Two lines that I
really believe depict the true meaning of this poem would have to be, “Where
it’s rough and untended and hungry weed grows. / A girl gets sick of a rose.”
By the first line mentioned, it is referring to the backyard of the poem, which
has to do with all of the African Americans that this girl wants to hang out
with hang out together. But, this girl’s mother doesn’t allow her to hang out
in the “backyard”, and this is definitely because of the time period. These
children aren’t any different from her, but in this time period, white people
believed that African American people were bad people, and had no sense of
direction in their lives, and they all would wind up doing bad things. So the
denotation of “weeds” is obviously a troublesome plant that can ruin your
nicely tended yard. But, the connotation that I have of “weeds” in this poems
is how white people feel that African American people ruin neighborhoods and
nice little girls. This little girl’s mother believes that she is a nicely brought
up girl, and doesn’t want her to be ruined by the “weeds”. By the second line
mentioned, it’s showing the longing tone of this poem. Obviously this girl
doesn’t mean that she is literally sick of a flower; She is sick of having to
stay away from the African American children, because she doesn’t think they
are as bad as people make them out to be. She wants to be friends with them and
do fun things with all of them. But, because of the time period, she is not
allowed to. So, the denotation of this line a girl getting sick f seeing or
smelling a certain flower. But, my connotation of this line is that a little
girl who has never been allowed to play with African American children is sick
of all of the stereotypes on these kids that seem like they’d be really good
playmates. This definitely helped shape my understand because I can see how
this little girl is “sick” of things being this way, and she longs for things
to be different.
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