Analysis Of The Pow Wow At The End Of The World

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Summary The poem begins with the speaker reminiscing about a happy time in his childhood when he was riding the bus in Baltimore, taking in the sights and sounds of an unfamiliar city. The author uses alliteration when he writes the boy was, “head-filled, heart-filled with glee”. He notices another boy staring at him, so he smiles at the boy. The speaker believes there is little difference between them because of the closeness of the two’s size and age. We learn that the speaker is a small 8-year-old, and the other boy was also small. Naturally, we think maybe the boys will become friends or talk, since they’ve already took that preliminary step to introducing yourself. Instead of smiling back, the other boy sticks out his tongue and calls the speaker "nigger". The white child’s slur makes the speaker aware of how much larger the differences really are between them. This word was completely unexpected. I can just imagine the smile slowly slipping from the speaker’s face. It 's at this moment of …show more content…

I was instantly struck by how traumatic and utterly heart-wrenching this poem is. I was thinking, "I wish I could write a response paper on this". Then I saw this poem on my syllabus, and promised to do it justice. "Incident" is about a moment when a young boy 's perception of himself in relation to white Americans is completely fractured. Everyone experiences a day when they put aside childish things and grow up. I think of this poem as the point the speaker realizes he 's not considered to be on equal footing with the white child. The speaker grew up when he realized he was considered a "Nigger". He wasn 't just a boy, he was "other", and this is a moment he will never forget. What I find ironic about the title is that you think of an incident as some small thing. However, the speaker being called "Nigger" shaped not only the rest of his trip, but the rest of his

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