Elements of Literature Course 5

5

10

Locked arm in arm they cross the way,
The black boy and the white,
The golden splendor of the day,
The sable pride of night.

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare,
And here the fair folk talk,
Indignant that these two should dare
In unison to walk.

Oblivious to look and word
They pass, and see no wonder
That lightning brilliant as a sword
Should blaze the path of thunder.

5

10

Once, riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.

5 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
10 From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.

1. Review your Quickwrite. Do the boys in “Tableau” act toward their critics as you would act toward yours?
2. What metaphors describe the two boys in the first stanza?
3. In the third stanza, who or what is “lightning brilliant as a sword”? Who or what is the “path of thunder”?
4. Why should such a commonplace thing as the friendship between two boys evoke such a dramatic response? What larger topic do you think the poem is really about?
5. Look at your Quickwrite notes. Does the poem describe a mere incident or something much larger? Explain.
6. What might lead a child to insult an eight-year-old boy in the way described here? In what ways is a child’s prejudice even more disturbing than an adult’s?
7. Review your response to First Thoughts. What ironic overtones does the title have?
8. The speaker never directly states his emotional response to the experience. How does the last stanza indirectly make clear the impact the event had on him?
9. Do you think that the content and message of “Tableau” and “Incident” are outdated, or are the scenes described in these poems still occurring today? Explain.

Compare and contrast the diction and sentence structure in "Tableau" and "Incident." Take notes that show how Cullen uses language to create two different effects in poems that are about very similar subjects.

Write a conversation in which the two boys who appear in "Tableau" discuss what happens in "Incident" with the eight-year-old boy who was the victim of the incident.

Suppose you were going to make a short film based on the poem "Incident." To convince a producer that you have a good idea, write a list of planned camera shots, in the order in which they would appear on screen. Then write a treatment, or summary, of your vision of the film. If you wish, find or compose music that you would use as an appropriate soundtrack for your film, and include a recording of that music with your film treatment.