ENG1300_WK2_Allen_Debra
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English
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Apr 3, 2024
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“A Song in the Front Yard”
Debra Allen
South University- Online
ENG1300- Composition III/ Literacy
Dr. Volker
February 26, 2024
LITERACY ELEMENTS
“A Song in the Front Yard”
“A girl gets sick of a rose” (Axelrod, Roman, & Travisano, 2012. Line 4) foreshadows the poem “A Song in the Front Yard” by Gwendolyn Brookson. The poem has many literacy elements to help the reader engage better into the thoughts, feelings, and the message being portrayed. The poem reflects a well-off little girl who aspired to live like the nearby less fortunate kids. Gwendolyn Brooks highlights the irony of affluence and wanting for a life not allowed by using symbolism of the front yard and backyard to reflect society’s standards and desires.
Many people can relate to wanting something different than what we have in life. Gwendolyn Brooks begins with “I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life. I want a peek at the back”. (Axelrod, Roman, & Travisano, 2012. Lines 1-2) This is the opening line of the poem, a metaphor is used to compare the speaker's life to the front yard, which is tidy, safe, predictable, and her ideal life, which is rough, neglected, and overrun with weeds that are hungry. The young girl wants to be able to stay outside later like the other children in the back yard, but her mother tells her they are going to grow up to be criminals and prostitutes. Imagery is a literacy device used to help the reader be more in tune with what the speaker is trying to convey. Visual imagery is when the speaker describes something or someone for the reader to get a mental picture. The speaker uses visual imagery to set the scene for what the mother thinks the children in the backyard and the alley will grow up to be like and the young girls desire to be like them and be adventurous. “And wear the brave stockings of night-
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LITERACY ELEMENTS
black lace and strut down the streets with paint on my face.”. (Axelrod, Roman, & Travisano, 2012. Lines 18-19) The speaker also uses irony with the desire to be adventurous, comes with the
implication of growing up with a future to be a potential criminal and have bad behaviors. Symbolism and characterization are literacy elements that Brooks uses in this poem. The characterization of the speaker who is a small child who has lived in the front yard her entire life tells the story of the poem; she is a symbol of innocence, curiosity, and a yearning for something more than every day. Her youthfulness is apparent in her need to escape the confines of her secure environment. The characterization of the charity children is that the speaker admires the children's independence and longs to experience it herself. These children, playing in the alley, represent an alternative way of life, unrestricted by parental expectations or society conventions. The front and back yard are symbolic, having lived her entire life in the front yard, which stands for security, tradition, and the expected route, the speaker is eager to explore the darker side of life represented by the backyard and the neighboring alley, which stand for the uncharted and wild.
Gwendolyn Brooks highlights the irony of affluence and wanting for a life not allowed by using symbolism of the front yard and backyard to reflect society’s standards and desires. “A girl gets sick of roses” (Axelrod, Roman, & Travisano, 2012. Line 4) Lets us know that the young girl has beautiful things around her, but she is ready for more adventurous, such as weeds,
in her life. The speaker does a great job of using literacy devices to portray that message to the readers.
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LITERACY ELEMENTS
References
Axelrod, S. G., Roman, C., & Travisano, T. (Eds.). (2012). The New Anthology of American Poetry (Vol. 3). Rutgers University Press. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc//GCCO?u=soc1&sid=lms-
GCCO&pg=125363088&xid=f372989b
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