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There is no safe place in the world. “Ballad of Birmingham” proves that by telling the tragic tale of a young girl and her mother. No matter what a building symbolizes or how much determination is spent on keeping love ones safe, life or destiny will occur. “Ballad of Birmingham” approaches the bombing of Birmingham in 1963 from a sentimental point of view, providing a unique insight into the story. The story of a mother and daughter, as described in the “Ballad of Birmingham,” cannot be understood unless the loss of a loved one has been experience first-hand. The first four stanzas are a conversation between the mother and daughter. The daughter asks for permission to attend a civil rights march. The child is a unique one who believes that sacrificing something like “play[ing]” for a march that can make a difference will be worthwhile (2). However, the mother understands that the march is not a simple march, but a political movement that can turn violent. The mother refuses the child’s request, which categorizes the poem as a tragedy because it places the child in the chur...
In her poem “The School Children”, Louise Gluck uses imagery by applying an extended metaphor to show how going to school is similar to going to battle and by describing the mothers’ actions through the use of vivid verbs to portray the disconnection between children and their guardians, despite the sacrifices that mothers make.
The repetition of the words “waited” (13), and “watched” (14), throughout the stanzas adds anaphora and mystery to the vivid disapproval surrounding the family. Moreover, the use of repetition deepens the focus on the shame and guilt the young girl and her family are experiencing. The anaphora used throughout the poem intends that there is something being waited for. Therefore, the colonialist settlers are continuously waiting and watching for something to happen. In the last stanza Dumont states, “Or wait until a fight broke out” (55), suggesting that this is the action being waited for. As a result, the negative action causes the family to feel shame and regret. Overall, the use of musicality and anaphora successfully allows the reader to experience the pressure of
The first line of the last stanza “Therefore,” suggest that previous ideas of physical need and despair provide a telling prelude to the fate of the children. The following lines “their sons grow suicidally beautiful at the beginning of October…” are further telling to their destiny. As aforementioned, the phrase “suicidally beautiful” and the setting of October are indicative of a period of death and decay. Following this notion, is the line “And they gallop terribly against each other’s bodies” which literally takes the poem back to the football game, but also symbolizes the struggle of the sons. They “gallop terribly” denoting an uncontrollable rapid progression, and are doing so “against” one another as if attempting to be the hero the community dreams about. However, just as the poem begins with the setting of the stadium and ends with their struggle, their lives are ultimately determined by a cycle of poverty beginning with the idealization of a hero, failure to provide the family, and hope for the child just like the “proud fathers” in the stadium. However, the chances of escape are extremely
Fulfilling the roles of both mother and breadwinner creates an assortment of reactions for the narrator. In the poem’s opening lines, she commences her day in the harried role as a mother, and with “too much to do,” (2) expresses her struggle with balancing priorities. After saying goodbye to her children she rushes out the door, transitioning from both, one role to the next, as well as, one emotion to another. As the day continues, when reflecting on
Stanza three again shows doubtfulness about the mother’s love. We see how the mother locks her child in because she fears the modern world. She sees the world as dangers and especially fears men. Her fear of men is emphasized by the italics used. In the final line of the stanza, the mother puts her son on a plastic pot. This is somewhat symbolic of the consumeristic society i.e. manufactured and cheap.
The tragic poem, “The Ballad of Birmingham,” begins with a young child asking an imploring question to her mother, “May I go downtown instead of out to play” (Randall, 669)?
In Dundley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham,” a mother-daughter debate over the freedom march breathes the characters into life by empowering them with exclusive voices. Furthering the mother and daughter’s story through a third voice, Randall introduces the narrator’s cold and callous voice in the fifth stanza. The voices in the ballad emotionally connect the readers to the characters and the bombing of Birmingham.
