How Does Sharon Olds Use Figurative Language In On The Subway

To show first hand to the whites the inequality’s and hardships that the blacks face, the entire first section is in a narrative and a descriptive format. The use of these types of essays lets the readers feel more involved in the story and feel things for themselves. Split into two sections within itself, this first paragraph juxtaposes two stories — one about a “young Negro boy” living in Harlem, and the other about a “young Negro girl” living in Birmingham. The parallelism in the sentence structures of introducing the children likens them even more — despite the differences between them — whether it be their far away location, or their differing, yet still awful, situations. Since this section is focused more towards his white audience, King goes into a description of what it was like living as an African American in those times— a situation the black audience knew all too well. His intense word choice of describing the boy’s house as “vermin-infested” provokes a very negative reaction due to the bad

Segregation had had many effects on the black nation, to the point that it started building up ones character, “See the depressing clouds of inferiority begin to form in her little mental sky and see her begin to distort her little personality by unconsciously developing a bitterness towards white people”, King shows readers that segregation is even affecting little children, that it is starting to build up a young girls character and is contributing to the child developing hatred “bitterness” towards the white Americans. King makes readers imagine a black cloud settling in a young girls brain mentally, when instead she should have an image of a colorful blue sky with a rainbow, isn’t that suppose to be part of a 6 year-old’s imagination? King gives readers an image of destruction civil disobedience had created in the black community, especially in the young innocent little children.

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:

In this poem there is a lot of figurative language. One of the biggest types of figurative language used in this poem is irony. The irony in this poem is how the mother wouldn't let her child go to march because she feared her child would get hurt. Instead she sent her child to church because she believed it was a safe and sacred place but ironically the church ended up being bombed. Another piece of figurative language that is very effective in this poem is imagery. The way the poem is written helps me create images in my head for example, "She raced through the streets of Birmingham." I can imagine her running around desperately, looking for her child. The metaphors and hyperboles in this poem also help with the imagery, for example, "...night dark hair," and "…rose-petal sweet." These metaphors make me think of the girls smoothly combed black hair and her fresh and beautiful rosy smell. A hyperbole that had a huge effect on the tone was, "But that smile was the last smile to ever come upon her face." This hyperbole really helps me understand the effect of a tragic moment like this and how it can completely ruin

This book is made up of two cycles of poems, each confronting the same subject: the characterization of a black man in white America. In this book, I plan to focus mainly on the first cycle and touch briefly on the second. The first cycle includes four different sections. In section one of cycle one, Eady writes about Susan Smith and Charles Stuart, two murderers who blamed their crimes on nonexistent black attackers. The first poem is called “How I Got Born” (Eady 5), in this poem the fictional young African American man is conjured up. In the upper right-hand corner of the page, Eady writes a note that explains who and what the speaker is: “The speaker is the young black man Susan Smith claimed kidnapped her children” (Eady 5). In the first few lines of the poem he says, “Susan Smith willed me alive/ At the moment/ Her babies sank into the lake” (l. 1-40). So right away he gives us a pretty straightforward explanation for what this poem is about and what this section will be about. In the next few poems, the narrator discusses his “existence” and reason for being created. Eady uses a lot of metaphors, similes and imagery in his poems, and he does a phenomenal job with imagery.

A large portion of this poem is comparing the difference between black and white. In the poem it practically says “what if all the black is now white, and all the white is now black?”, then goes on to give some examples like “Black Presidents,

When the ladies talk about their own life’s they never once assume that they are all thinking or going through the same problems, their ingroup. But when thinking about this “big, black boy” they think he must be a threat to the teenage daughter. Even though through further getting to know him we find out that he would never let anything happen to his new family let alone do anything, the only 98% he got in school was protectiveness on the aptitude test.

