CM 100 Fundamentals of English

Between The World and Me by Richard Wright—Poem Analysis

Between the World and Me" is a poem about the immense horror and cruelty of racist violence, as well as the devastating and traumatic effects of racism on Black people as they navigate society. The speaker employs a variety of symbolism to convey his message to capture both the audience's and reader's attention. For example, upon discovering the bones of a Black person lynched by a racist mob, the speaker vividly recalls the scene preceding the victim's death. The trash on the ground—cigarette butts, a lipstick tube, an empty gin flask, and peanut shells—indicates that spectators viewed this person's heinous murder as entertainment (Gray, 294).

By juxtaposing this concept with graphic, frightening depictions of the victim's final moments, the speaker demonstrates racism's monstrous inhumanity. In the opening lines, the speaker employs assonance and alliteration to emphasize his word, elevating the language in a way that immediately grabs the reader's attention (Calloway, 270)

Additionally, the speaker has used personification as a figurative language to communicate his message to the readers. For instance, he writes, "There was a design of white bones dozing on an ash cushion." A charred stump of a sapling pointing accusingly at the sky with a blunt finger. He imbues the bones and charred stump with human characteristics of sleep. He creates these to demonstrate how black people have been murdered and left to rot in the forest. Thus, the poem's elevated poetic sound draws readers in, thrusting them into the scene with the same abruptness that the speaker feels when he stumbles upon the corpse.

Works Cited

Calloway, Catherine. "Fiction: The 1930s to the 1960s." American Literary Scholarship 2019.1 (2019): 263-285.

Gray, Tyson?Lord. "Staring at the Sun: Tragedy, trauma, and ecological harmony." Dialog 59.4 (2020): 293-301.

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