He compares the land of the south to a concubine, or one who is given to someone in a position of power specifically for the pleasure of the one in power. In the final stanza of Georgia Dusk, the speaker calls out to the singers, those few whose voices rose up among the apathy of society. The speaker continues with stanza two on the next page.īring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs. The use of words such as “passive” “lazy” and “indolent” gives the poem an extremely passive tone which contrasts with the audacious content. This perhaps reflects on the way the society was reacting to these atrocities.
In this stanza, Toomer writes in a melancholy and passive tone. Many in the South accused, attacked, hung, and burned African American people for any reason they could come up with, and they called these events, “barbecues”.
Poetic dusk trial#
An African American person rarely received a fair trial, and sometimes were even murdered without a trial because of any accusation that might arise. These crimes against humanity were sometimes done under the law, and sometimes done outside of the law. They took African American people who were accused of even the slightest crime and hung them. One of the many atrocities they committed included lynching. While African American people were said to have their freedom, many people in the South made it almost impossible for the African American people to live free lives. Although during the time of the Harlem Renaissance, slavery had long been abolished, equal treatment was still far away. One of the most horrific truths of America’s past is the occurrence of what some heartless people called “barbecues”. He states that the day “passively darkens for night’s barbecue”.
The speaker describes the “setting sun” but not as something beautiful and peaceful, but rather as “indolent”. The words “lazily” and “disdaining” suggest gives the poem a slow, low key yet dark tone. The first stanza of Georgia Dusk begins with the description of a sky.
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