In Angelina Weld Grimke’s poems “The Black Finger” and “Tenebris” we can see at least two times where Grimke relates the African American community to that of trees. Although it might seem a little strange, I think this was a really great way to show what it must have been like to be treated as badly as they were in that time. In the first poem, “The Black Finger”, Grimke writes, “I have just seen a beautiful thing/ Slim and still, /Against a gold, gold sky, /A straight cypress, /Sensitive /Exquisite, /A black finger”. In these lines we can see that she is saying a cypress tree is like a black finger. At first I was pretty confused on why Grimke would choose specifically a cypress tree, but then I did a little digging to see if the cypress tree had a deeper meaning. It turns out that a cypress tree is actually identified with mourning. After finding this out I thought that it fit really well with the times and the epidemic of African American suppression. I took Grimke comparing a black finger (or the African American community) to the cypress tree as saying that they are being put through so much and being treated as less the human, so they should be or be able to mourn and be mourning. The amount of people that were killed because they were different is insane and everyone should be mournful of that time in our history. Next, is the poem “Tenebris”. In this poem, Grimke writes, “There is a tree, by day, /That, at night, Has a shadow, /A hand huge and black, /With fingers long and black. /All through the dark, /Against the white man's house,”. We can see how Grimke writes again about a tree, but this time describing the tree as black hands and fingers. I think this time Grimke is using the tree to symbolize the strength African Americans can/will have against “the white man’s house”. I looked up some of the symbolism associated with trees and was a little surprised when I found out that liberation was one of them. Especially in this poem, we can see liberation is definitely one of the bigger themes being portrayed. We can see the theme of liberation in the lines “The black hand plucks and plucks /At the bricks.”, where Grimke talks about taking apart the white man’s house. Not only was Grimke stating in her poem that they would take back their own lives by tearing down the white man’s house, but also when she used a tree to represent African Americans.
2 Comments
Chloe Fleming
9/22/2019 07:59:27 am
I love how you broke this poem down into lines and explained them. When I first read this poem I was a little intimidated, but you did a great job explaining it. I also like how you did the research about trees, and included that in your blog. It brings a lot of context!
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