Ballad Of Birmingham Analysis

In poetry, Analysis is often just as important as reading for discerning the story. Breaking down and analyzing each individual line as well as the different elements and themes can reveal so much more than what is gleaned from the first reading. I’ve chosen to examine tragedy because in my opinion, among the elements commonly found among ballads tragedy often has the most impact on the story. The two ballads I am examining—Edgar Allan Poe’s “Annabel Lee” and Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham”—both exhibit tragedy as major turning points in their stories, but even within this one story element there is a surprising amount of variation in the nature of the tragedies as well as the use of tragedy in story development. This can be demonstrated

Because we know the poem is about a church bombing that took place during the American civil rights movement, we already have an inkling of what the tragedy is before we even begin. In a lesser poet’s hands, this may have given an anti-climactic feeling to the story. Mr. Randall avoids this through skillful execution in both the overall story development and the tragic event itself. He begins by simultaneously making you care about the characters and adding an element of irony in the first four stanzas: “‘Mother dear, may I go downtown / Instead of out to play, / And march the streets of Birmingham / In a Freedom March today?’ / No, baby, no, you may not go, / For the dogs are fierce and wild, / And clubs and hoses, guns and jails / Aren’t good for a little child.’/ …But you may go to Church instead / And sing in the children’s choir’” (p. 500, ll. 1-16). Here we have a mother and a little girl (she is revealed to be a girl in line seventeen)

This second tragedy is what makes “Annabel Lee” stand out to my mind. The first tragedy is one easily recognizable to the audience: the death of the narrator’s loved one. Her identity and the existence of a loving relationship between her and the narrator are established in lines three to six: “That a maiden there lived whom you may know / By the name of Annabel Lee; / And this maiden she lived with no other thought / Than to love and be loved by me,” (p. 609, ll. 3-6). Her death is established rather quickly: “A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling / My beautiful Annabel Lee; / So that her highborn kinsmen came / … To shut her up in a supulchre” (p. 609, ll. 15-19). Thanks to the very first line, we can also conclude that Annabel lee has been dead for some time before the beginning of the story: “It was many and many a year ago” (p. 609, l. 1). The second tragedy I keep alluding to is the narrator’s own madness. It isn’t long before the narrator makes a statement that displays the intense paranoia that is symptomatic of a number of mental illnesses: “The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, / Went envying her and me:— / Yes! that was the reason… / That the wind came out of the cloud by night, / Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee” (p. 609, ll. 21-26). With this statement, we can