What Else Could We Do Analysis
What Else Could We Do?: Turning Tragedy into Triumph
"Well, what else could we do?” (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till) J. W. Milam asked, though it was a rhetorical question at best, for he already knew the answer. “I like niggers -- in their place…But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice... And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he 's tired o ' livin '. I 'm likely to kill him" (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till). In an interview, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi”, published in Look magazine on January 24, 1956, J.W. Milam openly confessed to the murder of young Emmett Till, a murder for which he and his half brother, Roy Bryant, had been acquitted of just four months earlier. As if the brutal beating and killing of Till weren’t enough, to have the killers confess openly on a national platform forced African Americans to …show more content…
relive the tragedy of Till’s murder and the injustice of the trial of his killers over again, for the law of double jeopardy prevented the two from ever being retried for Till’s murder. Recognizing this repeated injustice meant recognizing the propensity for such travesties to happen again to African Americans for no other reason than the color of their skin. And so there came a call to action. This call came forward in many different forms, including speeches, marches, protests, and just as importantly and influential, literature. James A. Emanuel’s poem “Emmett Till” is a glowing, though tragic, example of this. In Emanuel’s “Emmet Till,” the use of tone, figurative language, and metaphors help to communicate the idea of how tragedy can be overcome by using it as a catalyst for action and change.
The murder of Emmett Till was a “cultural trauma experienced by an entire generation of black men and women coming of age in 1955” (Pollack and Metress 8). However, a surface reading of Emanuel’s poem does not seem to reflect this. Reading the poem reveals language that contrarily describes the violence associated with that fateful August night in Money, Mississippi. As the poem opens, it reads, “I hear a whistling / Through the water” (Emanuel lines 1-2). This is likely a reference to the fact that some accounts say that Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant during their interaction. However, by the time that Till and his assailants reached the river, “whistling” would not be an actual reflection of the sounds most likely heard that night from Till. Contrary to the whistling sound described in the poem, the sounds that would have likely been heard coming from the river that night would have been the screams of young Emmett Till. Another instance of a contrary description to actual events can be found in line 5, “He keeps floating,” (Emanuel) and again in line 13 “Who swims forever” (Emanuel). It would have been nearly impossible for Till’s body to float as it was “Necklaced in / A coral toy” (Emauel 15-16), weighted down by a heavy cotton gin fan tied to Till’s neck with barbed wire, and it would have been impossible for Till to swim in the river that night as he was already dead before his body even touched the waters of the Tallahatchie River.
Emanuel seemingly makes use of language and these particular words as a method to disguise the ugliness of the truth surrounding the story of Emmett Till. All of these elements tied to a story which represents such a gloomy and sinister event should seem odd for the reader. It should seem strange for a writer to give such niceties to an event associated with violence, brutality, racism, and murder. However, this is done so with a purpose. Pollack and Metress, editors of Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, a collection of essays which explores several different literary representations of Emmett Till’s story, contend that “One healing response to trauma is to narrate the past – to tell the story of the event in forms that reconcile it with recovery” (8). Rewriting tales of tragedy allows individuals to “release the ‘toxicity’ of trauma and make visible the promise of a more redemptive future” (Pollack and Metress 8). Emanuel does this by changing the tale of a young black boy’s brutal murder into a fairy tale surrounding the sprite-like spirit of a boy who dwells within the waters of the Tallahatchie River. The lines “Tell me, please, / That bedtime story / Of the fairy / River Boy / Who swims forever” (Emanuel 9-13) help to reiterate this message. Emanuel does so by immortalizing Till both by taking away his human-like characteristic of mortality as he takes on the presence of a fairy or spirit and by keeping his story alive and in the minds of readers while dressing up Till’s story and communicating his tale as a beloved bedtime story to be told over and over again, transforming “the deep and unsettling wound of Till’s lynching-a wound so clearly representative of anger, prejudice, and unmitigated hate-into a site of healing and liberation” (Pollack and Metress 8).
