Runagate By Countee Cullen: Poem Analysis

“Runagate Runagate” portrays the underground Railroad. Which in the middle 1800s aided slaves to escape up north to freedom. Rhythmically the poem captures the mood of frantic flight of a “runagate” (an escaped slave) it shows that by this quote “Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror (Hayden 317). Another good example of his organic use is in the stresses and the pace of the lines in “Runagate Runagate”. Like the rhythm of the title. In the poem the frenetic pace of the running slaves and the steady, rumbling movement of a train, appropriate of the Underground Railroad “And the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing and the high cold and the night long and the river” (Hayden, 317). This period in history as a time of darkness, Hayden uses the journey northward a quote is “North star and bonanza gold I’m bound for the freedom, Freedom- bound” (Hayden, 318)

Readers of Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” commonly pose objections which concern opposite ends of the critical spectrum. One

It is a restrained, dignified, poignant work. Perhaps Cullen knew he was speaking for the others, too, when he wrote: “We all not always plant while others reap The golden increment of bursting fruit, Not always countenance, abject and mute (Cullen, 441) Here we have often used symbol of planting seeds and reaping fruit. This symbol invariably refers to the natural sequence of things the hope eventually realized, or the “just deserts” finally obtained. The sowing reaping symbol here effectively expresses the frustration that inevitably falls to the individual or group of people caught in an unjust system. The image of a person planting the seeds of his labor, knowing even as he plants that “other” will pluck the fruit, is a picture of the frustration which is so often the Negro’s