Any literary work raises an issue related to a political or social problem in society. An examination of a narrative’s historical context, its literary features, and plot helps identify and understand such societal issues. The poem “Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall, the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key, and the novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien are prime examples of such works. Both poems and the novel tell the story of struggle and war in different periods of American history and illuminate it as terrible events in the life of society.
“The Ballad of Birmingham” is one of the most famous works of the Civil Rights Movement. Dudley Randall is an African American poet who lived and worked in the 20 centuries before and after the abolition of segregation; therefore, a significant part of his life and work was devoted to the struggle for African Americans’ rights just society and against violence. For example, Randall cultivated African American authors’ works, published and sold broadsides at low cost, which was unusual and bold in those days when black authors were rarely published (“Ballad”; Jerkins). “The Ballad of Birmingham” is also a poem written in response to the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four black girls (Jerkins). Thus, the main social issue that defines “The Ballad of Birmingham” is the struggle for equality of rights for black people.
The exposition of this poem is a conversation between a daughter and a mother, in which the mother convinces her little daughter to go to church instead of Freedom March to be safe. The girls’ preparation for the church is the story’s rising, and the crisis is expressed in the lines “But that smile was the last smile / To come upon her face” (Randall). The climax occurs when the mother hears an explosion. The falling action part shortly turns to the denouement, since after a search for her child, the mother finds only her shoe. Thus, in a short poem, the author contains a whole story in which he expressed the pain, despair, and injustice of the events of the bombing in the church.
Moreover, the author uses various literary devices to evoke emotions in the reader. For example, the metaphor “the dogs” in this context refers to people who fight against protests with violence and force (Randall). Randall also uses a simple rhyme scheme that creates the nursery effect and conveys the little girl’s innocence (Jackson). Thus, the exposition of a mother’s love and tenderness for her child underlines the brutality of the explosion and people’s violence.
The analysis of appeals of persuasion demonstrates that the author is most concerned with the reader’s emotions, or pathos. This feature is reflected in the central images of an innocent child who perish because of people’s cruelty and a mother who tries with all her might to protect her daughter. As Mitchell and Davis point out, a ballad is designed to pull an emotional response, so the centrality of pathos appeals of persuasion is appropriate and logical (13). Ethos in verse reflects the image of the church as a sacred place, which from an ethical point of view, should be the safest. Randall also uses logos when mom says that marches’ shooting and fighting are not for the child and send her daughter to church (Randall). However, the Birmingham event, which the author describes, breaks logic and ethics when the church becomes the epicenter of the explosion.
Another poem that talks about the struggle for rights and freedoms is the nationally famous “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key. Key was a lawyer who lived and worked during the early decades of US independence(“Star-Spangled”). “The Star-Spangled Banner” is dedicated to the Battle of Baltimore in 1814 that Key witnessed (“Star-Spangled”). In this war, the Americans fought back their right to independent politics, and it shaped a sense of national identity and pride (Meacham and McGraw 42). For this reason, Key’s verse illuminates the American struggle for freedom and is the epitome of patriotism. This motive is the central social issue of the early 19th century in the United States, reflected in society and Key’s poem.
Key describes the flag’s appearance at dawn in the first lines to create exposition. The line on the defeated enemy army reflects the plot’s rising, and the author’s ridicule of British confidence in victory express crisis (Key). The story culminates in lines about the British’s defeat, which are expressed in vivid images and metaphors of violence and death. In the last verse, the plot falls and ends, as Key speaks of Americans’ strength and resilience, emphasized by the description of the waving flag as a symbol of hope and inspiration.
Key uses various literary devices to reveal the topic and create a patriotic mood for the story. The central element is the image of the flag as a symbol of hope, which the soldiers and civilians see flying over the ship, which means victory (Campisi and Willingham). Besides, almost the entire poem is built on rhetorical questions that emphasize a mixture of fear and uncertainty about the battle’s outcome in the first lines, or the enemy’s mockery in the third verse (Smith). These features are also an expression of pathos, as they reinforce the emotional response of the reader. The author expresses the ethos in lines, “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, / And this be our motto. – In God is our trust” (Key). With these words, he emphasizes that the struggle is fair and noble only if it is used for protection and, in this case, is not forbidden by God. Thus, in his verse, Key raises a social issue fight for freedom and emphasizes its justice and necessity to protect lands from enemies.
