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Balliad of Bermingham. Dalton 1 Dalton ENGL 1302 March 17, 2005 Safety
and Irony Dudley Randall?s ?Ballad of Birmingham? is ...
Submitted by rancherdan on April 30, 2006
Category: American History
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Dalton 1
Dalton
ENGL 1302
March 17, 2005
Safety and Irony
Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham” is acted out like a play with three characters. They are the mother, the daughter, and a third person. This ballad uses irony to depict the struggles of a mother in times of racial inequality and violence and her eagerness to please her daughter by offering a safe alternative to what her daughter wants to do. The daughter wants to take part in helping the world become a better place by participating in a Freedom March. Her patriotism is commendable, but the mother is certain of the dangers of such a march and ironically, she offers a compromise that is possibly the worst decision she will make in her life.
In the first stanza, the daughter is offering to her mother a compromise of going downtown instead of out to play. She wants to march in the streets of Birmingham in a Freedom March. Her mother is all too aware of what goes on at these types of demonstrations and how there are racists that don’t care if you are only a young child. The irony here is even the people you should be able to trust are not trustworthy, which is implied in the second stanza: “For the dogs are fierce and wild / And clubs and hoses and guns and jails / Aren’t good for a little child.” The clubs and hoses belong to the police for crowd control and in this era, the police were against civil rights and treated the blacks badly. They were supposed to protect the peaceful protestors but that isn’t always what happened. It is apparent after reading this stanza that this is a ballad that uses irony to imply a tragic ending is inevitable.
Dalton 2
The daughter begins to argue with her mother: “But mother, I won’t be alone. / Other children will go with me / And march the streets of Birmingham.” The daughter has a solid and admirable reason for wanting to go, as the last line...
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