Still, Emanuel does not completely eliminate the darkness that surrounds Emmett Till’s story from his poetry. The use of words like “darkness”, “edging”, and “silent chill” make sure that the reader is aware of the fact that there is an eerie air surrounding this story, one that should let the reader know that the presentation of this tale should not be taken strictly at face value. The lines “Little Emmett / Won’t be still” (Emanuel 3-4) and “River Boy / Who swims forever” (Emanuel 12-13), offer another representation of Till besides the images of the flighty sprite that is given precedent throughout most of the poem. By combining these words and this type of language, Emanuel casts an eerie, haunting image of Till as a restless spirit who haunts the Tallahatchie River due to the injustices visited upon him, and it is quite possible that he will continue to do so until he is allowed some type of resolution. This restless spirit is a metaphor for something much more than Emmett himself. Contrary to the true image of Till’s lifeless body found in the river, the poem describes Till as being in a state of unrest, much like the temperament of African Americans, especially after this tragedy.
Akin to the restless spirit of the “fairy river boy” was the restless African American spirit.
Much like the confessed murderers, African Americans surely wondered “What else could we do?” The acquittal of these men proved two things to the black community of this time: one, the value, or lack thereof, of a black life in America, especially in the South, and two, though African Americans had made leaps and bounds as far as freedom and gaining a sense of equality in America, they still had a long way to go. The acquittal of the two men known to have kidnapped Till in the middle of the night led to public outrage. “The Daily Worker bemoaned that ‘Good people everywhere-in America and throughout the world-feel a deep sense of horror over the outcome of the murder trial in Mississippi,’ and the Chicago Defender promised its readers that ‘this miscarriage of justice must not be left unavenged’” (Pollack and Metress 6). This is something that Emanuel’s poem does, in fact, allude to, and something that actually became a part of Till’s
legacy.
Just as Milam ridiculously conjectured that they were left with little choice, surely African American public held the same sentiment. They had very little choice but to take action against the injustices that their people had visited on them, injustices that they were reminded of as each chapter of the Till saga continued to unfold. As Myisha Priest, a published professor of English and African American studies describes, it was impossible for “Little Emmett” to “be still” or for his story to be put to rest:
After the original event of his murder, Till’s body rose from the river bottom to thwart the killers’ desire for open secrecy; it rose next when its meaning became the centerpiece of the trial. It rose again when the court-mandated undertaker, intent on throwing the body into an unmarked grave in a potter’s field, was thwarted by Mamie Till, who demanded an open casket so that ‘everyone can see what they have done to my boy,’ and again a year later, when his acquitted killers confessed in Look magazine that they had brutalized his body ‘just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’ And it rose once more still later when the civil rights movement raised Till’s body like a banner. (1)
As a result of the death of Emmett Till and the resulting events surrounding it, “…the level of violence that was commonplace in a place like Mississippi became known to the world, and that violence generated anger and outrage-and in some ways courage-for those fighting in Mississippi and those willing to come South to fight that fight” (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till). According to Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems, professor and published author, “It was the epitome of the ugliness and hatred of racism. It made people uncomfortable, but it made people act. If you want to move a people, kill their children…I believe that Emmett Till was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that his death sparked the flame” (184). Till’s murder mobilized African Americans in an unprecedented manner which the likes had never been seen before, becoming the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.
“Emmett Till” written by James A. Emanuel is a protest poem which uses the tragic and horrifying, yet legendary death of Emmett Till as a metaphor for the resolve and determination of African Americans in their unwavering fight for civil rights and equality. Emanuel’s specific use of language to change the violent and gruesome images associated with Till’s death helped to offer African Americans a method of healing by giving them a way to remember Till without always being immediately reminded of the gory details surrounding his death. However, by painting him as a restless spirit, he urged African Americans to fight against the injustices visited upon Till, strengthening their resolve to change a nation in which the possibility could exist that a young child could be murdered for an innocent, misguided, ill-fated whistle.
