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Southern History And Incident By Countee Cullen: Poem Analysis

758 Words4 Pages

When your race is broadcasted it’s not something that you just get over. It remains with you for a very long, agonizing time. In these two poems, “Southern History” by Natasha Trethewey and “Incident” by Countee Cullen, the speaker is pronounced fully aware of their racial identity and something in them changes and makes them view everything differently, like their class or a whole city. The uses of point of view, irony, and tone all make this realization possible for the speaker because it helped convey the significance of these moments.
The poems “Southern History” and “Incident” both had the same point of view, first person, “I watched the words blur on the page” - Southern History (5), “I saw a Baltimorean” -Incident (3). First person point of view gives us the true feelings and thoughts of the main character for these poems. This was extremely crucial because since it was dealing …show more content…

The teacher who was communicating to the class was expressing remarks that didn’t respect what actually happened to the slaves, such as, “The slaves were clothed, fed, and better-off under a master's care” (3-4). Even though the book was actually saying these things, the teacher had the choice whether to read it or not. The book was very negative, it was suspected to be a history book on facts, but the novel was feeding the kids lies. This moment was very significant because it showed that the racism wasn’t necessary in a person, but a book that was required to teach the truth. In, “Incident”, the tone was intense and scathing. The child the speaker came across was a racist and a loathsome person, “He poked out/ His tongue, and called me, ‘Nigger’” (6-7). Also, it felt like the boy was getting attacked by the other child so it was scathing. This is prominent because from then on the tiny child looked at Baltimore as this unpleasant area and it was a true moment in time that this little child realized race and

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Incident by Countee Cullen is a poem that teaches us how influential and negative racism can be. This poem shows us how dangerous racism was during Cullen’s life. The issue in the poem is racism because a young boy around the age of Cullen calls him a nigger. It is also very This kind of behavior is unacceptable from anyone especially a child. Children this age should want to have fun with other children, not call them a nigger.

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