A Review of Dudley Randall’s Literary Techniques and Rhymes in “The Ballad of Birmingham”
The Ballad of Birmingham wrote by Dudley Randall was about a church that was bombed in 1963. This ballad was wrote by an African American man who was forty-nine years old when the bombing occurred. This ballad features irony, symbolism, and discrimination.
It is very ironic that the mother did not want her child to be on the streets of a big city because of the safety factor, so therefore she sent her to church instead which was the death of her daughter. The shoes and clothing that she dressed her daughter in was white and clean when her daughter left to go to church but after the bombing she only found one shoe that was underneath all the rubble.
The symbolism is represented throughout the ballad in different ways. The mother replies to the question her daughter asked about going out to a Freedom March by saying the dogs are fierce and wild (6). The dogs are symbolic to the people and officers at the march that could get out of hand. The daughter wants to go to the march for freedom and the mother dresses her nicely and sprays her with cologne to send her to church. The mother was afraid of her daughter getting into violence and sent her to church to worship where she thought she would be safe.
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The bombing of the black church was done because of someone who was prejudice. The march was held for the rights of the black people so they would be treated equal and not discriminated against. A small innocent child was killed by the grotesque actions done by someone who was against black people.
This ballad contains a lot of words that can touch the heart of anyone and any race. It has a regular meter when reading it. It could easily be put to music to make a beautiful song.
The Ballad of Birmingham, written by Dudley Randall, is a poem that commemorates the bombing of a black church in Alabama in 1963, at the height of the civil rights movement. The poem is written in a traditional narrative style form of a ballad, though the subject matter is far from traditional. The poem tells the story of a woman who doesnt let her daughter go to play in town because she feels that it is too dangerous, but instead sends her to church where she feels that her daughter will be safe. The tragic irony of the story is that while the little girl is at church singing in the choir, the church is bombed and she is killed. The author of the poem uses different literary techniques to accentuate the ironies of the story told.
The poem is written with a regular rhyme scheme and in iambic tetrameter that makes the poem sound very nursery rhyme like. It seems as though the author made this poem sound very child-like and innocent to contrast the seriousness of what is discussed in the text. I was actually shocked at the outcome of the poem because I thought that the content of the poem would be as light-hearted as the way it sounded. I felt that the poem was more effective and emotion stirring because it was so unpredictable. I didnt know what to expect until I actually read the final two lines of the poem.
The nursery rhyme effect that the author puts forth is also meant to exemplify the sense of innocence associated with the little girl. If this poem didnt sound as if it were meant to be sung by children out in the yard playing games, it couldnt have possibly done justice to the idea of absolute innocence of this young girl at church. Because the author does such a good job of portraying the purity of this little black child, it shows how evil an act this bombing was.
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A Review of Dudley Randall’s Literary Techniques and Rhymes in “The Ballad of Birmingham”. (2023, Feb 24). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/a-review-of-dudley-randalls-literary-techniques-and-rhymes-in-the-ballad-of-birmingham/
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