Literature Help!- Short Poems- “They” and “Harlem”-address questions pertaining to the imagery, figures of speech, symbolism, language/word choice, tone, themes, sound, and final thoughts on each poem.

 

Literature-Short Poems- “They” and “Harlem”-address questions pertaining to the imagery, figures of speech, symbolism, language/word choice, tone, themes, sound, and  final thoughts on each poem. 

Needed ASAP! (tonight if possible)

 

I have attached the 2 poems and my findings to this.  I have done some research, but I need someone that can tell me what the answers to the above questions are.  I can write the essay and put it into APA format, but I need someone to basically analyze each poem for me by answering the questions.

  

“Harlem”by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore —

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over —

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode? (Meyer, 2012, p. 576).

the imagery,

figures of speech,

symbolism,

language/word choice,

tone,

themes,

sound,

and my final thoughts on each poem.

…….”Harlem” is a lyric poem with irregular rhyme and an irregular metrical pattern that sums up the white oppression of blacks in America. It first appeared in 1951 in a collection of Hughes’s poetry, Montage of a Dream Deferred (Cummings, 2007).

Theme

Frustration (Cummings, 2007).

…….In 1951—the year of the poem’s publication—frustration characterized the mood of American blacks. The Civil War in the previous century had liberated them from slavery, and federal laws had granted them the right to vote, the right to own property, and so on. However, continuing prejudice against blacks, as well as laws passed since the Civil War, relegated them to second-class citizenship (Cummings, 2007). Consequently, blacks had to attend poorly equipped segregated schools and settle for menial jobs as porters, ditch-diggers, servants, shoeshine boys, and so on. In many states, blacks could not use the same public facilities as whites, including restrooms, restaurants, theaters, and parks. Access to other facilities, such as buses, required them to take a back seat, literally, to whites. By the mid-Twentieth Century, their frustration with inferior status became a powder keg, and the fuse was burning. Hughes well understood what the future held, as he indicates in the last line of the poem (Cummings, 2007).

Meter, Structure, Rhyme, and Technique

…….Although the meter of “Harlem” varies, the poem has a rhythmic, lyrical quality achieved through alliteration, rhyme, repetition of certain words, and carefully placed stressed syllables. The length of the first five lines also varies: Line 1 has eight syllables, line 2 has four, line 3 has seven, line 4 has six, and line 5 has three. This irregularity gives these lines a jagged edge, like the edge of a shard of broken glass, enabling Hughes’s message to lacerate its readers. However, the last three lines of the poem each have five syllables, smoothing the poem’s edge to the keenness of a razor ready to cut cleanly (Cummings, 2007). Although the poem does not imitate any format used by previous poets, it does exhibit regularities, including the following:

In each line except Line 7, the last syllable is stressed.

Six of the seven sentences in the poem are questions.

All of the sentences except the first and the last contain similes using like.

Line 3 rhymes with line 5; line 6 rhymes with line 8; line 10 rhymes with line 11.

Lines 4, 7, and 11 begin with or.

Lines 3, 8, and 10 begin with like.

Figures of Speech

…….Hughes relies on alliteration, similes, and anaphora in the poem.

Alliteration

is the repetition of a consonant sound. Similes use like, as, or than to make comparisons. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning successive groups of words. Following are examples these figures of speech (Cummings, 2007).

Alliteration

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up (lines 1-2)

syrupy sweet (line 7)

Simile Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore— (lines 2-4)

Comparison of the dream to a raisin and a fester

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet? (lines 6-8)

Comparison of the dream to foods

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load. (lines 9-10)

Comparison of the dream to a heavy load.

Anaphora Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet? Graphic Sights and Smells (Cummings, 2007).

…….The language of “Harlem” is frank, down-to-earth. It does not euphemize. The narrator asks whether a dream becomes a dried-up fruit, a running sore, rotten meat, or a sweet that crusts and sugars over. He also asks whether the dream sags or explodes. All of these tropes enable to reader to see and smell the frustration of American blacks (Cummings, 2007).

Maltreatment of Blacks Since the Civil War

…….The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution—approved in the post-Civil War era—granted black Americans basic rights as American citizens, as did the Civil Rights Act of 1875. However, court and legislative decisions later emasculated the legal protection of blacks. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1896 (Plessy v. Ferguson) that it was legal to provide “separate but equal” accommodations for passengers of Louisiana’s railroads. This ruling set a precedent that led to segregated schools, restaurants, parks, libraries, and so on.

…….Meanwhile, hate groups inflicted inhuman treatment on innocent blacks, including brutal beatings. Lynching of innocent blacks were not uncommon. Many so-called “enlightened” or “liberal-minded” Americans looked the other way, including law-enforcement officers, clergymen, politicians, and ordinary Americans. By the mid-20th Century, black frustration with white oppression formed itself into a potent blasting powder (Cummings, 2007).

1…deferred: Postponed, put off.

2…raisin: A dried, sweet grape. The grape is dried by the sun or by a dehydrator.

3…fester: develop pus; ulcerate.

1. Imagery:

What visual images can you identify in both poems?

Comment on the details you notice about objects, places, people, colors, textures and so forth.

Which of your other senses are stimulated by the poets’ descriptions?

2. Figures of Speech

List the specific metaphors, similes, puns and other figures of speech each poet uses and how they contribute to the poem’s overall meaning. (Remember, figurative language is not literal but rather suggestive of something else. For example, the metaphor, “Jack is a pig,” is not a reference to an actual animal with hooves but rather someone named Jack who has pig-like qualities or mannerisms.)

3. Symbolism

4. Identify the symbols you notice in each poem. What abstract concepts (e.g., love, death, truth) might the concrete objects (e.g., persons, places, things) suggest?

