Incindent, Countee Cullen (1925)

Incident

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

His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

That's all that I remember. 

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DISCUSS

1. What is the nature of the interaction between the two boys?

2. Why does the speaker remember nothing more than the incident, even though he stayed in Baltimore from "May until December"?

3. In a paragraph compare your experience of prejudice with the persona in the poem.

4. What do its form and rhyme add to this poem?

5. What is the power of the language? What are the effects of the use of the term nigger?

ANSWER

1. At first, the persona feels was happy. As the evidence, in the stanza one, second line, 'Heart-filled, head-filled with glee'. The interaction is characterized by his friendly gesture to the Baltimorean. This interaction had been supported in stanza two, line three, ' And I smiled, but he poked out'.

2. The speaker remembers the incident because it was happens in the early stage of growth. He was 8 years old. The Baltimorean makes the boy feels guilty, oppressed, scare and feeling uncomfortable. Regarding to the Russian Physicist, Ivan Pavlov, reflexes and automatic behavior that is caused by a stimulus from the environment can affect the boy’s behavior. For instance, a boy saw a dog for the first time, and he was chased by the dog. So, it will set to the boy’s mindset that it was harmful. As the result, the behavior was manipulated. This incident will definitely give a scar to the boy’s lifetime. For this reason, he still remembers the incident.

3. In comparing the prejudice experience between the personas, I also have an experience of prejudice. It was prejudice towards religion. Pious person vs. common people. Both of them have their own misunderstood. As what I can see, it was really hard for common people to greet or being friends with the pious people while the pious also didn't have a good communication to attract the other group.  There is a huge gap between them. For me, being friends is not about religion. It is about the similarity, the enjoyment, and the understanding.

4. The form of this poem is three-quatrain ballad about the trauma of racial naming for a child. The rhyme scheme ABCB is employed here where the second line of the quatrain rhymes with the fourth. The first three lines of each have seven, six, and then eight syllables.

5. The power of language that had been used in this poem is clearly and straight mentioned about racism towards age. ‘Whit’ can be referring to the white people, which is the majority of the people in Baltimore. “Nigger “give negative effects towards the black people because in that particular time, there was racism crisis occur between white people and African-American people.