Marissa Harris Final Draft Professor Coley 10/19/2014 Analysis of “Hard Rock Returns to Prison” In the existence and effort of Etheridge Knight, the premise of prisons inflicted from slavery, racism, poverty, incarceration along with addiction and repetition of painful patterns are offset with the subject of freedom. His poems of travail and endurance, misery and tribute, loss and love bear witness to the reality that we are under no circumstance entirely confined. Knight's poetry articulates our choice of awareness and makes plain our capability for relationships with others. Knight was born on 19 April 1931 in Corinth, Mississippi; he was one of seven children. After having abandoned school …show more content…
in the eighth grade, he enlisted in the army in 1947, saw active duty in Korea, where he experienced shrapnel wound, and was dismissed in 1957. Throughout this time, he established an addiction to drugs and alcohol that lead him to turn to crime to assist his habit. While meandering around the United States after his discharge, Knight was arrested for robbery in 1960 and carried out his sentence in the Indiana State Prison, where by happenchance Gwendolyn Brooks visited him and gave confidence to his writing. He started writing frequently, cheered on by members of the Black Arts interest groups such as Sonia Sanchez and Dudley Randall, who is Broadside Press, published Knight’s Poems from Prison in 1968 the year of his liberation from prison. (Norton) One of Knights most beloved poems not only depicts the treatment of an imprisoned society, it also illustrates a form of slavery and the loss of free will among institutional residents.
The main character, Hard Rock as a kind of “Superman” to other penal patients is recognized immediately in the poem through a repeating of the accounts that are strewed about him; the forthright narrative of the poem sets up the vagueness of how he will respond after his "treatment" in the sanatorium. The poem associates with those who anticipate his return; they are confident that Hard Rock's essence has not been shattered by a surgical “treatment” or shock therapy, and the lines slither nearly to a halt with dissatisfaction in verse four. The "nothing" (line 27) of Hard Rock's reaction to mockery and provoking and the hollowness of his eyes, "1ike knot holes in a fence," (James 194-195) decrease the valiant expectations and delusions to desolation. The final section recounts the spectators' efforts to reinterpret, to grasp onto faith that their idol of heroism could counter against the greatest determinations to dominate him, but the spirit has disappeared out of the hero-worshipers too, and the poem reports them as hammered, submitted, denied of their inner self as Hard Rock has been of his. The poem expresses the anguish of the despondent and it rallies against the implementation of power that can restrain even as fractious a character as Hard Rock. …show more content…
(Norton) Knight’s formation of Hard Rock as a Black legendary star is quite prosperous. Hard Rock has come to represent the Black man inside and outside reformatory walls who has been ultimately shattered by the uncontrollable powers in a repressive society. (Norton) To the poet, Hard Rock had been the embodiment of what the Black man views as his independence—being his own man: "[Hard Rock] is known not to take no shit/from Nobody,"(James 194-195) and "he had the scars to prove it."(James 194-195) Now, the convicts hear that he had transformed; the prison system had imposed a lobotomy upon him. In order to suppress his adamancy, doctors had interfered with his brain—the center of his life force. They had not severed his legs to constrain his development—his movement was already delimited in the "Hole"; in its place, they carved out his brain to hamper his untamed thoughts. Not only does Langston Hughes describe the actions that Hard Rock has previously played so vividly he also uses the treatment that he underwent as a way of portraying the racial aspects of the time. Intensely explaining the way the treatment had done away with Hard Rock’s vicious aggressiveness towards those that try to restrain his freethinking. A lobotomy is a surgical technique, which includes extracting or destroying portions of the frontal cortex.
