Analysis of The Suicide
James Weldon Johnson 1871 (Jacksonville) – 1938 (Wiscasset)
For fifty years,
Cruel, insatiable Old World.
You have punched me over the heart
Till you made me cough blood.
The few paltry things I gathered
You snatched out of my hands.
You have knocked the cup from my thirsty lips.
You have laughed at my hunger of body and soul.
You look at me now and think,
'He is still strong,
There ought to be twenty more years of good punching there.
At the end of that time he will be old and broken,
Not able to strike back,
But cringing and crying for leave
To live a little longer.'
Those twenty, pitiful, extra years
Would please you more than the fifty past,
Would they not, Old World?
Well, I hold them up before your greedy eyes,
And snatch them away as I laugh in your face,
Ha! Ha!
Bang —!
Scheme | ABXXXXXX XXXXXXX AXBXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101 10010011 11111001 111111 01101110 111111 1110111101 111111011001 1111101 1111 1111101111101 1011111111010 110111 11001011 1101010 110100101 111110101 11111 11111011101 01101111011 11 1 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 717 |
Words | 145 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 7, 7 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 187 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 43 sec read
- 57 Views
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"The Suicide" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20741/the-suicide>.
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