Works Cited
American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till. PBS.org, 2009. Web. 26 July 2013.
Emanuel, James A. “Emmett Till.” Literature, Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell. 7th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 1085-1086. Print.
Hudson-Weems, Clenora. “Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.” Journal of Black Studies 29.2 (1998): 179-188. JSTORE. Web. 29 July 2013.
Pollack, Harriet, and Christopher Metress, eds. Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2008. Web. 29 July 2013.
Priest, Myisha. "’The Nightmare Is Not Cured’: Emmett Till and American Healing." American Quarterly 62.1 (2010): 1-24. Project MUSE. Web. 29 July 2013.
Final Outline
Thesis Statement: In Emanuel’s “Emmet Till,” the use of tone, figurative language, and metaphors help to communicate the idea of how tragedy can be overcome by using it as a catalyst for action and change.
I. The murder of Emmett Till was a “cultural trauma experienced by an entire generation of black men and women coming of age in 1955 (Pollack and Metress 8). However, a surface reading of Emanuel’s poem does not seem to reflect this.
II. Emanuel seemingly makes use of language and these particular words as a method to disguise the ugliness of the truth surrounding the story of Emmett Till.
III. Still, Emanuel does not completely eliminate the darkness that surrounds Emmett Till’s story from his poetry.
IV. Akin to the restless spirit of the “fairy river boy” was the restless African American spirit. Much like the confessed murderers, African Americans surely wondered “What else could we do?”
V. Just as Milam ridiculously conjectured that they were left with little choice, surely African American public held the same sentiment. They had very little choice but to take action against the injustices that their people had visited on them, injustices that they were reminded of as each chapter of the Till saga continued to unfold.
Conclusion: “Emmett Till” written by James A. Emanuel is a protest poem which uses the tragic and horrifying, yet legendary death of Emmett Till as a metaphor for the resolve and determination of African Americans in their unwavering fight for civil rights and equality.
"Well, what else could we do?” (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till) J. W. Milam asked, though it was a rhetorical question at best, for he already knew the answer. “I like niggers -- in their place…But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice... And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he 's tired o ' livin '. I 'm likely to kill him" (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till). In an interview, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi”, published in Look magazine on January 24, 1956, J.W. Milam openly confessed to the murder of young Emmett Till, a murder for which he and his half brother, Roy Bryant, had been acquitted of just four months earlier. As if the brutal beating and killing of Till weren’t enough, to have the killers confess openly on a national platform forced African Americans to …show more content…
relive the tragedy of Till’s murder and the injustice of the trial of his killers over again, for the law of double jeopardy prevented the two from ever being retried for Till’s murder. Recognizing this repeated injustice meant recognizing the propensity for such travesties to happen again to African Americans for no other reason than the color of their skin. And so there came a call to action. This call came forward in many different forms, including speeches, marches, protests, and just as importantly and influential, literature. James A. Emanuel’s poem “Emmett Till” is a glowing, though tragic, example of this. In Emanuel’s “Emmet Till,” the use of tone, figurative language, and metaphors help to communicate the idea of how tragedy can be overcome by using it as a catalyst for action and change.
The murder of Emmett Till was a “cultural trauma experienced by an entire generation of black men and women coming of age in 1955” (Pollack and Metress 8). However, a surface reading of Emanuel’s poem does not seem to reflect this. Reading the poem reveals language that contrarily describes the violence associated with that fateful August night in Money, Mississippi. As the poem opens, it reads, “I hear a whistling / Through the water” (Emanuel lines 1-2). This is likely a reference to the fact that some accounts say that Till whistled at Carolyn Bryant during their interaction. However, by the time that Till and his assailants reached the river, “whistling” would not be an actual reflection of the sounds most likely heard that night from Till. Contrary to the whistling sound described in the poem, the sounds that would have likely been heard coming from the river that night would have been the screams of young Emmett Till. Another instance of a contrary description to actual events can be found in line 5, “He keeps floating,” (Emanuel) and again in line 13 “Who swims forever” (Emanuel). It would have been nearly impossible for Till’s body to float as it was “Necklaced in / A coral toy” (Emauel 15-16), weighted down by a heavy cotton gin fan tied to Till’s neck with barbed wire, and it would have been impossible for Till to swim in the river that night as he was already dead before his body even touched the waters of the Tallahatchie River.
