The one thing that family could respond to all negative attitudes toward them was bitterness and even this was prohibited. In consequences of race’s discrimination, few generations of one family lived through violence, pressure and suffer and family could not do anything, Just not to be bitter. The author used irony structure in order to show the powerless of the family’s race, such powerless that family’s members did not have a chance to be bitter on this lawlessness. The extraordinary author’s style gave us an opportunity to feel the whole emotions, that writer wanted us to feel.
The rhythm and rhyme of the poem is first example of accent on negative relation of the author to the violence. Brown highlights the consonants, especially “b”. The words bitter, better, bloody, beaten and etc. “Bitter” is used more often, as it is main word that exactly explains the characters’ feelings. “B’ is associates with pain and negative words are attracting the attention of the reader: bitter, bloody, beaten. Moreover, the sound of “B” in sad poem sounds for the reader as beat. The rhyme of the poem is also complicated; so it is one more prove that author tries to show hard times.
Mostly the rhyme words stand in the middle of the line, for instance first-born – husband, swamplands – at last. The imagery is a perfect way to transfer from current time to the poem’s events. Every reader is imagining the events from the book, so Brown’s poem is not an exception. He used imagery and sensory language really brightly in order to express the violence, pressure and suffer of the family. The first example is “swamplands”, the reader associates it with hard and death Job, as at that time slaves dried up swamplands in order to build something new on the territory. Another one example is “bloody and beaten”.
It is easy to imagine the result of this Job by reading such description. These two examples proved how imagery describes hard time, slave’s life and employers without punishment without using these words. The sensory language is a key to encourage the feelings. The usage of the words from example above is also shows the sensory language, which used in the poem. Having the swamplands in the imagination is giving not only a picture of it, but also makes us feel disgusting smell of it. The blood is known view for the person, so it is easy to see, how bloody the character was. Another good example is a phrase “weather-stripped a house”.
The reader is able to feel the warm that the character could not feel and could not make in his own home. Again we feel sorry for the character and understand the powerless of the father. The one thing that family could respond to all negative attitudes toward them was bitterness and even this was prohibited. The authors described the time of slavery and transfer the feelings of the characters by using literature techniques. Nowadays, we do not have slavery, but still we have poor and rich families. The poem’s example should teach people to treat each other with passion, respect and does not matter if it your partner, employee or housekeeper.