The stereotypes in the story, makes it difficult for the readers to conclude the race of each character. People assume that the African American character would be illiterate and uneducated and the white character to be well-educated. During the time period of the story African Americans did not have access to a decent education; making it harder for them to learn just the basics. Whites had access to good education, making it easy to believe the white character is more educated. It is also believed that a person that is well educated will have a better lifestyle when they are older. A well-educated person will have a better job, paying more, and have a better opportunity to afford the means of a luxurious lifestyle. An under educated person will most likely live in poverty, struggle for their basic needs, or live in a declining neighborhood. Behavior is a harder stereo type to use to distinguish a race. Many assume that whites have an entitled attitude toward life. Whites had access to a good education and jobs, they had a “I’m better than you” attitude. On the other hand, many think African Americans were upset because of how easy it was for whites to have better access to the basic necessities such as education and housing.

Alliteration and metaphors are two major elements of this poem. The repetition of consonant sounds and alliteration occurs throughout the poem. All of the lines strongly use the repetition of consonants and alliteration except for lines two and seven. In addition to that, the controlling figure of speech in this poem is a metaphor. It is strongly articulated in the first line, and as the one continues to read, it is amplified and extended throughout the rest of the poem. The metaphor compares mask of Line 1 to the fabricated emotive facades that African-Americans had made use of in order to avert provoking their oppressors.

“The Little Black Boy” is about an African child who has come to term with his “blackness” and with divine being that created him God. The basis of the poem is built around the imagery of light and dark. In the first stanza the boy cries:“I am black but O! my soul is white” and “I am black as if bereav’d of light.” The black boy feels that his blackeness is a burden

In this excerpt ZZ Packer clearly points out that the aversion the girls feel towards the whites is not based on their own experiences, but rather their families. According to their parents, dealing with “whites” was a problem every adult had to face. Lauren’s statement clearly exposes the young African-American girls’ lack of reasoning on racism, and thus portrays the parents as the responsible for the children’s behavior. Resentment on behalf of the parents did indeed have a huge impact in the brownies.

During the entirety of the poem the speaker uses the contrast of light and dark to illustrate the divide of Caucasian and Native American in her life and the specific wording she uses throughout shows that she is ends up moving away from her white heritage’s side. We first start to see that she is upset with her white roots when she states that her mother left her with “large white breasts” that weigh down her body. This statement is quite important. With the addition of the word “white” and the use of the words “weigh down” the narrator seems to be implying that it is a burden to carry the whiteness. Also, the narrator uses specific wording in this statement in order to disassociate herself from her own white leanings since she refers to her breasts as if they were her mothers and not her own. The next time she mentions the word white comes in the third stanza. The speaker devotes an entire line to the short phrase “and is white” almost as if to single out that word in the poem and signify that being white

Another example in the poem of the similarities and differences between races is a when the author talks about the finances of Mister Samuel and Sam. ‘Mister Samuel deal wid high finance, Sam deal in a two-bit game; Mister Samuel crashes, Sam goes broke, But deys busted jes’ de same’ (Brown, 220) compares how the finances are much lower of the black man compared to the white man. This stanza continues by providing the similarities between the men. It discusses how both the white man and the black man experience financial downfall as a result.

The main observation readers could take from this poem is that the “lower” individual has to take care of and pick up after the white man. It is even hinted at that the poems the mother chant rival the alleged master of poetry’s own works.

In both of William Blake’s poems, “The Little Black Boy” and “The Chimney Sweeper,” an innocent-eye point of view portrays the stresses of society in an alternative way to an adult’s understanding. The innocent perspective redirects focus onto what society has become and how lacking each narrator is in the eyes of the predominant white culture. Each naïve speaker also creates an alternate scenario that presents a vision of what their skewed version of life should be like, showing how much their unfortunate youth alters their reality. From the viewpoint of children, Blake’s poems highlight the unhealthy thoughts or conditions in their lives and how unfortunate they were to be the wrong race or class level. These narrators were cheap laborers and were in no control of how society degraded them. Such usage of a child’s perspective offers important insight into the lives of these poor children and raises awareness for the horrible conditions children faced in the London labor force prior to any labor laws. The children of the time had no voice or platform on which to express their opinions on their conditions. Blake targets society’s lack of mindfulness towards the children using the innocent-eye point of view and illusions of what they dream for in life.