Parsley Rita Dove Summary

Dove’s History Lesson “Parsley” by Rita Dove is a poem that tells the story of true events that happened in the early 1900s in the Dominican Republic. Dove tells the story of how the dictator of the Dominican Republic had over 20,000 Haitian workers killed because they couldn’t pronounce the word “perejil,” which is Spanish for parsley, correctly. The poem is broken up into two parts; the first part is given from the Haitians’ perspective, while the second part is from the dictator Rafael Trujillo’s perspective. This is a significant structural element of the poem because it allows readers to have it allows readers to understand the thought processes of the victims of the massacre, the Haitians, but at the same time understand the thought processes of the facilitator of the massacre, Trujillo. The first part of the poem is titled “The Cane Fields” and is the part which is
This is shown in the line where the narrator says “The children gnaw their teeth” (11). This paints a picture of the children grinding their teeth out of fear because they know death is near. This helps the readers understand the Haitians even more because the children gnawing their teeth lets the reader know that they are terrified because they know their death is near. The killing of children allows the reader to sympathize with the Haitians even more because everyone can sympathize with the death of a child, so the massacre of thousands of children makes readers more sympathetic. The fact that Dove has a first-person plural narrator to show the Haitians’ perspective also allows readers to understand them. Using terms like “us” and “we” instead of terms like “they” and “them” helps readers connect to the story better. For example, when the narrator says “we lie down screaming” (7), it gives readers the ability to put themselves in the Haitians’ situation laying down and screaming with