Strange Fruit
Daniel Sou
Strange Fruit
“Strange Fruit” is one of the best poems written around the topic of segregation and racism. “Strange Fruit” was produced in the late 1930s, the same time that African Americans in the South were being lynched by white supremacist groups in the days of America’s Abolition movement. Throughout the movement, the stress on seeing no evil and hearing no evil at this time was strongly enforced. Yet, Abel Meeropol expressed the horrors that African Americans experienced throughout this Abolition. When Billie Holiday performed this poem as a song, it had a more meaningful level to it, as she suffered the hardships through the Abolition, herself. In the poem “Strange Fruit,” by Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the visual image represents the tension and segregation in the South in the 1930s.
The song is short and simple, having only three stanzas and 12 lines. All the lines follow a rhyme pattern, where each pair of lines rhyme at the ending. The following line 'Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze' is in an almost in a casual tone, which purposely makes the image of murder shocking and surprising. The use of ‘bodies’ in this line, suggests that there are a number of the black men and women, who faced the circumstances of that period in time and not just a small number of people. As we keep reading, the choice of tone helps us understand the mood and scene the black men and women may have faced. "Pastoral scene of the gallant south." The first line of this stanza uses the words ‘pastoral’ and ‘gallant.’ Pastoral should convey a pleasant picture of a country life and its surroundings. Gallant means courteous and brave, so the first line creates a pleasant scene for the reader. However this line is in direct contrast with the following line as the mood changes dramatically and quickly to show the complete opposite of mood "The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth". This change in mood shows the wrongness of the acts being practiced, as it
Strange Fruit
“Strange Fruit” is one of the best poems written around the topic of segregation and racism. “Strange Fruit” was produced in the late 1930s, the same time that African Americans in the South were being lynched by white supremacist groups in the days of America’s Abolition movement. Throughout the movement, the stress on seeing no evil and hearing no evil at this time was strongly enforced. Yet, Abel Meeropol expressed the horrors that African Americans experienced throughout this Abolition. When Billie Holiday performed this poem as a song, it had a more meaningful level to it, as she suffered the hardships through the Abolition, herself. In the poem “Strange Fruit,” by Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol, the visual image represents the tension and segregation in the South in the 1930s.
The song is short and simple, having only three stanzas and 12 lines. All the lines follow a rhyme pattern, where each pair of lines rhyme at the ending. The following line 'Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze' is in an almost in a casual tone, which purposely makes the image of murder shocking and surprising. The use of ‘bodies’ in this line, suggests that there are a number of the black men and women, who faced the circumstances of that period in time and not just a small number of people. As we keep reading, the choice of tone helps us understand the mood and scene the black men and women may have faced. "Pastoral scene of the gallant south." The first line of this stanza uses the words ‘pastoral’ and ‘gallant.’ Pastoral should convey a pleasant picture of a country life and its surroundings. Gallant means courteous and brave, so the first line creates a pleasant scene for the reader. However this line is in direct contrast with the following line as the mood changes dramatically and quickly to show the complete opposite of mood "The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth". This change in mood shows the wrongness of the acts being practiced, as it