I Have A Rendezvous With Life By Countee Cullen

The poems “Tableau” and “Incident” by Countee Cullen are about racism, but both have a different take on it. The African American author wrote in 1900’s , when racism was common and more acceptable. Cullen’s work became more popular during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920’s. Both poems are developed with different writing mechanics to convey a clear message to the reader or audience. Cullen uses figurative language and tone to develop the theme in each text.

These two poems rest the blame for their hardships on the shoulders of God, in Cullen’s poem, and the white American population, in McKay’s situation. Although they both depict these greater forces, God and religion in Cullen’s poem plays a much bigger role than it does in McKay’s poem.

The metaphor in line 3, “They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes,” expresses the oppression that African Americans still face (Hughes). However, as the poem progresses, a sense of hope appears. Found in line 15, “Besides, They’ll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed---” the true value of African Americans will soon enough prevail (Hughes). In “I Too”, the narrator’s use of personal pronouns symbolizes the entirety of African Americans and how the oppression denotes isolation.

The short story “The Love Of My Life” by T.C. Boyle's examines two couples who are imagined to be inseparable and how no love comes closer to theirs. The story follows young high school couples who are in the merge of a bright future. They are always together “wearing each other like a pair socks”. They idolized the love they share is something far from real and it is true love. While Jeremy is set to attend Brown and on the other hand China were in Binghamton things took wrong turn. Over the summer before their going to college they mistakenly conceived a baby while they are at a camping trip. The story was pleasant and everything was green and China and Jeremy went to a trip together and had sex. The couples were so keen to avoid this from

Throughout the poem Incident by Countee Cullen, the author uses the change of tone to reflect the ideas and purpose of the Harlem Renaissance. Throughout the poem, the tone changes from the young child being thrilled about arriving to a heartbreaking memory. In the poem, cullen writes “Once riding in old Baltimore? Heart-filled, head filled with glee/ I saw a Baltimorean/ Keep looking straight at me/ Now I was eight and very small,/ And he was no whit bigger,” (lines 1-6). In this part of the poem, the child had just recently arrived in Baltimore and is more than excited to be in a different place other than in the plantations. He’s very optimistic about meeting someone whom he thought would be his friend. The tone explains how during the Harlem

Cullen wrote more conventionally which is important to the future generations who may comes across The New Negro. His topics focused on the black experience and his poetry was more traditional and soulful which he strongly believed to be the best way of writing. This what made him different from Hughes, Hurston, Toomer and others, who initially focused more on the folk tradition as their signature style. Furthermore, Cullen differed from his peers by defying the ideology of remaining within his race poetically. It was not in fact denying his "blackness" or African American Heritage but bringing to recognition his right to create ideas and works that does not necessarily have to deal with race. He acknowledged that he was Black, just like the

Cullen uses auditory imagery to draw his readers in to hear what he hears. The meaning of this poem is to take the reader on a journey of what the negro felt about

Through my understanding of the book, Homeward Bound by Elaine Tyler May explores two traditional depictions of the 1950s, namely suburban domesticity and anticommunism. She intertwines both historical events into a captivating argument. Throughout the book, May aims to discover why “Post-war Americans accepted parenting as well as marriage with so much zeal” unlike their own parents and children. Her findings are that the “cold war ideology and domestic revival” were somewhat linked together. She saw “domestic containment” as an outgrowth of frights and desires that bloomed after the war. However, psychotherapeutic services were as much a boom then as now, and helped offer “private and personal solutions to social problems.” May reflects her views on the origin of domestic containment, and how it affected the lives of people who tried to live by it.

Unlike Naylor, Cullen never identifies the sex of the black child in his poem. Perhaps Cullen renders the child in his poem genderless to give the child a more universal standing; perhaps he leaves the child genderless in order to focus on the more important fact that the child, whether male or female, sees no difference between him- or herself and the other boy until the “Baltimorean" boy calls him/her "nigger" (3).

The Harlem Renaissance allowed for the expression of many African American artists such as Countee Cullen to illustrate the indifference of blacks and whites through poetry. Cullen wrote Tableau as well as Incident, which share a tone of power. The racial interaction between a black and white boy in the two poems both contradict and have similarities. Developing their separate themes comes with the comparison of the two races and how they treat one another. Countee Cullen uses figurative language and tone to formulate the themes of the two works of literacy.

In the book Between the World and Me it comes across as a letter from Coates to his 15 year old son. The letter is written in a poetic and wise voice. It's modelled on James Baldwin's 1963 civil rights classic. Throughout the book coates writes as an atheist who was raised by activists. He also speaks on growing up in the black neighborhood of Baltimore and what he encountered growing which was parental beatings, first-hand experience, and the tragedies. For instance a tragedy he had to face was the death of his friend which was from a policeman who was later found not guilty for the murder. Within the book you can get a sense of feel of how he came to understand the anger of his parents, the alienation of his peers, the violence of the streets.

Countee Cullen was man who struggled to be called a “poet” instead of a “Negro poet.”  His life during the Harlem Renaissance was filled with inequality and prejudice.  These facts have lead many analysts to perceive his poem “Any Human to Another” as a cry for racial equality.  However, Cullen’s manipulation of structure, imagery, and symbols in the poem reveals that his true theme is that all humans are individually unique but must live together in harmony and equality, caring for and helping each other.

Guilt is a theme that occurs in both poems as the individual feels remorseful for what they’ve done.

Cullen utilizes imagery throughout the poem, to illuminate the racism African Americans endured and impact racism carries. The speaker in the poem is an eight year old in Baltimore. In the first stanza, Cullen describes the child as “heart-filled, head-filled with glee.” This image portrays the speaker as innocent and joyful. Then the speaker notices a boy staring at him, the speaker believes there’s little difference between them, that the kid “was no whit bigger.” The speaker gets a rude awakening after the boy “poked out his tongue.” A seemingly playful meaningless gesture is met with the boy calling the speaker “N****r.” Cullen contrasts these two experiences because it depicts how racism comes out of nowhere and effects those you wouldn’t expect. The last stanza, the speaker “saw the whole Baltimore. The image of seeing is not just visual, but a metaphor for the loss of innocence where the speaker now is exposed to the hate. Cullen masterfully uses imagery so that readers understand the incredible impact that words have, especially when used for hate.

In the 1950’s the melodrama genre came to age and there is no better example than Douglas Sirk’s All that Heaven Allows. The melodrama followed some basic characteristics which can be identified in the film. First and foremost the narrative of the melodrama focused on the family. All that Heaven Allows follows the narrative of the typical melodrama but at the same time also challenges the social conventions. While Sirk follows many of the key themes he does so in a more detached fashion. The protagonist Cary is bound to her community by her social class. Change was occurring in society and the melodrama displayed people’s restraint to this. In All that Heaven Allows Sirk began his focus on the female and her desires in contrast to the more conservative male focused melodrama. As with the melodrama the legibility of the story, displayed through the plot, is simple and easy to follow. “Our engagement with the story depends on our understanding of the pattern of change and stability, cause and effect, time and space” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008). The linear time flow of the film allows for it’s simple understanding. This is added to by the expressiveness of the melodrama, where everything is brought into the open and nothing is left unsaid. The expressiveness of the melodrama is also represented in the highly expressive mise-en-scene. Sirks use of colour, the human figure, camera work, lighting and music allow him to portray suppressed meaning and significance.