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Important allusions in literature
Significance of symbolism in literature
Significance of symbolism in literature
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Lynching was frequently committed as a public display of cruelty toward African Americans in the South. “The Haunted Oak” is a poem in which Paul Laurence Dunbar, the poet, presents a well-known unjust act that was enjoyed by Whites in the late 1890s. In the poem the Dunbar introduces a theme of lynching .He also uses descriptions that appeals to the reader’s sense of hearing, seeing and touch. Throughout the poem Dunbar uses personification as well to convey what was seen, He does this by allowing the Oak tree to tell the story of what took place through its eyes and to explain what caused it to wither away. Dunbar decides to start his poem off by sparking appeals to several of his readers’ senses. The sense of hearing is referred to when Dunbar stated, “I bent me down to hear his sigh; I shook with his gurgling moan.” This line indicates that the Oak tree branch was bent because of the weight of the man who was being …show more content…
hang for an old crime and, because the Oak tree became bent it was able to hear all the agony and hurt the moaning man felt knowing the inevitable .Dunbar included another example of the usage of hearing when he said, “Oh, why does the dog howl all night long, And why does the night wail?” The poet uses metaphor to describe the degree of the man’s cry and hurt which the oak tree heard; he also used the metaphor to help the readers feel the discrimination and grief that were being done toward the guiltless man. The poet also illustrated the use of imagery in his poem.
Dunbar does this by allowing the reader to mentally picture everything that is taking place throughout the poem. For instance, when Dunbar said “and he raised his hand to the sky; but the beat of hoofs smote on his ear, and the steady thread drew nigh.” The reader is able to vividly picture the man hands being in the air and his dangling feet kicking on the Oak as he fights to survive while the rope gets tighter around his neck. Likewise in stanza eleven the reader is able to picture the people the Oak tree describe as the judge that wore a mask of black , the doctor who wore white and a minister with his oldest son. These characters are who we assume are the ones who were in charge of the hanging of the guiltless man. This conclusion is made because the Oak tree uttered, “oh, foolish man, why weep you now? ’Tis but a little space, and the time will come when these shall dread the mem’ry of your face. This meant that they will suffer from guilt for the wrong they
did. Another sense the poet introduces is the sense of touch. In the 13th stanza the poet gave an example of touch when he stated “I feel the rope against my bark, and the weight of him in my grain, I feel the throe of his final woe, the touch of my own pain.” These lines allow the reader to feel the sorrow the Oak tree felt when the man gave his last kick. The last kick which symbolizes the death of the man and also represent the point at which the Oak tree withered away for good. Last but not least Paul Dunbar used a significant amount of personification throughout his poem. He does this by personifying the speaker, who is the Oak tree, for example Dunbar stated, “And the sap ran free in my veins, but I saw in the moonlight dim and weird a guiltless victim pains.” He gave the Oak tree human characteristics and emotion to better express what was happening. By doing this he gives the reader a creative way of viewing a very serious issue that was taking place during that time.
‘Fire in a Canebrake’ is important since it sheds new light on the last mass lynching in America. It certainly shows the ambivalence and poor standards of the investigation into the case by the authorities as well as the terrible racism of the common townsfolk who could not care a jot about the fate of the murdered blacks. The book is a clear indictment of the terrible plague of lynching.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker starts by telling the reader the place, time and activity he is doing, stating that he saw something that he will always remember. His description of his view is explained through simile for example “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets of their branches” (Updike), captivating the reader’s attention
As I gazed across the book isles and leaned over carefully to pick one up out of the old dusty vaults of the library, a familiar object caught my eye in the poetry section. A picture in time stood still on this book, of two African American men both holding guitars. I immediately was attracted to this book of poems. For the Confederate Dead, by Kevin Young, is what it read on the front in cursive lettering. I turned to the back of the book and “Jazz“, and “blues” popped out of the paper back book and into my brain. Sometimes you can judge a book by it’s cover, I thought. Kevin Young’s For the Confederate Dead is a book of poems influenced by blues and jazz in the deep rural parts of the south.
The poem opens upon comparisons, with lines 3 through 8 reading, “Ripe apples were caught like red fish in the nets/ of their branches. The maples/ were colored like apples,/part orange and red, part green./ The elms, already transparent trees,/ seemed swaying vases full of sky.” The narrator’s surroundings in this poem illustrate him; and the similes suggest that he is not himself, and instead he acts like others. Just as the maples are colored like apples, he
In her Fire in a Canebrake, Laura Wexler describes an important event in mid-twentieth century American race relations, long ago relegated to the closet of American consciousness. In so doing, Wexler not only skillfully describes the event—the Moore’s Ford lynching of 1946—but incorporates it into our understanding of the present world and past by retaining the complexities of doubt and deception that surrounded the event when it occurred, and which still confound it in historical records. By skillfully navigating these currents of deceit, too, Wexler is not only able to portray them to the reader in full form, but also historicize this muddled record in the context of certain larger historical truths. In this fashion, and by refusing to cede to a desire for closure by drawing easy but inherently flawed conclusions regarding the individuals directly responsible for the 1946 lynching, Wexler demonstrates that she is more interested in a larger historical picture than the single event to which she dedicates her text. And, in so doing, she rebukes the doubts of those who question the importance of “bringing up” the lynching, lending powerful motivation and purpose to her writing that sustains her narrative, and the audience’s attention to it.
