We Real Cool

We Real Cool, written by Gwendolyn Brooks shows the path youths faced when they chose to not attend school. Brooks was born before the Harlem Renaissance, which gives the poem its setting. The Harlem Renaissance was the rebirth of African American Arts (History). We Real Cool is a ballad. A ballad is a poem telling a short story based on a theme or narrative (Strand and Boland 73). We Real Cool shows what is was like living as an African American young man during this time. The poem opens with…

“We die soon” is We Real Cool’s most important line because it is saying that our lives are not long enough to do everything we want, but to take risks and enjoy life. The significance of the poem is that life is short so you should enjoy it as much as you can. I came to this conclusion at first by just looking at the poem, you can obviously tell that this is a short poem just like life. Throughout the poem I picture a group of teens playing pool at night and just enjoying themselves without a…

theme of the poem “We Real Cool” is theirs as a group of boys rebellious with their own actions. I know this is the theme for “We” is repeated eight times in this eight-line poem. • Define the poetic devices (e.g., rhythm, figurative language, etc.) used in the poem. Offer at least two examples. The poetic devices used in the poem “We Real Cool” is epistrophe and alliteration. Epistrophe is defined as the repetition of a word at the end of successive clauses or sentences. In case,“We” is the…

Poetic Explication: “We Real Cool” We Real Cool, is a rather short poem written by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1960, right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. Near the beginning of the poem it sounds like everything is quite alright with everyone, with “We real cool,” but by the end of the poem, everything is not ok, and the poem ends with “We / die soon,” which means that death will soon occur, if change does not happen (Brooks 3, 9-10). Through the use several literary techniques, Brooks…

In both “What It’s Like to be a Gang Member” by Bill Lee and “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks gang life is portrayed as dangerous, hard, and useless demonstrating that joining one is not worth it or good. In “What It’s Like to be a Gang Member” by Bill Lee. Lee quotes “the gang I was in was responsible for the golden dragon massacre.” Because of gang life Lee was part of a mass killing and has to deal with the trauma of being in a event like that also there were lots of weapons and he could…

collective group of boys saying “We real cool. We left School. We die soon”. Brooks uses the young boy’s voices as a group to convey the attitude of most young men. Young men are cool and casual, they go with the group. Brooks uses the collective voice of the young boys because the poem is about how the boys do everything together; there is no one decision or one leader of the group. The speakers in the poem exemplify the lack of choices in society; there is no choice in “we”. The speakers think…

was dark outside. We can tell that the father works relentlessly because the poem states “cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather.” The story goes on saying no one ever thanks him for the work, but whoever is telling the poem, could hear cold splinters breaking. The father calls the narrator to get ready. The narrator’s shoes were polished. From how the story is told, the narrator is the son of the father. The poems “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks, and “We Old Dudes” by…

Raymond Johnson Intro into literature Mr. McDonald 11/9/14 We Are Cool Gwendolyn Brooks' poem "We Real Cool" was written in 1959, which was in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement. The poem sums up the reality that many adolescences faced at that time whether they chose to drop out of school. Within this era in American history the case of Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, the Supreme Court legislated that it was unconstitutional to segregate schools based on race; nevertheless,…

Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool” there are several aspects of the poem that work together to present an interesting scene. The most outstanding characteristic I found was how the two beginning lines of the poem “THE POOL PLAYERS,” and “SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL” are written to look like stage directions as they are the only two lines that are written entirely in capital letters and there is a large amount of space separating those lines from the rest of the poem as we would see in a…

Gwendolyn Brooks poem, We Real Cool, was written in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement and racial tensions that existed during the 1960s. During this time period many African Americans were constantly rejected from possessing basic human rights and becoming sufficient members of society. Brooks poem reflects how while facing constant scrutiny and prejudice from their white counterparts, much of the African-American youth struggled to discover their identity, questioning their roles in…