5. Language and Word Choice

Every word in a poem has been included (or left out) after much deliberation, as poets choose their words very carefully. Remark on the following in each poem: Does the poet use informal or formal language? Does he or she write in an older dialect or contemporary English? Provide examples.

6. Tone

What tone does each poet take (e.g., sad, humorous, sarcastic, loving, etc.) toward his or her subject matter?

7. Themes

What are the main messages of both poems? Give reasons for your answers.

Sound

Read both poems out loud. What do you notice about their rhythms, rhyme schemes and musicality?

How does listening to the sound of a poem differ from merely reading it as words on a page?

8. Final Thoughts

Poetry can enlighten and/or evoke deep emotion in readers. Express the impact, each of the two poems you have analyzed, has had on you.

What insights did you gain about life or human nature, and what feelings did each piece stir in you?

Has your view of poetry changed in any way since reading and analyzing these poems? Explain your answer.

 

“They” by Siegfried Sassoon

The Bishop tells us: “When the boys come back

They will not be the same; for they’ll have fought

In a just cause: they lead the last attack

On Anti-Christ; their comrades’ blood has bought

New right to breed an honourable race, 5

They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.”

“We’re none of us the same!” the boys reply.

“For George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind;

Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die;

And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find 10

A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change.”

And the Bishop said: “The ways of God are strange!” (Meyer, 2012, p. 581).

the imagery,

figures of speech

symbolism,

language/word choice,

tone,

themes,

sound, rhyme scheme is ABABCC.

It has a clever rhythmical structure.

and my final thoughts on each poem.

intended to create a particular tone to the poem. Sassoon subtly subverts the Bishop’s strident sermon in the first stanza by his use of colons and semi-colons as caesuras or pauses in the middle of each line. These give the first stanza a deliberately halting rhythm that, along with the rhetorical confidence of the Bishop’s sermon, gives his speech a subtle staginess that suggests an insincere performance. By contrast, the strong rhythm given to the answers of the men in the second stanza reinforces the ugly truth that they tell. The soldiers’ reply tends to pause more ‘naturally’ at the end of lines, ‘end-stopping’ each statement, giving a sense of complete meaning (Griffith, 2011).

They: ‘They’ are the idealized British soldiers of whom the bishop speaks. ‘They’ are quite unlike the real soldiers who go to war.

“The Bishop tells us:” The figure of religious authority in the poem— a Bishop of the Church of England— speaks with confidence about a situation of which he has no knowledge. He represents a brand of religious cant and hypocrisy that was deeply unpopular amongst many men at the front (Griffith, 2011).

“When the boys come back / They will not be the same;”: The meaning of the poem turns on this observation— that the war changes the men who fought in it. Note the easy familiarity, even patronizing tone of the reference to ‘the boys’, and the use of alliteration in this first line, as throughout the poem.

“for they’ll have fought / In a just cause;” alliteration (‘f’) is again used to give a rhythmic force to the Bishop’s leading statements. The mention of a “just cause” reinforces the sense that the Bishop is dealing in popular platitudes about the justification for war— that it is “just”, or ‘right’.

“their comrades blood has bought…”: the soldiers are explicitly compared to Christ, who ‘bought’ man eternal life by dying for their sins. Sassoon’s earlier poem ‘The Redeemer’ explicitly made this contrast: interestingly, Sassoon now seems to refute this sentimental analogy (Griffith, 2011).

“New right to breed an honourable race,”: what follows from this Christ-like redemption is more unpleasant however. The Bishop uses pseudo-scientific language, popular around the turn of the century. In Social Darwinist terms, the ‘right to breed’ is claimed through the sacrifice of soldiers. This ‘survival of the fittest’ (here, the fittest are the most “honourable”) is an idea that underlay much elitist thinking about society and often had, as here, a racist dimension. Compare and contrast this line with those found in Rupert Brooke’s ‘Peace’ and ‘The Dead’.

“they have challenged Death and dared him face to face”: the Bishop’s heroic and clichéd rhetoric unwittingly recalls the line in Corinthians 13:12, that declares “now we see through a glass, darkly; but then, face to face”. This Biblical line declares that before death we have necessarily imperfect knowledge, only attaining real enlightenment when we meet God. In many ways, the Bishop embodies this cosmic ignorance (Griffith, 2011).

“‘We’re none of us the same!’ the boys reply”: The anguished agreement echoes— along with the use of the phrase “the boys” – the first line, only to subvert the Bishop’s prediction.

“For George lost both his legs…”: A grim litany of injuries follows, spelling out the true consequences of war for “the boys”. Note that the soldiers are named, rather than idealized and anonymous in the Bishop’s sermon. The description is explicit and pitiful: “Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die” (Griffith, 2011).

“‘And Bert’s gone syphilitic:”: Bert has contracted syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease. Soldiers on leave would commonly visit prostitutes in the local towns and villages; brothels were even graded in some areas for use by officers (signed by blue lamps) and privates (red lamps). Venereal infection was endemic, as prostitutes could sleep with over a hundred men a day. Note the deeply ironic contrast, then, between this and the Bishop’s claim that “their comrades blood has bought / New right to breed an honourable race” (Griffith, 2011).

“…that hasn’t found some change.”: the irony of this statement illustrates Sassoon’s satirical point, that a massive change has indeed come to the men, but quite different to that which the Bishop predicts. “And the Bishop said; ‘the ways of God are strange!”: The Bishop resorts to idiotic cliché to explain the real change witnessed, essentially pronouncing that ‘God works in mysterious ways’(Griffith, 2011). It is a cutting attack on the hypocrisy of authority and the kind of rhetoric used to encourage others to go abroad and fight (Griffith, 2011).