Southern Horror s: Lynch Law in All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells took me on a journey through our nations violent past. This book voices how strong the practice of lynching is sewn into the fabric of America and expresses the elevated severity of this issue; she also includes pages of graphic stories detailing lynching in the South. Wells examined the many cases of lynching based on “rape of white women” and concluded that rape was just an excuse to shadow white’s real reasons for this type of execution. It was black’s economic progress that threatened white’s ideas about black inferiority. In the South Reconstruction laws often conflicted with real Southern racism. Before I give it to you straight, let me take you on a journey through Ida’s
Many writers begin writing and showing literary talent when they are young. Paul Laurence Dunbar, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, was already editor of a newspaper and had had two of his poems published in the local newspaper before he’d graduated from high school. His classmate, Orville Wright, printed The Tattler which Dunbar edited and published for the local African American community. After graduating from high school, he was forced to get a job as an elevator operator which allowed him spare time for writing. He finally gained recognition outside of Dayton when, in 1892, he was invited to address the Western Association of Writers and met James Newton Matthews who praised his work in a letter to an Illinois newspaper. In 1892, he decided to publish his first book of poems entitled Oak and Ivy and four years later his second book of poems Majors and Minors was published. People began to see him as a symbol for his race, and he was thought of artistically as “a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being… in a log cabin amid fields of cotton” (Dunbar, AAW 2). Dunbar’s poems, written alternately in literary and dialect English, are about love, death, music, laughter, human frailty, and though Dunbar tried to mute themes of social protest, social commentary on racial themes is present in his poetry.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
Laurence Dunbar's "Ship That Pass In The Night" is a cry for opportunity for all men, regardless of race. Dunbar's poem directly parallels a passage from Frederick Douglass' autobiography that gives an account of his life as a slave. Both Douglass and Dunbar look out at the ships that sail by and see hopes for societal changes. Although they both sought change, their aspirations were quite different. Frederick Douglass watched the ships from ashore, wishing for freedom and for slavery to be abolished. Paul Laurence Dunbar on the other hand was already a free man. He was on a ship, still more of an opportunity than Douglass had, yet he was still in search for new opportunities for African Americans. The new opportunities that he seeks are upon a ship somewhere sailing in the dark night and keep passing him by.
Abercrombie’s 1946 creation, oil on Masonite, consists of a desolate, muted night landscape contrasted by a bright yellow box and noose positioned in the center, and random, ripped pieces of fabric scattered about. A ladder leans against the tree, but not figures are present under the dim light of the full moon. Previously alluding to Charlie Parker, an influential African American jazz artist who came to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance and a close friend of Abercrombie’s, the painting exudes haunting and ominous imagery in its void scenery. The image of an abandoned noose handing off a tree is a bold allusion to the illegal lynching of African Americans that occurred throughout the
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.
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” is a lyric poem in which the point of attraction, the mask, represents the oppression and sadness held by African Americans in the late 19th century, around the time of slavery. As the poem progresses, Dunbar reveals the façade of the mask, portrayed in the third stanza where the speaker states, “But let the dream otherwise” (13). The unreal character of the mask has played a significant role over the life of African Americans, whom pretend to put on a smile when they feel sad internally. This ocassion, according to Dunbar, is the “debt we pay to human guile," meaning that their sadness is related to them deceiving others. Unlike his other poems, with its prevalent use of black dialect, Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” acts as “an apologia (or justification) for the minstrel quality of some of his dialect poems” (Desmet, Hart and Miller 466). Through the utilization of iambic tetrameter, end rhyme, sound devices and figurative language, the speaker expresses the hidden pain and suffering African Americans possessed, as they were “tortured souls” behind their masks (10).
Mary Oliver, in her poem “The Black Walnut Tree”, gives an account of a mother and daughters quandary to cut down the walnut tree despite the history attached to it. Poems are often difficult to grasp and understand, however, through the usage of literary devices such as diction and imagery the reader is able to draw context and form a conclusion.
This change in tone echoes the emotions and mental state of the narrator. At the beginning of the poem, the narrator starts somewhat nervous. However, at the end, he is left insane and delusional. When he hears a knocking at the door, he logically pieces that it is most likely a visitor at the door.
The photograph that Williams’ piece revolved around has one, stark, bleak caption, and is the only given piece of information about the photograph, stating that the man in the picture was “Accused in 1937 of murdering white in Mississippi, the black man was tortured with a blowtorch and then lynched.” (Lombardi). The photograph does not show the man being lynched, but instead, the process of torture before the actual lynching, as was common during the nineteenth and twentieth century. Through the photograph and William’s writing around the piece, the viewers are able to presume that the man who took the photograph was also held somewhat responsible for the torturing of this man before he was even lynched. Williams poses questions such as, “WHO took this picture?”, “Couldn’t he just as easily let the man go?”, “Did he take his camera home and then come back with a blowtorch?” in order to convey to the viewer that the same man who took the photographs was also responsible for the black man’s