Strange Fruit, Q1 Response

Subjects difficult to write on are often even more difficult to read, evoking emotion while creating a pleasant reading experience is a challenge most authors are unable to accomplish. Although, Lewis Allan has done precisely this in his 1939 poem Strange Fruit. Allan uses meter and juxtaposition to euphemise the his depiction of the “strange fruit”, why emphasizing the irony of the lynching of black men in the Southern United States.

First, a false innocence is projected in the poem by Allan’s use of meter; the rhyme scheme and end-stopping create a pleasant tone that contrast the dark subject matter. By incorporating punctuation at the end of every line, Allan forces the reader to pause, emphasizing each rhyme …show more content…
The structure of the poem is such that lines four through eight all juxtapose the corresponding rhyming line. Allan directly contrasts the description of how the pasture should be with its reality: “Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh…. Smell of burning flesh!” The pasture should smell of flowers and be a place of beauty, but it is nothing but a place of death. The same type of pasture people would declare a place of God, a: “Pastoral scene”, that Allan views as crooked, like the “twisted mouth” of the deceased. He broadcasts how ironic it is for a man to declare himself faithful when he is capable of such horrific acts. But, juxtaposing the declaration in this way allows the reader to experience the ideal and the real in equal rations, thus decreasing the severity of the scene. Including the beautiful imagery in the beginning does not only juxtapose but makes reading the poem effortless. Had the whole poem resembled the more graphic imagery near in the final lines of the poem, the language used may have been more striking than the message. Describing the “strange fruit” through euphemism, by the use of meter and juxtaposition allowed Allan to effectively convey the horrors of senseless