Richard Wrights Between the World and Me - Essay Example

Analysis; Between the World and Me Richard Wright’s poem, Between the World and Me is modernist in its experimental styles, themes, and subject matter. The poem deals with lynching that suggests the segregation that is present in modernism.  It depicts the alienation and torture that the minorities such as the blacks got from the society and the world.  The great background and themes of this poem not only address the feeling of alienation and torture, but also drags the reader into the situation to feel the alienation.

The experimental style of Wright’s poem is also modernist.  He desists from using the traditional forms of poetry. He embarks on using fragmentation and unique perspective to help reinforce and focus on the themes of the poem. Combining all these things makes Wright’s works on the poem potent (Harris 95-102). It is about a man who experiences the death of the victim by staring at his burnt skeleton. The reader experiences deep regrets and sadness for the victim after the initial reading.

It is only after reading the poem severally that the reader gets to know the author’s real meaning. It is common for man to view tragic occurrences with remorse and pity. People cannot understand the situation unless they give it a view from the victim’s perspective. The theme of the poem becomes apparent when the central character mentally experiences the sufferings and death of the victim. Wright’s poem starts with the protagonist walking through the woods and comes across a human-like burnt-to-ashes skeleton on a tree.

The initial scene represents how people and society view tragedies. The society position is of viewing adversities as terrible misfortunes. People are deeply saddened by such circumstances, but they lack the understanding of the victims emotions and viewpoint. The world remains separated from the victim until when people understand the victim’s emotions and prospective that results from the incident (Harris 95-102). As the poem continues, the protagonist view of the victims demise with an outsider’s view progresses.

The protagonist experiences cold pities because of the life experienced as he continues to view and think about the death of the victim. The details of the death become apparent to the protagonist after the cold pities. When "the dry and hard bones stirred, lifted, rattled, melting themselves" into the body of the protagonist, the character now realizes the victims situation and pains. When the protagonists change to be a victim by imagination and mental processes, what the victim went through becomes real.

He visualizes the pains of the victim as the murderers battered his dentals into the throat until he got to swallow volumes of his own blood (Harris 95-102). As a result of the vivid happenings and details of the poem, the poem’s theme is evident that connects the reader and the protagonist. Many people in life feel remorse due tragedies that encounter victims. A concerned person becomes intensely tuned to the pains of the victim, as a result, of the tragedy. Such a person gets a different understanding and view of life and separates from the world physically.

Works Cited Harris, Trudier. Exorcising blackness: historical and literary lynching and burning rituals. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1984. Print.