Emanuel seemingly makes use of language and these particular words as a method to disguise the ugliness of the truth surrounding the story of Emmett Till. All of these elements tied to a story which represents such a gloomy and sinister event should seem odd for the reader. It should seem strange for a writer to give such niceties to an event associated with violence, brutality, racism, and murder. However, this is done so with a purpose. Pollack and Metress, editors of Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination, a collection of essays which explores several different literary representations of Emmett Till’s story, contend that “One healing response to trauma is to narrate the past – to tell the story of the event in forms that reconcile it with recovery” (8). Rewriting tales of tragedy allows individuals to “release the ‘toxicity’ of trauma and make visible the promise of a more redemptive future” (Pollack and Metress 8). Emanuel does this by changing the tale of a young black boy’s brutal murder into a fairy tale surrounding the sprite-like spirit of a boy who dwells within the waters of the Tallahatchie River. The lines “Tell me, please, / That bedtime story / Of the fairy / River Boy / Who swims forever” (Emanuel 9-13) help to reiterate this message. Emanuel does so by immortalizing Till both by taking away his human-like characteristic of mortality as he takes on the presence of a fairy or spirit and by keeping his story alive and in the minds of readers while dressing up Till’s story and communicating his tale as a beloved bedtime story to be told over and over again, transforming “the deep and unsettling wound of Till’s lynching-a wound so clearly representative of anger, prejudice, and unmitigated hate-into a site of healing and liberation” (Pollack and Metress 8).
Still, Emanuel does not completely eliminate the darkness that surrounds Emmett Till’s story from his poetry. The use of words like “darkness”, “edging”, and “silent chill” make sure that the reader is aware of the fact that there is an eerie air surrounding this story, one that should let the reader know that the presentation of this tale should not be taken strictly at face value. The lines “Little Emmett / Won’t be still” (Emanuel 3-4) and “River Boy / Who swims forever” (Emanuel 12-13), offer another representation of Till besides the images of the flighty sprite that is given precedent throughout most of the poem. By combining these words and this type of language, Emanuel casts an eerie, haunting image of Till as a restless spirit who haunts the Tallahatchie River due to the injustices visited upon him, and it is quite possible that he will continue to do so until he is allowed some type of resolution. This restless spirit is a metaphor for something much more than Emmett himself. Contrary to the true image of Till’s lifeless body found in the river, the poem describes Till as being in a state of unrest, much like the temperament of African Americans, especially after this tragedy.
Akin to the restless spirit of the “fairy river boy” was the restless African American spirit.
Much like the confessed murderers, African Americans surely wondered “What else could we do?” The acquittal of these men proved two things to the black community of this time: one, the value, or lack thereof, of a black life in America, especially in the South, and two, though African Americans had made leaps and bounds as far as freedom and gaining a sense of equality in America, they still had a long way to go. The acquittal of the two men known to have kidnapped Till in the middle of the night led to public outrage. “The Daily Worker bemoaned that ‘Good people everywhere-in America and throughout the world-feel a deep sense of horror over the outcome of the murder trial in Mississippi,’ and the Chicago Defender promised its readers that ‘this miscarriage of justice must not be left unavenged’” (Pollack and Metress 6). This is something that Emanuel’s poem does, in fact, allude to, and something that actually became a part of Till’s
legacy.
