Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
"Incident" by Countee Cullen - Thomas Gaddy
2
Personal Response
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember
Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident” is a simple and direct poem, which through its use of imagery and language shocks the reader when it changes tone in exploring the impact of a encounter between a black boy and a white boy. . “Incident” is a poem about a young black boy who goes to Baltimore for the first time. He is hopeful for his adventure, his heart and head “filled with glee”. When he encounters a white boy who is about the same age and size, the black boy smiles at him, but his smile is returned with a cutting racial epithet. The poem ends as the black boy, now much older, look backs on his several month stay in Baltimore and all he can recall is the “incident”. The poem is at once shocking and disappointing. For the first time, the small boy is aware of his race and the resulting limitations in a highly segregated and racist world. Though the white boy is at first portrayed as his equal in size and age, it becomes immediately evident that the boys are not equals. The barrier of race separates the potential friends before they even begin to know each other. The boys are mirror images of each other in everything but color, and yet such a small difference compared to the boys’ many similarities means so much in world defined by race. The message of “incident” is universal. The insidious nature of the societal racism manifested in the small white boy shatters the hopes and dreams of a boy who was once so hopeful for all the possibilities in a new city.
"Incident" Countee Cullen
His tongue, and called me, "Nigger."
Thomas Gaddy
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out