ESSAY CEMETERY

Themes and recurring elements ·        Making fun of each other's mothers ·        Singing about food ·        Singing about freedom ·        Big boy is shrewd ·        Fighting techniques ·        Segregation ·        White prejudice against blacks ·        Whites have swimming pools and blacks don't ·        Children playing ·        Automatic suspicion of young black boys ·        Killing ·        Lynching ·        Mutual help within the black community ·        Corn pone Style and Devices ·        Rep...

I Four black boys, Buck, Bobo, Lester and Big Boy are walking in the woods making up dirty songs. They lie down and bask in the warm sun. They hear a train and sing a song about it. Someone farts and they tease each other. They want to go swimming in the creek but Big Boy warns that they could get lynched. They want to go anyway so Big Boy distracts them by jumping on them and telling them he is hungry. They sing a song about food. To retaliate, the three boys maul Big Boy. He catches Bobo hard, and tells the other boys to let go of him or Bobo suffers. They back off to save Bobo. They keep walking. Big Boy explains the technique behind his defense: pick on one member of a gang to make the others let off. II The boys arrive at the swimming hole. Everyone but Big Boy is reluctant to go in. Big Boy reasons that they would be in as much trouble swimming as they are near the water, so they might as well go in. Big boy dares them to go in. He begins stripping and the boys fol...

Themes ·        Black prejudice against blacks ·        White prejudice against blacks ·        Violence white against black ·        Lying to whites to avoid punishment ·        Altering behavior to whites to avoid punishment ·        Masking feelings and emotions to avoid punishment ·        Pretending to have no interest in learning ·        Whites against blacks exhibiting white behaviors ·        Blacks should not show knowledge or assertion Style and Devices ·        Reported speech that mimics black people's ·        Difference between the speech of blacks and whites People and Places ·     ...

1 Young Richard's and the other black families lived behind the railroad tracks in Arkansas, their yards strewn with cinders. One day his gang got into a fight with white kids, who used broken bottles instead of cinders for the fight. Richard was injured, and instead of consoling him his mother admonishes him for fighting white boys and beats him until he is sick with fever. From that time on the lawns and trees become a symbol of white people, then a symbol of fear. They move to a different house in Mississippi, far from a black neighborhood. Richard gets his first job at an optical company. He is careful to be polite to the white men around him. When he carefully asks if they would teach him some of the trade like they had said they would, they become colder to Richard. Finally they bully him into leaving, accusing him of rudeness to them. 2 His second job is a porter at a clothing store. Richard's white boss and his son beat and rape a black woman for not ...