Just as Milam ridiculously conjectured that they were left with little choice, surely African American public held the same sentiment. They had very little choice but to take action against the injustices that their people had visited on them, injustices that they were reminded of as each chapter of the Till saga continued to unfold. As Myisha Priest, a published professor of English and African American studies describes, it was impossible for “Little Emmett” to “be still” or for his story to be put to rest:
After the original event of his murder, Till’s body rose from the river bottom to thwart the killers’ desire for open secrecy; it rose next when its meaning became the centerpiece of the trial. It rose again when the court-mandated undertaker, intent on throwing the body into an unmarked grave in a potter’s field, was thwarted by Mamie Till, who demanded an open casket so that ‘everyone can see what they have done to my boy,’ and again a year later, when his acquitted killers confessed in Look magazine that they had brutalized his body ‘just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’ And it rose once more still later when the civil rights movement raised Till’s body like a banner. (1)
As a result of the death of Emmett Till and the resulting events surrounding it, “…the level of violence that was commonplace in a place like Mississippi became known to the world, and that violence generated anger and outrage-and in some ways courage-for those fighting in Mississippi and those willing to come South to fight that fight” (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till). According to Dr. Clenora Hudson-Weems, professor and published author, “It was the epitome of the ugliness and hatred of racism. It made people uncomfortable, but it made people act. If you want to move a people, kill their children…I believe that Emmett Till was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that his death sparked the flame” (184). Till’s murder mobilized African Americans in an unprecedented manner which the likes had never been seen before, becoming the catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement.
“Emmett Till” written by James A. Emanuel is a protest poem which uses the tragic and horrifying, yet legendary death of Emmett Till as a metaphor for the resolve and determination of African Americans in their unwavering fight for civil rights and equality. Emanuel’s specific use of language to change the violent and gruesome images associated with Till’s death helped to offer African Americans a method of healing by giving them a way to remember Till without always being immediately reminded of the gory details surrounding his death. However, by painting him as a restless spirit, he urged African Americans to fight against the injustices visited upon Till, strengthening their resolve to change a nation in which the possibility could exist that a young child could be murdered for an innocent, misguided, ill-fated whistle.
Works Cited
American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till. PBS.org, 2009. Web. 26 July 2013.
Emanuel, James A. “Emmett Till.” Literature, Reading, Reacting, Writing. Ed. Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell. 7th ed. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 1085-1086. Print.
Hudson-Weems, Clenora. “Resurrecting Emmett Till: The Catalyst of the Modern Civil Rights Movement.” Journal of Black Studies 29.2 (1998): 179-188. JSTORE. Web. 29 July 2013.
Pollack, Harriet, and Christopher Metress, eds. Emmett Till in Literary Memory and Imagination. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2008. Web. 29 July 2013.
Priest, Myisha. "’The Nightmare Is Not Cured’: Emmett Till and American Healing." American Quarterly 62.1 (2010): 1-24. Project MUSE. Web. 29 July 2013.
Final Outline
Thesis Statement: In Emanuel’s “Emmet Till,” the use of tone, figurative language, and metaphors help to communicate the idea of how tragedy can be overcome by using it as a catalyst for action and change.
I. The murder of Emmett Till was a “cultural trauma experienced by an entire generation of black men and women coming of age in 1955 (Pollack and Metress 8). However, a surface reading of Emanuel’s poem does not seem to reflect this.
II. Emanuel seemingly makes use of language and these particular words as a method to disguise the ugliness of the truth surrounding the story of Emmett Till.
III. Still, Emanuel does not completely eliminate the darkness that surrounds Emmett Till’s story from his poetry.
IV. Akin to the restless spirit of the “fairy river boy” was the restless African American spirit. Much like the confessed murderers, African Americans surely wondered “What else could we do?”
V. Just as Milam ridiculously conjectured that they were left with little choice, surely African American public held the same sentiment. They had very little choice but to take action against the injustices that their people had visited on them, injustices that they were reminded of as each chapter of the Till saga continued to unfold.
Conclusion: “Emmett Till” written by James A. Emanuel is a protest poem which uses the tragic and horrifying, yet legendary death of Emmett Till as a metaphor for the resolve and determination of African Americans in their unwavering fight for civil rights and equality.