Meaning Behind Strange Fruit

The Meaning Behind “Strange Fruit” The title of the poem is “Strange Fruit” by Abel Meeropol. The date of the publication was in 1937 and was recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. Abel Meeropol was inspired to write this poem from a old photograph of a lynching. He was haunted for days with this picture in mind and then decided to put his thoughts into words in this beautiful yet haunting poem “Strange Fruit.” The powerful imagery In Abel Meeropol’s poem, “Strange Fruit,” reveals the brutal reality of racism in America during the early to mid 1900s. The meaning, message, and literary devices interwoven by Meeropol pull the reader into the harsh reality of that time. In this poem, Meeropol decides to show the meaning by comparing bodies to fruit in this strange but intriguing poem. When he describes the lynching, he doesn’t describe it in his point of view, he decides to explain it from the point of any person that was a witness to any lynching. From the title, you can tell that there is strange

This is saying that the evil acts of what we did to colored people scared many lives. It scared the memories of people related to the many killed or even men and women who saw a lynching. Then, when you hear the person singing the poem, you can hear the emotion and depth that this song has on the singer and the people listening. It is a sad and terrifying poem. “Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze” (2-3). This quote shows us a horrifying picture of bodies swinging from trees and their blood everywhere. It’s a scarring picture that never leaves a person. Then it transfers from talking to sweet things to scary things. “Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh / Then the smell of burnin’ flesh” (7-8). It compares sweet things to horrifying smells of burning