem set the mood of fear and gloom which is constant throughout the remainder of the poem. The word choice of "black" to describe the speaker's face can convey several messages (502). The most obvious meaning ...
The use of anaphora is prominent in the poem as each stanza is initiated with the same or similar phrase. The second through eighth stanza begin with the words, “I see them,” this is to show the speaker’s sympathy for the slaves and the horrible lives they were given. He feels as if he is his great-grandfather and is responsible for the abhorrent crimes he committed. Berry then changes the phrasing to, “I know” signifying that he empathizes with the slaves, finally saying, “I am” showing that he feels similar to a slave. This anaphora shows the struggle of being a descendant of an evil person, the speaker’s inner demons make his life full of shame and guilt for the actions of his ancestors.
...t is arguable that the birds fight is also a metaphor, implying the fight exists not only between birds but also in the father’s mind. Finally, the last part confirms the transformation of the parents, from a life-weary attitude to a “moving on” one by contrasting the gloomy and harmonious letter. In addition, readers should consider this changed attitude as a preference of the poet. Within the poem, we would be able to the repetitions of word with same notion. Take the first part of the poem as example, words like death, illness
In short, oranges represent what their young love feeds off of which are warmth, love and understanding. Soto used imagery and symbolism to make the poem powerful, but what really made it powerful is his use of elements, characters, and the plot. There is a lot of reference to brightness, breathing, and light. Brightness and the light give the poem and the oranges more power, while the heavy breathing makes it seem more realistic because the twelve year old boy is nervous since he is out with his first girlfriend. The poem is very vivid as well as colorful. You can tell what the narrator feels, and even I could identify with him at some points.
Within “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant, he states “She has a voice of gladness, and a smile/And eloquence of beauty, and she glides/Into his darker musings, with a mild/And healing sympathy (Bryant, 4-6).” The “she” Bryant is referring to is Mother Nature, which makes his statement that nature can take away a man’s pain that much more powerful. By personifying nature, the reader feels as though they can relate to “her” in a different way. A poem that uses powerful metaphors is “The First Snowfall” by James Russell Lowell. Within his poem, he states, “From sheds new-roofed with Carrara/Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow/The stiff rails were softened to swan’s-down/And still fluttered down the snow (Lowell, 9-12).” The line “from sheds new-roofed with Carrara” is referring to how pure and white the snow that had just recently fallen looks. Carrara is an expensive white marble. So, Lowell is comparing expensive items to the snow, which helps put an image of a beautiful snowfall into the reader’s head. By using both personification and metaphors, the reader can relate to the words being said in a completely different way, and thus understand the abstract ideas that the authors are trying to convey in their Romantic
In this poem called “Creatures” by the author Billy Collins there is a literary device called a metaphor when the reader is reading this poem. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things without using the words like or as. In lines one (1) through...
Consider the first few lines, “I have nothing else to give you, so it is a pot full of yellow corn, to warm your belly in the winter” (Baca 8-10). The imagery here is clear. The author invokes the images of yellow delicious corn while stressing the importance of his poem in relation to food. The speaker cannot give the recipient food, so he gives the only thing he can, poetry. This imagery is strong in demonstrating the importance of the poem in comparison to food. Not only was imagery strong in this line it, it is also a metaphor: Thing A = Thing B. The author appears skilled in using both imagery and metaphors in this poem. Consider these lines, “It is a scarf for your head, to wear over your hair, to tie up around your face” (Baca 11-12). The author uses again both imagery and metaphors in this line. He is stating that his poem is as important to his love interest as a “Scarf for your head”, and that it should be valued. The imagery used within this stanza appears to be coordinating with Santiago’s message quite well. The second stanza invokes warm images of kindness, while the third stanza is more mysterious and
An elegance in word choice that evokes a vivid image. It would take a quite a bit of this essay to completely analyze this essay, so to break it down very briefly. It portrays a positive image of blackness as opposed to darkness and the color black normally being connected with evil, sorrow, and negativity. The poem as a whole connects blackness with positivity through its use of intricate, beautiful words and images.
In the Bontemps poem, he uses the metaphor of reaping and harvesting to express the bitterness felt by African Americans in a racist America. The metaphor explains that no matter how hard African Americans work, their reward will always be less than that of a White American. Bontemps feels that African Americans have labored long and hard enough for White Americans, and that it is time for all Americans to receive equal reward for equal work. In lines 11 and 12 Bontemps says "Small wonder then my children glean in fields / They have not sown, and feed of bitter fruit." These lines are a great example of the extended metaphor used throughout Bontemps poem, and show that he believes that no matter how hard he works to bring change, his children have already tasted the "bitter fruit" (line 12) of racial prejudice. Cullen also uses the extended metaphor of reaping and harvesting as evident in lines 1 and 2: "We shall not always plant while others reap / The golden increment of bursting fruit". Cullen uses these lines to express his pride in his race and to promote equality. He also says "So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, / And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds" (lines 13 and 14) to say that change will not happen overnight and that the wait for equality will be painful and
The titles of both poems have extreme symbolic imagery to grab the readers attention and get them thinking. In “Strange Fruit” the word strange is immediately associated with something that is different, weird, ugly, disgusting, unwelcoming, and bizarre. On the other hand, fruit is something sweet, delicious, and healthy. When they are united together the image that is revealed is this disgusting rotten fruit that is hanging from a tree or is fallen on ground and everyone is trying to avoid it, while at the same time make fun of it. When the title is put into context of the poem and the era it happened in it is very sad to hear how African-Americans were getting lynched on trees and everyone would look at them as this different, ugly, weird object and not humanly. Conversely, the symbol of the two words strange and fruit is very diverse and one is more positive while the other is negative, but when combined together they have a totally contrasting connotation and are presented in different ways. When one says the word strange fruit right away you assume this fruit is either spoiled, squished, or disgusting, but you never consider the positive or good side of it. Back in the nineteen hundreds there was a lot of racism between white and colour people. Sadly enough, coloured people were viewed and described as this strange fruit just because they
Strange fruit is and amazing dark poem told by Billie Holiday as very powerful song. Strange Fruit is a terrifying protest against the inhumane acts of racism. Strange Fruit was about the murders and lynching going on in the south at the time from public hangings to burnings. The south has a cruel and terrifying past that haunts the very people who still live down there and remind them that only a short time ago was no one prosecuted for killing someone of dark skin since whole towns were involved in it.
The theme of Julio Polance’s poem “Identity” talks about being different from people or being your own person by not following what other people are doing, but doing whatever pleases you instead. The first literary device for this poem would be imagery. Julio Polance shows imagery in his poem by stating, He’d “rather be a tall, ugly weed, clinging on cliff, like an eagle wind-wavering above high, jagged rocks.” He says this because he wants the reader of the story to see and experience what he does through this poem. Usually when we talk about weed vs flowers we assume the the weed is bad and the flowers are good but for the is poem it is flipped and, it is this way since the flowers represent society being being normal and the weed represents
As I read the poem, the first word that stood out to me was the labyrinth. Labyrinth caught my attention because it was an unknown word to me, but the meaning made me realize it can relate to life itself. This brings up the first figure of speech, metaphor. I would consider labyrinth a metaphor because labyrinth is used to describe life. Life is full of choices, struggles, and the unknown. It’s like being in a maze deciding what side to go, but you don’t know because you can’t see beyond the walls surrounding you. Using this word sets the tone; it lets you know how the speaker feels: lost and confused about life itself. Another figure of speech that I identified was contrast. On lines 3 and 5 the speaker is contrasting the left and the right