Literary comment

The history of black people is still in the forefront of everyone's minds today. In fact, especially in the United States, blacks went unnoticed for years. Slavery, lynching, segregation, they were victims of scorn and disdain during the 18th century until the late 20th century. The act of lynching consisted of executing a person, an accused, without regular trial or jury, by inflicting serious violence on that person. The execution of black people in the United States began in 1865 with the creation of the racist group, the Ku Klux Klan. Not content with President Lincoln’s decision to abolish slavery in 1863, they decided to intervene. This famous poem was written by Abel Meeropol (best known under his pseudonym Lewis Allan) a Russian teacher from the Bronx. It deals with lynching of Black people. Indeed, he wrote this poem to express his horror after seeing a photograph of the lynching of two men.Strange Fruit became a song, performed most famously by Billie Holiday, an American jazz singer and songwriter. She was used to sing it in the Coffee Society (the first integrate cabaret that means that Black people were accepted) and she had the talent to transfix the audience each time she sang it. Moreover Strange Fruit is not only the first American protest song but also the most powerful. Its political and historical implications are very important. It has become the hymn of all oppressed minorities victims and of all racist acts victims. So we can ask us what are the symbols in this poem who translate the cruelty endured by black people . Firstly , we will study the composition of this poem.
Then , we will see that Abel Meeropol uses an ironic form , and why she uses it . Thirdly , we will describe what is the Ku Klux Klan . Finally , we will note that this lynching was represented by many photographs .

I) The composition of the poem. firstly , the form of the poem .

-A poem divided into 3 stanzas which are quatrains.