Lobotomies were traditionally used to remedy patients with psychological illnesses and behavioral disorders; in the 1950s, they were mainly phased out and substituted with medications, talk therapy, and other methods of dealing. As an overall decree, lobotomies are not carried out today, and many people reason that they are essentially quite brutal. When performed effectively, a lobotomy could bring about significant behavioral modifications for the patient. For psychotic patients, lobotomies were sometimes favorable, relaxing the patient so that he or she could live a somewhat average life. Lobotomies are also notorious for producing a lifeless affect and general reduced responsiveness; this was viewed as an advantage of the lobotomy over all by some supporters of the surgery. Nonetheless, lobotomies can in addition go very wrong. The brain is a tremendously elusive and very intricate organ, and in the era when lobotomies were performed, people were not familiar with much about the brain, as they did not have the assistance of a wide variety of scientific equipment to visualize the brain and its behaviors. At its worst, a lobotomy could be fatal, but it could also cause severe brain damage, ensuing in what was in essence mental retardation of the patient. Patients could also fall into comas and persistent vegetative states after lobotomies. The lobotomy is now thought
of as the worst medical inaccuracy to ever take place, but back in the 1920s to the 1950s, it was “normal” to expose someone that was diagnosed with a mental illness to this process. With no alternate types of medicine to benefit mental patients, this was seen as the solitary method of treating the challenge they may or may not have been having. This “vegetative” state is what the doctors were trying to achieve when placing Hard Rock under, this “soft-torture” depicted by Hughes, took away any self-control that Hard Rock had over his life. He no longer debated with the detention authorities and complied with what he was told to do. The staff could now manipulate and influence him in to obeying their word. The “lobotomy” that was performed on Hard Rock produces the same ideological effects as a lynching and as the other prisoners viewed it, killed his soul and killed “Hard Rock” as they know him. Much of Hard Rock’s personality is cleverly sketched through the prisoners’ conversations, which are occupied with Black ghetto dialogue designs. One of the utmost actual discussions is the one in which the prisoners ruminates about Hard Rock and the sovereignty of spirit he once demonstrated: "Man, the last time, it took eight/Screws to put him in the Hole!" "Yeah, remember when he/Smacked the captain with his dinner tray? He set/The record for time in the Hole – 67 straight days! /01 Hard Rock! Man, that’s one crazy nigger."(James 194-195) Hard Rock is, at first, the breathing illustration of a free man constricted; but, after his brain cells are defaced, his spirit is hushed as well. Once the Black man whom they trusted could not be fragmented is spiritless, the prisoners "turned away, our eyes on the ground. Crushed. /He had been our Destroyer, the doer of things/We dreamed of doing but could not bring ourselves to do."(James 194-195) "Hard Rock" has converted a classic in Black poetry. Knight’s talent in representation of an intense character, which he had established as a toast-teller, is evidently shown. However, the point that he is seen still examining for a sufficient, outstanding printed method of appearance is also obvious. Langston Hughes poems have always been poems that are written to make people aware of the unjust treatment of others. In this very popular poem “Hard Rock Returns…” he expresses to the reader the cruelty that patients, prisoners, and African Americans are undertaking, how their rights are being ignored and the humanity, along with the civil rights that they deserve is being governed by someone other than themselves. Works Cited The Norton Introduction to Poetry. Copyright © 1986, 1981, 1973 by W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. "The New Black Aesthetic as a Counterpoetics: The Poetry of Etheridge Knight." Diss., Stanford University, 1977. Copyright © 1977 by Patricia Alveda Liggins Hill James, Missy, and Alan Merickel. Reading Literature and Writing Argument. 5th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. Print.
In dire situations, it is common for people to seek moral guidance. William Wordsworth and Paul Laurence Dunbar did this through poetry. The two poems, “London, 1802” and “Douglass,” share a similar underlying cause, sentence formation, and the conditions of their particular country, but differ drastically in tone, use of comparisons, structure, and the author’s goals.
First let me give a short summary of the book “A question of Freedom a Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison” by R. Dwayne Betts is about the life changing experience of an inmate. R. Dwayne Betts was a high school honor student from a lower-middle-class family. He made a bad decision that sent him to prison. Betts was only six-teen years old and when he was h...
One of the most famous forms of a cure during the 1930s was a surgery called Lobotomy. “Lobotomy, also known as leucotomy which mean cut/slice white in Greek, or its nickname of ice pick, is a neurosurgical operation that involves severing connection in the brain’s prefrontal lobe” according to Freeman. Lobotomy was performed by
More of Knight’s notable use of diction and tone is found in this stanza, where he writes, “A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch/ And didn’t lose his teeth, a screw who knew Hard Rock/ From before shook him down and barked in his face./ And Hard Rock did nothing” (lines 24-27). It can be felt from Knight’s use of tone that this type of action is uncharacteristic of Hard Rock. The second stanza details Hard Rock’s lobotomy, with Knight writing, “...the doctors had bored a hole in his head,/ Cut out part of his brain, and shot electricity/ Through the rest” (lines 8-10). This leaves the inmate with an intruding presence of hopelessness. The imagery and diction is the last stanza of the poem drives home the motif of disheartenment that the black prison inmates felt after realizing that Hard Rock is forever changed. Similar to the movie One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, the central, nonconformist character Randle McMurphy, who gave the inmates a sense of hope, is lobotomized, leaving the prisoners afraid and unable to challenge authority in the way they could have if McMurphy was still his full, original self. This is the same way that Etheridge Knight and his fellow prisoners felt after Hard Rock’s return. The one person who was brave enough to stand back was now made into a martyr for the prisoners as well as an example made for the prisoners on what would happen if
The institution of slavery defies the very nature of humanity, truth, and intellect from both the slave and the slave owner. Throughout the "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; the terrible relationship between ignorance and suppression is seen time and time again with every one of his owners. Douglass is fortunate in discovering the liberating power of knowledge of which his owners are trying so diligently to conceal. With this discovery comes a "new conception" of just how evil the institution of slavery is, causing Douglass to consider the pursuit of this powerful tool. To further complicate his battle against ignorance, Douglass's pathway to enlightenment and ultimately freedom leads him to discover the many other cruel methods that his suppressors use to break the essential and most important component of humanity, the soul.
