Symbols In The Ballad Of Birmingham

The Dark Side of The United States “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” (MLK). The poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall is about the church bombing that occurred in Birmingham, Alabama. The speakers are the daughter and the mother. In the beginning of the poem, the daughter wants to go march in the Freedom March, but the mother says no because there are dogs, hoses, and guns. The mother tells her to go to church and sing in the choir where it is going to be safe; however, there was an explosion and the mother could not find the daughter. This poem uses symbols and ironies to influence the themes. Some of the symbols are the daughter’s white gloves, the church, the bomb, and the white shoes. First, the way Randall expresses the daughter’s preparation for church: “And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands” (19), this illustrates her innocence and purity. In society white means purity and small is related to a child and children are innocent. Later when she is at church the bomb goes off. This symbolizes the theme of regret. I cannot start to imagine what kind of pain the mom went through when she realized her daughter was gone forever. Even though it was not her fault the mother might blame herself and feel guilty for the death of her daughter. The reason

. .white gloves on her small brown hands /and white shoes on her feet” (19, 20) symbolize how the whites want to suppress the rights of the black community. In the Freedom March, they tried to shut them up by the use of dogs, hoses and guns. Even though these marches could get dangerous and people die, the daughter wants to fight for her rights. She wants to have a voice in her community by helping: “. . .make our country free” (12). This is ironic because the little girl is acting like an adult and wants to go march. This illustrates that things are really bad, and that there is no safe place for a