Ballad Of Birmingham Essay
Critical Analysis the Ballad of Birmingham The Ballad of Birmingham is a poem written by Dudley Randall in 1963. This ballad was divided into eight stanzas containing four lines each. Birmingham, Alabama was the center of the storm for the fight for equality. It uses a rhyming style of “ABCB”. In the 1960s, the southern United States were still under the Jim Crow laws. This allowed racial segregation to be legal, thus sparking the uprising of the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King. There were protests, demonstrations and often riots where many people were wounded or killed. In 1963, white supremacists bombed 16th Street Baptist Church killing four little girls. The Ballad of Birmingham was written in response to the bombing
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Her daughter wants to go to the Freedom Marches while her mom is concerned with her safety that a march is not meant for children. The mom repeats the phrase “No, baby, no, you may not go” followed by a danger as to why the child shouldn’t go on the march. Instead, the mother suggests that her daughter goes to church because it is a safe environment. She says “But you may go to the church instead”. Dudley Randall begins to paint the image of a soft, innocent beautiful young girl with the lines “She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, and bathed rose petal sweet, and drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, and white shoes on her feet.” This all adds to the dramatic irony of the ballad. This is just a young girl dressing up pretty to go to what is normally a safe place, church. However there is an explosion that the mother hears. The poem concludes with the heart felt line “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, but, baby, where are you?”. This infers to us that the Mother never ends up finding her baby, that her baby, is dead. The poem is very good at using figurative language in order to appeal to our emotions such as “rose petal sweet” or “her eyes grew wet and wild.” It also has a
Her daughter wants to go to the Freedom Marches while her mom is concerned with her safety that a march is not meant for children. The mom repeats the phrase “No, baby, no, you may not go” followed by a danger as to why the child shouldn’t go on the march. Instead, the mother suggests that her daughter goes to church because it is a safe environment. She says “But you may go to the church instead”. Dudley Randall begins to paint the image of a soft, innocent beautiful young girl with the lines “She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair, and bathed rose petal sweet, and drawn white gloves on her small brown hands, and white shoes on her feet.” This all adds to the dramatic irony of the ballad. This is just a young girl dressing up pretty to go to what is normally a safe place, church. However there is an explosion that the mother hears. The poem concludes with the heart felt line “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore, but, baby, where are you?”. This infers to us that the Mother never ends up finding her baby, that her baby, is dead. The poem is very good at using figurative language in order to appeal to our emotions such as “rose petal sweet” or “her eyes grew wet and wild.” It also has a