Even though this poem is pretty tame compared to the others, it still has a much deeper meaning. David is wondering why the camp was so bad, all he remembers is playing a few games, and with a bit of famine. David's mother doesn’t really understand why he doesn’t remember how bad it was. This show how bad the internment camps were for keeping families together, even after they were dismantled. Alongside this, the camps kept people from partaking in cultural events, hobbies “mostly we were bored” (Mura 9). This shows how between the two generations, they can have vastly different views on how bad the internment camps
Although the little girl doesn’t listen to the mother the first time she eventually listens in the end. For example, in stanzas 1-4, the little girl asks if she can go to the Freedom March not once, but twice even after her mother had already denied her the first time. These stanzas show how the daughter is a little disobedient at first, but then is able to respect her mother’s wishes. In stanzas 5 and 6, as the little girl is getting ready the mother is happy and smiling because she knows that her little girl is going to be safe, or so she thinks. By these stanzas the reader is able to tell how happy the mother was because she thought her daughter would be safe by listening to her and not going to the March. The last two stanzas, 7 and 8, show that the mother senses something is wrong, she runs to the church to find nothing, but her daughter’s shoe. At this moment she realizes that her baby is gone. These stanzas symbolize that even though her daughter listened to her she still wasn’t safe and is now dead. The Shoe symbolizes the loss the mother is going through and her loss of hope as well. This poem shows how elastic the bond between the daughter and her mother is because the daughter respected her mother’s wish by not going to the March and although the daughter is now dead her mother will always have her in her heart. By her having her
Dudley Randall's Ballad of Birmingham gives a poetic account of the bombing of a Birmingham church in 1963. The poem was written in ballad form to convey the mood of the mother to her daughter. The author also gives a graphic account of what the 1960's were like. Irony played a part also in the ballad showing the church as the warzone and the freedom march as the safer place to be.
... overall themes, and the use of flashbacks. Both of the boys in these two poems reminisce on a past experience that they remember with their fathers. With both poems possessing strong sentimental tones, readers are shown how much of an impact a father can have on a child’s life. Clearly the two main characters experience very different past relationships with their fathers, but in the end they both come to realize the importance of having a father figure in their lives and how their experiences have impacted their futures.
“Mockingbirds do nothing for us but sing all day. That’s why it’s a sin to kill one” (103). To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells of a small town life, disrupted by an unfair trial of a black man accused of rape.It has many underlying points, like the children trying to meet Boo Radley and new friends in the summer. As named in the title, the mockingbird is used several times to symbolize innocence destroyed by evil, the mockingbird is an innocent animal doing nothing but singing, while the one who shoots it down is the evil one destroying all innocence. The mockingbird represents certain characters throughout the story who have been metaphorically “shot down”.
The mother, on the other hand, is very adamant that the child should not go because it is dangerous. It is obvious that the child is concerned about the events surrounding the march and wants to be part of the movement. The child expresses these feelings in a way the appears mature and cognizant of the surrounding world, expressing a desire to support the civil rights movement rather than to?go out and play.? The desire to no longer be seen as a child and have her voice heard by those being marched against and by her mother (who can also be seen as an oppressive form of authority in this poem) is expressed by the first few lines. The opinion of the child is much like that of all young people who want to fight for their freedom.
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
This poem is about an incident of racism that happened to the narrator earlier in his young life. The thing about this poem is that the event that happened in the poem was so random, the narrator was just called a racial slur out of nowhere. In lines one and two, we can see that the narrator is happy strolling around in Baltimore. There is also some alliteration going on in line two, where there is “repeated H sounds in “heart” and “head.”” (Shmoop) And then suddenly in line eight we can see that this happiness was suddenly ruined because another kid that did not appear to be any older than the narrator (at the age of eight) just said a racial slur to the narrator without any reason to do so. This memory in Baltimore has been stuck with the narrator for the rest of his life, as in stanza three the narrator revealed that throughout all seven months in Baltimore, which is kind of a long time, this event was the only thing that he remembered from his trip in Baltimore. This memory probably struck the narrator for a long time because this might have been his first instance of “in-your-face” racism, where it is just blatant racism. This might have been his first instance because in line five it is revealed that he is only eight years of age and very small. A kid this age should not be exposed to these types of words, because as we can see it has stuck with the narrator’s whole life.