Summary Of We Real Cool By Gwendolyn Brook

“We Real Cool” is a poem by Gwendolyn Brook’s which describes a group of young men currently skipping school to hang out at the pool hall and partake in delinquent activities. The persona is a single member of the group, however he represents the group’s actions as well as aspirations. Moreover, the poem is delivered in four short stanzas, each of which are 2 line couplets, and every word has only one syllable. The poem takes a satirical approach to delinquent behavior committed in pursuit of being cool and a social identity, in order to advise against making those hedonistic decisions, through the use of irony. In the beginning of the poem, Brook’s starts off with a two-line epigraph which discloses the persona’s location and group affiliation. The first line, “The Pool Player’s.” (534) establishes the young men’s coolness by associating them with a “cool” place: a pool hall. Furthermore, the second line, “Seven at The Golden Shovel.” (534) utilizes the number seven as a symbol for the pool players’ luck. Moreover, the use of “golden” in the pool hall’s title inspires the image of youthful enthusiasm, while “shovel”, alongside the last line of the poem (“Die Soon”), connotes images of grave digging. When combined, the two words create a feeling of a glorified doom, as if you’re knowingly riding a magnificent rollercoaster to your

We” (534). The pool player’s, who are clearly underage, are “thinning” gin, which is to say they’re diluting gin by adding water to preserve it. Or alternatively, if the style of the poem remains true to form the first word of each line would be a verb, so instead to “thin gin” would mean to consume it at an alarming rate. Regardless of how you interpret it, they’re still partaking in illegal activities to pursue a lifestyle based on decisions bearing temporary satisfaction rather than those based on