Incident by Countee Cullen

Incident

BY COUNTEE CULLEN

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.

Explorations of the Text

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

Prejudice between white and black people during 1925 in American.

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

“Nigger” called by that Baltimorean gave a big impact to that boy till his memory was just left this.

The Reading/Writing Connection

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

My sister is a physically disable and people used to look at her with different sights. This is not something she wants and all humans are imperfect. This prejudice makes me mad and sad because she is human too, and her appearance is also normal, not that she looks differ from human, so there is needn’t to look disable people with different sights.

Ideas for Writing

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

The form of this poem is 3 stanzas and each stanza is with 4 lines and the rhyme of this poem is ABCB.

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

The way we control the language and the tone we use when we speak the language, either soft tone or harsh tone. The term nigger is a type of insult that when the Baltimorean poked out his tongue and called the boy nigger, this is a type of prejudice and it leave a deep impact to the boy, made him felt hurt and remember forever.