The Ballad of Rudolph Reed (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Gwendolyn Brooks
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Work: Ballad
- Genres: Poetry, Ballad
- Subjects: African Americans, Discrimination, Family or family life, Racism, Blacks, Race, Murder or homicide, Social issues, Poverty or poor people
The Poem
“The Ballad of Rudolph Reed” employs a traditional verse form to tell a heroic and finally tragic story of human struggle against the contemporary forces of discrimination and hate. Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem is powerful and unrelenting in its cry for social justice, and it holds only a small hope for redemption for its characters. The story is told in sixteen ballad stanzas of regular structure, broken roughly into three sections. The first five stanzas describe the players in the drama and their dreams. In the first stanza, readers are introduced to the central...
[The entire page is 1369 words long]
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