Steven

=Individual Analysis=

The poem "Song in the Front Yard", by Gwendolyn Brooks, is full of symbolism and somewhat hidden racial messages. These messages become more evident after reading other poems by the author and looking at her background. Not until knowing the authors background and the subject matter of black culture in almost all of her poems, can you interpret the poem correctly.

During her childhood Gwendolyn Brooks, being an African American experienced a great amount of racial prejudice largely through going to many different schools. While living in Chicago she experienced life in a leading white school, an all black school, and an integrated school. From this she was able to observe the racial prejudice of the time from many different angles. Her childhood in Chicago, Illinois greatly influenced her works.

Brooks starts off the poem by having the speaker, a young white girl, saying, "I’ve stayed in the front yard all my life".(line 1) Since we know that no one could realistically live in their front yard their entire life, we can assume that this is symbolism. The front yard is more observed by people passing by, unlike the back which is rarely seen by outsiders. It is not kept us as well as the poems states, "I want to peak at the back now/Where it's rough an unattended and hungry weeds grow"(Line 2-3). These lines also imply that the back yard is kept nice and it can be seen as much more like higher class society in comparison to line where the girl says, "(on the account of last summer he sold our back gate)". This shows how the rrich area or back yard is of higher status and superior to the back in its appearance and upkeep. At the same time it serves as a parallel to the black comunity that brooks came from where the outward appearance of the neighborhood was rough.

From the backyard the girl then goes onto convey that she wants to go play with the charity children down the alley and have fun.(lines 5-8) The alley is once again symbolism for the mainly black community Brooks grew up in. Brooks preesents the idea that while it is not well kept it is where people have fun. This can be seen when he speaker says, "They have some wonderful fun. My mother sneers, but i say it's fine..."(lines 10-11). In the rest of the poem the girl goes onto give examples of activities that go on in the back yard and argue that from her mom's point of view the people in the back yard are bad and dirty. But in fact she believes that the people in the back yard are allowed to do all of these things, and that its much better because of the freedom in a sense that they have compared to her. The girl then wants to be like the people in the backyard by becoming there equals. The girl plans to do this by dressing up and acting just like them, totally ignoring her mother's cautions.

These lines explore authors pride in the black community presenting the point that its where there is real freedom. Brooks is trying to show how in some ways the black cultural communities are better than the rich higher class white ones. They may not have the money but they are not stuckk in the front yard all of the time, they can experience life elsewhere and have fun. The young white girl in the poem seems to be symbolic of the behavior of many of the younger white people at the time when integration was beginning to occur. They wouldn't listen to their parents beliefs like in lines eleven to seventeen. In the last four lines of the poem instead they experienced the ways in which the black cultural community was better. The speaker is asserting that if being in the backyard is bad then she will act like the people in the back yard and copy the ways that they act so that she may prove her point that they aren't really bad. She wants to ignore the older generations prejudices and choose what she believes is the right thing to do. In this way she wants to change the association with the, "backyard", from being bad to good.

The use of symbolism throughout was necessary to cover up the true meaning of the poem at the time. The symbolic meaning allowed it to be excepted at the time. If it had openly stated the messages Brooks was trying to convey it probably would not have seen the light of day.