Gwendolyn Brooks

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Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks

    Writing with uncommon strength, Gwendolyn Brooks creates haunting images
of black America, and their struggle in escaping the scathing hatred of many
white Americans. Her stories, such as in the "Ballad of Rudolph Reed", portray
courage and perseverance. In those like "The Boy Died in My Alley" Brooks
portrays both the weakness of black America and the unfortunate lack of care
spawned from oppression. In "The Ballad of Chocolate Mabbie" Brooks unveils
another aspect of her skill by entering the domestic arena with the lingering
limitations imposed by prejudice. These aspects, such as strength and finesse,
are among Brooks great attributes. Worthy of exploration, Brooks powerful and
haunting techniques can be separated and explored in the above mentioned poems.
Each work contains a specific tactic, which effectively promotes her ideas. It
is for that reason, tactics mixed with ideas, which have placed Brooks among the
finest poets.
    Perhaps because of Brooks' use of a stiff format, "The Ballad of Rudolph
Reed" may be her strongest work. Imbuing the poem with incredible lines and
description, Brooks transforms Rudolph Reed, who is the character the poem is
built around, into a storybook hero, or a tragic character whose only flaw was
the love he held for his family. Brooks creates a strong, solid character who
is more than another fictional martyr, but a human being. The Finesse she
imbued in this work from the first stylized Peiffer 2 stanza: "Rudolph Reed was
oaken.\ His wife was oaken too.\ And his two girls and his good little man\
Oakened as they grew." (1081, 1-4) Here brooks' symbolic use of the word
oakened, coupled with the use of a rhyme scheme of the second and last sentence
of every stanza causes the reader to more deeply feel what the character and his
family are going through. Using the idea of a dream home, Brooks stabbed to the
heart of the American dream and where those of African descent fit into it.
Every person, man or woman, has at one time or another dreamt of living in a
beautiful home:

"I am not hungry for berries.\ I am not hungry for bread.\
But hungry hungry for a house\ Where at night a man in bed\ "May never
here the plaster\ stir as if in pain.\ May never here the roaches\
Falling like fat rain.\ "Where never wife and children need\ Go blinking
through the gloom.\ Where every room of many rooms\ Will be full of
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