Ballad Of Birmingham

Have you ever been treated unfairly? Well, in the book The Watsons go to Birmingham in 1963 they were in the middle of the civil rights movements, they were fighting to be treated equally. The main theme is stopping segregation here are three examples ,the Watson family couldn't go to the same school as whites, they couldn't use the same restrooms, they couldn't go to the same church in peace.

In the same way, readers also must connect to these children, both those within the poem and those truly enduring the conditions Browning discusses throughout her poem. The conclusion of the second stanza establishes England as the “happy Fatherland” in which the suffering of the children ironically

When I first saw the title, "Ballad of Birmingham" I thought that this poem is going to be about the city of Birmingham and how beautiful it is. Then I saw what was beneath the title which said, "On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963." I now know that the poem is going to be about a bombing, something I know but the characters don't. That sentence also tells me it takes place in 1963 which is around the time of the civil rights movement.

Second in the second paragraph there is use of personification. The writer use personification though out the entire poem. He says that the poem can find when it can’t. The writer also says that poem live in the bottom of shoes

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)?

Once Martin Luther King Jr. said “now is the time to rise from the darkand desolate vally of segregation to the sunlightpath of racal justice”. He said this in his speech in the 1960’s, many African Americans were treathed unfairly. Before the speech something happened. In Birmingham, Alabama something happened that would change America.

“But you may go to church instead” (Randall,15) a mother thought her child would be safer in such a sacred place rather than being a part of the march that just might have been safer. The poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, has multiple themes, but the one that sticks out is violence, which is because it is so powerful and brings the whole poem together. There is also a lot of imagery shown through this whole poem that can put a horrible picture in your head because of how sad the poem really is.

Published in 1995 by Christopher Paul Curtis, The Watsons Go to Birmingham is a story of an African- American family living in a town of Flint, Michigan, having a journey to Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. The movie came out in 2013, similar to the original novel. This loving family consists of five members: Byron Watson, an official juvenile delinquent, Kenneth Bernard Watson, ten years old boy with a lazy eye, Joetta Watson, an obedient youngest Watson, Wilona Sands Watson, Momma who always look after her kids, and lastly, David Watson, a thoughtful reliable dad. In fact, the movie is quite different from the novel, because the plot events don’t match with the movie, there is fused resolution, there is some missing and different characters, and the focus of the theme are slightly different.

In 'Ballad of Birmingham,' Dudley Randall illustrates a conflict between a child who wishes to march for civil rights and a mother who wishes only to protect her child. Much of this poem is read as dialogue between a mother and a child, a style which gives it an intimate tone and provides insight to the feelings of the characters. Throughout the poem the child is eager to go into Birmingham and march for freedom with the people there. 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

In the poem “Ballad of Birmingham”, by Dudley Randall, many different things can be analyzed. The difference in the two translations; one being a literal translation, telling the true meaning of the poem, and the other being a thematic translation, which tells the author’s theme and symbolism used in his/her work. Another thing that all poets have in common is the usage of poetic devices; such as similes, metaphors, and personification.

     The Ballad of Birmingham resembles a traditional ballad in that it tells a story in a song-like manner. The didactic tone seeks to teach us something; in this case it’s the theme of needless destruction. There are many devices the author uses to create such a tone and to tell such a story.

In the poem, “The Ballad of Birmingham” the text reads, “ “Oh, here’s the shoe my baby wore, but baby where are you?” This shows that the mood of “The Ballad of Birmingham” is very ironic and heartbreaking because the mother’s wish to keep her child safe by letting her go to church instead of the Freedom March has killed her child. The quote shows that the brave little girl can’t be found by her mother and that she is probably buried under the wreckage of the church that crumbled after it was bombed. This mood is very different from that of “When School Was Scary” because the quote from the article that reads, “As the years passed, more and more schools around the country started to integrate,” shows that the mood for the article is encouraging and hopeful. This is because it shows that the Little Rock Nine paved the way for other schools to integrate by having the courage to keep going to school even when they were threatened and could have gotten killed.

In order to occupy her child, the mother dresses her daughter up to go sing in the children’s choir at church in the fifth stanza. She brushes her hair, bathes her, and puts on her gloves and shoes. Randall appeals to the senses in this stanza; he uses a metaphor here to inform the reader a visual that the family is African American. She has “night-dark” hair and small brown hands. She is dressed in white and smells of sweet rose petals. The mother takes the girls mind off of the Freedom March and fixes it on the children’s choir. The tone is one of content. The sixth stanza is a

The Ballad of Birmingham Dudley Randall chose “The Ballad of Birmingham” to captive a tragic experience in poetic form because poetry allows the author to state his/her feelings or thoughts or someone else’s in many ways. The author could express his/her feelings through figurative language, and by using literary devices. In the first stanza, Dudley uses a form of allusion “... in a Freedom March today?”

The song Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen debuted in 1975. When the song arrived, it produced a new innovation of music blending the incredible guitar riffs of hard rock and elegance of soft piano ballads. Clifford Geertz discusses, "a religion is a set of symbols which acts to establish long-lasting moods and motivations in men" Clifford Geertz, "Religion as a Culture System," in The Interpretation of Cultures, (New York: Basic Books, Inc. Publishers, 1973): 90.In this essay, I will argue that Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody uses various religious visual representation techniques to express the narrative of Freddie Mercury battling between his sexuality and his affiliation with his religion. The song was produced to use differing genres in order to represent