He creates a vision of relief at the beginning of the passage by means of diction, similes, and an impeccable amount of imagery. Douglass also applies an approach for the application of syntax, diction, and connotative sense to amplify the feelings of loneliness and paranoia presented after emancipation. The result is the masterpiece that fluently runs from one state of mind following his escape to another. It is a masterpiece with a timeless sense of moral values being unconsciously taught to its audience, whether or not they succeed in deciphering it. Works Cited Frederick Douglass.
Though this poem is only a small snapshot of what I personally thought Douglass was going through, I could never adequately understand the frustration he must have had. My hope in writing this poem was not to provide a psychoanalysis or theoretical idea structure to any audience, but rather to show that even today, a modern audience member like me, can appreciate the struggle of a fellow human and speak against injustices, specifically in Douglass’s time.
The early history of mental illness is bleak. The belief that anyone with a mental illness was possessed by a demon or the family was being given a spiritual was the reason behind the horrific treatment of those with mental illness. These individuals were placed into institutions that were unhygienic and typically were kept in dark, cave like rooms away from people in the outside world. The institutions were not only dark and gross; they also used inhumane forms of treatment on their patients. Kimberly Leupo, discusses some of the practices that were used, these included may types of electro shocks, submitting patients to ice bath, as well as many other horrific events (Leupo). Lobotomies, which are surgical procedures that cut and scrape different connections in the brain, were very common practice. They were thought to help cure mental illness, but often ended up with more damage than good.
The Poet begins with the Rocky Mountain Newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy being informed of his twin brother’s suicide. As two of the detectives from the Denver police department who also worked with Sean McEvoy in the Crimes Against Persons unit inform McEvoy of the incident, he immediately has doubts about his twin’s alleged suicide. Seeking to better understand what his brother did and what the Denver PD says his brother did, Jack McEvoy decides to write a story for the paper about his brother. From this point on McEvoy began to learn about evil in a new way.
The treatment involved passing electrical currents through the brain which would trigger a small seizure and ease the symptoms of certain mental illnesses, however the procedure was used without anesthesia and caused the patient to jerk uncontrollably, this treatment would sometimes result in fractures, memory loss, and other side effects. The treatment is still used today, although with much weaker currents and anesthesia. Another popular treatment used in the asylums was the injection of insulin into a patient to induce a coma. This treatment was thought to reset an individual’s brain and bring them back to “normal”, however, insulin coma therapy proved to be not very effective and was phased out in the 1960s. One of the most inhumane treatments for the mentally ill was the lobotomy, or the prefrontal leucotomy. This surgical procedure involved opening a hole in the head to sever nerve pathways in the prefrontal cortex. The lobotomy was performed at least 15,000 times in Britain before being phased out in the late 1950s. Another type of brain surgery discussed in the film, was one done on patient, Maggi Chapman, who underwent a surgery in which an electrode was attached to a part of her brain and then turned on to fry that part of the brain. Maggi goes on to describe how the next few years she felt like a zombie and had a difficult time going through life (BBC,
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.
Patients have been mistreated in asylums by Inhumane Treatments. Back in late 1880, a surgical procedure emerged identified as lobotomy also called prefrontal leucotomy was highly used to “Heal” Mentally illnesses (Lobotomy,1). “A pick like an instrument was forced through the back of the eye sockets to pierce the thin bone that separates the eye sockets from the frontal lobes. The pick points were then inserted into the frontal lobe and used to sever connection in the brain” (Lobotomy, 2).In 1945 American neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman II streamlined the method lobotomy by replacing it with a transorbital lobotomy. The transorbital lobotomy was performed very quickly sometimes in less than 10 minutes. A large amount of lobotomized patients had negative effects such as apathy, passivity, lack of initiative, poor ability to concentrate, and generally decreased depth and intensity of their emotional response to life.
Throughout life, we have all experienced the loneliness of being excluded at some point or another. In “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge shows how his experience with this resentful jealousy matured into a selfless brotherly love and the acceptance of the beneficial effects some amount of denial can have. Each of the poem’s three stanzas demonstrates a separate step in this transition, showing Coleridge’s gradual progression from envy to appreciation. The pervading theme of Nature and the fluctuating diction are used to convey these, while the colloquial tone parallels the message’s universal applications. The poem culminates to show the reader that being deprived of something in life is not always to be regretted, but rather to be welcomed as an opportunity to “smell the roses,” so to speak, and appreciate the blessings we often take for granted.
Poetry is such a different and intricate form of literature. It can not only be dissected with different bits and pieces to the puzzle, but can have more than one meaning for each piece as well. Many layers can be interpreted differently depending on the certain way an author or poet writes them. The audience could have a different view of a poem than the author had initially intended to come across. But with prison poetry, it almost has twice as many meanings, because the symbolism and tones that the poet shapes within their writing, needs to be taken into consideration. In Etheridge Knight’s “For Freckle-Faced Gerald,” Knight uses symbolism in such a tender and raw way to explain the shifting tone and situation that occurs to the innocent
2nd ed. of the book. USA: Penguin Books, Ltd. [Accessed 01 January 2014]. The Prison Reform Trust.