Strange Fruit: Response

This poem focuses on the lynching of a African American male. The speaker of the poem appears to console a woman who appears to be distressed due to the events taking place. In the first four lines of stanza 1, the speaker says:

The article “Regarding the Aftermaths of Lynching” is one written by Kidada E. WIlliams, that helps explain why it is important to be interested in what happens after an individual is lynched. This is indeed Williams’ argument, which is later elaborated more on in the article. Her argument is arguable due to the fact that, even though Kidada believes that lynching should be researched, every scholar does not. Williams has stated that lynching is wrong and immoral, but there are obviously individuals that do not agree.

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

In the case of lynching, discourses emerge from heated debates about the meaning of the practice; these debates change over the long history of lynching in America. At different times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the term “lynching” has implied rather different historical acts amongst the community. It has also been used to specify acts that indicated a wide range of distinct motives, strategies, technologies and meanings, as well as a politically encumbered term. For many African Americans who grew up in the South in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the threat of lynching was mundane. Photographs and postcards illustrating the popular image of an angry white mob hanging a black man does not give the full historic

During the nineteenth century, lynching was brought to America by British Isles and after the Civil War white Americans lynching African American increased. Causing and bringing fear into their world. In the Southern United States, lynching became a method used by the whites to terrorize the Blacks and to remain in control with white supremacy. The hatred and fear that was installed into the white people’s head had caused them to turn to the lynch law. The term lynching means to be put to death by hanging by a mob action without legal sanction. So many white people were supportive of lynching because it was a sign of power that the white people had. “Lynching of the black people was used frequently by white people, their is no specific detail of how many times they had done it, but lynching of black people has lasted from 1882 to 1968. Lynching also is in fact a inhuman combination of racism and sadism which was used to support the south’s caste system,’’(Gandhi).

Lynching is a form of corporal punishment intended to intimidate a racial or ethnic group most commonly a minority. This became extremely common in the southern regions of the United States during the 18th century as a way to reinforce Jim Crow Laws. These laws consisted of five different pillars centered on the political, personal, economic, legal and social oppression of African Americans. Lynching most commonly occurred when African Americans were accused of not following the social norms set by Jim Crow laws such demanding equal rights or having inappropriate interracial relations. In more radical cases lynching was used as a way to persecute blacks for heinous crimes they were often wrongly accused of committing. Such was the case with

Imagery was also used in the poem.  I found that the yellow in the first line represented that the future the writer was facing was bright and warm regardless of his choice.  The undergrowth was, as undergrowth in any forest, damp and dank smelling, but not necessarily unpleasant, just something that the writer would have to face.  The image of traveling through a forest also brings to mind thoughts of birds in flight, chirping and singing.  Squirrels dashing through trees, rustling leaves and dropping the occasional acorn or nut also create an image of sight and sound.  The sun reflecting through the trees, casting shadows and creating pockets of warm and cool air and the occasional breeze stirring through the trees are also brought to mind by this poem.  The end of the poem brings to me

“The idea of you lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a man! Because you're brave enough to tar and feather poor friendless cast-out women that come along here, did that make you think you had grit enough to lay your hands on a man? Why, a man's safe in the hands of ten thousand of your kind—as long as it's daytime and you're not behind him” (133).

The poems by Paul Dunbar and Claude McKay both use figurative language in the poems the “The Hunted Oak” and “The Lynching”. The ways that they talk about it are completely different and invoke different feeling out of you as both writers wanted to talk about an important issue. “The hunted oak” was written in 1913 and “The Lynching” was written in 1920 so this tells us that it was a prominent issue at the time. Each author used different literary devices to convey their feelings and to express themselves. Their perception of terror is the same for both but how the convey it is different. The poems are meant to have a sense of terror and fright.

He uses elements from metaphors to juxtapositions. In “Strange Fruit” the author uses metaphors. For example, “Blood on the leaves and blood at the root” (Meeropol 2). He turns the meaning of the trees, which usually represent life, to represent death. The trees are covered in blood instead of being a perfect green. The author also uses imagery in his poem. For example, “Scent of magonolia sweet and fresh, / And the sudden smell of burning flesh!” (Meeropol 7-8). He makes it look like the South is an innocent place but then shows the horror into his writing. Finally the author uses juxtapostion. For example, “Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” (Meeropol 3-4). Black bodies and strange fruits are being hung, which means he is contrasting the effect of the two. The blacks are being hung from trees and so are the fruit, and that means they are being treated the

In stanza one, Judith Wright utilizes personification “rivers hindered him” and “thorn branches caught at his eyes to make him blind” coupled with metaphor “the sky turned into an unlucky opal” to emphasise nature’s hindrance of the blacksmith boy, if the poem is to be deemed as a metaphorical representation of

Lynching was way of life in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Wells-Barnett points out, although most white people try to say that they did not want to discuss the noisy, because it will drag the reputation of angry white women, the vast majority of lynching had been completed, white people thought like lynching or burning some black people just to teach them their place. Wells intends to dissolve these myths and reasons into lynching, especially black rape white women. She repeats and the objectivity of the news proves that most black corpses killed black citizens are innocent and that their murders are not punished.

A popular characteristic in many of Blake’s poems is the inclusion of biblical allusions to convey meaning. In his poem “A Poison Tree”, Blake uses anaphora, diction, and symbol to allow biblical allusions that depicts the evil that man is capable to come into being. Anaphora is the usage of the same word or phrase at the beginning of every consecutive line. In stanza one, the word ‘I’ begins every line, and later on the word ‘and’ is used seven times to signify the start of some of the lines. The poem is organized in a way that immediately starts off using anaphora and since anaphora is mainly

Imagine racism taking over the world, with overwhelming thoughts about how you might be the next victim. Quarrels about whether the best skin is black or white, but always resulting that white is right. Hope would evaporate from an evanescent cloud and Faith became instinct as it was replaced by agony. Everywhere you turned around for help, all you saw were the bodies of those neglected and lynched. Abel Meeropol published the poem Strange Fruit in 1937, after seeing a drastic picture of lynching that traumatized him ever since then. As a result, the poem became a memory to all those who died and is momentous to our history.

The poet uses different techniques to bring the out the impacts of slavery on the affected individuals (the slaves). The “grave/slave(s)” rhymed couplet recurs at