The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till
The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till - context Summary
Emmett Till Murder
This short quatrain serves as the closing of Brooks’s ballad about the lynching of Emmett Till. It compresses aftermath and mourning into a few stark images: the bereaved mother in a vivid room, ritual gestures of coffee and a kiss, and a landscape of “windy grays” and blood-red prairie. The poem anchors the national atrocity in intimate, domestic grief.
Read Complete Analyses(after the murder, after the burial) Emmett's mother is a pretty-faced thing; the tint of pulled taffy. She sits in a red room, drinking black coffee. She kisses her killed boy. And she is sorry. Chaos in windy grays through a red prairie.
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