Ballad of Birmingham

Poetry is a form of expression, a way of invoking feelings from a reader as well as expressing one’s own. Dudley Randall’s, “Ballad of Birmingham” is an ironic poem about a great tragedy in Birmingham, Alabama where a small girl dies as a result of a battle between races. Randall presents his poem as a story complete with dialect between his characters, a narrator, a beginning to establish characters, a middle to build the plot and an end to conclude. Randall uses many different techniques to fill his story with feeling and emotion, but imagery and irony are the most prominent.

Randall most effectively creates emotion in his poem by basing it on an actual event. Although the poem itself is fictional, children truly did die in the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama. This makes the poem more meaningful than if it never took place. Randall captures the sadness of the tragedy by speculating what may happen between a mother and her daughter shortly before her daughter is killed in a bombing. The poem opens with dialogue between the two and clearly portrays how the daughter regards her mother. When addressing her mother, the daughter uses words like “Mother dear”

Irony, although present through the entire poem, is especially present in the last stanza when her mother pulls a shoe out of the debris. This is ironic because after all of the imagery surrounding her preparation and appearance, her white shoe is all that is left. Even though her mother was trying to protect her, all she has left of her daughter is a small piece of her innocence.

Once Randall introduces the poem in the first four stanzas by establishing characters and the setting, there is a shift in the fifth stanza from the characters speaking to a narrator. This is significant because when this transition occurs, the narrator use very vivid imagery to create a clear picture of the daughter as she gets ready for church. Throughout the stanza the young girl is described as very childlike and innocent, there is also a reoccurrence of religious undertones. The following line of the poem is an example of this, “And bathed in rose petal sweet.” This idea of bathing is very central to being pure, innocent and clean. The picture of baptism comes to mind as she “bathed” away any uncleanness. Not only the fact that she “bathed” is significant but also that it was with “rose petal sweet.” This is very childlike, very much something a small little girl would do. Purity is presented again in the stanza when the girl’s “white gloves” and “white shoes” are described. The color white is also used symbolically in different religions to signify innocence. The fact that the young girl is a child is reiterated again when the word “small” is used to describe her. Images of tiny hands comes to mind and can represent a little girl who is untainted and inexperienced with so much of her life ahead of her.

Randa

Some topics in this essay:
Birmingham Alabama, Analysis Poetry, Dudley Randall’s, color white, mother daughter, , little girl, based color, petal sweet”, poem story, vivid imagery, makes poem, birmingham alabama, imagery irony,