In The Event Of By Kenneth Mccrae Analysis

“In the Event of” Poem Analysis

In the height of gun violence and police brutality, Shane McCrae wrote his poem, “In the Event of”, narrating police brutality through allusions and imagery. Although short, McCrae’s poem is full of generations of pain. The four-stanza poem criticizes the treatment of black bodies in authoritative situations. In this analysis of Shane McCrae’s poem the structure, emotion, devices, and message of the poem will be dissected and analyzed.

McCrae structured his poem in an AaB form until the last line. The beginning of each stanza starts with an action (A), followed by a lead into a bigger picture (a), then an allegory related to police brutality or violence forced upon the Black community (B). The action of

One of the more noticeable and common forms of his instruments are his utilization of commas. Instead of ending an idea, McCrae tends to put a comma to enhance the emotion of the line after it. He also does this by finishing the thought in the stanza following to engage his audience. Throughout the whole poem he only uses two periods. This can illustrate how the author has already met his end at the very beginning of the poem. Periods are met to end; end a sentence, a thought, a phrase. This one ends a life. Throughout the rest of the poem, McCrae’s audience is watching the transformation from living to lived. One of the main confirmations of the character’s death is in the last stanza, “You know I’m dead is that I seem to bow to you” revealing how the viewers have completely stepped over the dead body of the beginning stanza. “Body//-cam.” is calling out the first death in the poem with the use of the period, while “Were standing, stretched above my head.” calls out the second death, after the ‘ghost’, in this poem. That line depicts the charater with their arms above their head as if they were in a critical situation with police, forcing them to show that they are not a threat. Since this line also ends in a period, it is evident that the charater has again been murdered. Periods in this poem signifiy death in our charater. They can also signify how situations with the police usually have a preset outcome. McCrae utilizes periods to create an impact without using extra