The novel The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is another book that raises the issue of struggle and war. Tim O’Brien was born in the 1950s in the United States and has had a “normal” fate for a man of his generation, since he went through the Vietnam War (“The Things”). American troops’ participation in the Vietnam War was an event against which most of the American population opposed, which was an unprecedented event (Zimmerman). The reason for this was both the absence of a direct threat from Vietnam and the huge losses incurred by the US army. O’Brien’s book is a soldier’s story about the horrors of that war and demonstrates its harshness and stupidity. Thus, the novel that evokes sympathy for American guys forcibly drawn into someone else’s war underscores the social issue of war and its destructive consequences.
O’Brien’s novel is difficult to summarize sequentially, since it includes parts that can exist separately. However, one can say that the exposition is the description of all the characters, and the rise and the crisis is the story of the narrators’ attempt to escape to Canada to avoid the draft and change this decision (O’Brien 37-54). The culmination is the repetitive scene of Kiowa’s death, who was a friend of the narrator, and the denouement is his understanding that storytelling about the war saves his life.
At the same time, the central literary device is the images of things that the soldiers carried as they symbolize their desires and fears. Repetition of stories with details from different people is the second feature that reveals the meaning of events from different angles and their emotional sense. Although the author uses ethos, since, according to Bonnes, soldiers need to create a new ethical system, including cruelty, the central appeal of persuasion is pathos (5). All stories about the harshness of war, losses, fears, or love evoke readers’ emotions and force them to understand and feel those events. Logos is also an important appeal; however, although many stories about soldiers’ lives are similar to the truth, some are fiction aimed at an emotional response (Mahini et al. 1291). Thus, the author makes readers think about war’s inhumanity and the sacrifices it demands with his stories about a soldier’s life.
In conclusion, all of these stories from different eras speak of the social problem of struggle and destruction that attempts to encroach on the freedom of other people bring. Randall talks about the innocent victims of the struggle for equality, Key inspires to defend his country, and O’Brian demonstrates the horrors and destruction of war. These problems remain relevant today, as governments fight for lands, resources, and influence, for example, in Syria, and people seek their rights, as shown by the Black Lives Matter movement. Thus, all three works and authors separated by years are united by the desire to show that people’s cruelty and injustice are the main social problem of humanity.
Works Cited
“Ballad of Birmingham: 55 Years Later.” Illinois Library, Web.
Bonney, Sarah. “Morality and Pleasure in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried,” Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism, vol. 9, iss. 1, pp. 1-10.
Campisi, Jessie and Willingham, AJ. “Behind the lyrics of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner‘”. CNN, 2018. Web.
Jackson, La’Toya.”‘The Ballad of Birmingham’ Dudley Randall.” 2020. Web.
Jerkins, Morgan. “Overlooked No More: Dudley Randall, Whose Broadside Press Gave a Voice to Black Poets“. The New York Times, 2019, Web.
Key, Francis Scott. “Defence of Fort M’Henry“. Poetry Foundation, 2020. Web.
Mahini, Ramtin Noor-Tehrani (Noor), et al. “Tim O’Brien’s ‘Bad’ Vietnam War: The Things They Carried & Its Historical Perspective.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 8, no. 10, 2018, pp. 1283-1293.
Meacham, Jon and McGraw, Tim. Songs of America: Patriotism, Protest, and the Music That Made a Nation. Random House Publishing Group, 2019.
Mitchell, Verner D. and Davis, Cynthia, editors. Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
O’Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Randall, Dudley. “Ballad of Birmingham.” Poetry Foundation, 2020. Web.
Smith, Megan. “You asked, we answered: Why is there a question mark at the end of the National Anthem?” National Museum of American History, 2013, Web.
“Star-Spangled Banner.” Smithonian, 2020. Web.
“The Things They Carried.” National Endowment for the Arts, 2020. Web.
Zimmerman, Bill. “The Four Stages of the Antiwar Movement.” The New York Times, 2017, Web.