It is hard to disagree that this world’s past and present are filled with both joyful and significant events and terrible incidents that continue to frighten people with their cruelty for many years. Many factors are involved in such events, including racial discrimination, which people still cannot completely eliminate. Fortunately, writers and poets use their literary talent to reflect an incident on paper, and their words keep people from forgetting the victims and perpetrators of the past. One of these literary works is a poem called “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.” Written in 1960 by Gwendolyne Brooks, the poem explores the process of change that takes place in Carolyn Bryant’s mind as she replays recent horrific events in her head.
Brooks’s poem is devoted to the violent and, in fact, wanton murder of Emmett Till – an African-American boy who was visiting his family in Money, Mississippi, in August 1955. When discussing this outrageous case, people usually talk about the teenager himself, his killers, and his poor mother. At the same time, there was also another person involved in the incident – Carolyn Bryant, whose role in the whole situation is still debatable. According to Carolyn, the boy was allegedly flirting with her, which was unacceptable for a Black person. Many people accuse the woman of lying and the very murder of Emmet without thinking about what she felt after her husband was acquitted. In her controversial artistic narrative, Brooks gives readers a glimpse of the situation through Carolyn’s eyes.
The poem describes the changes in Mrs. Bryant’s confused consciousness. It is an ordinary morning after the trial, and it may seem that Carolyn is simply cooking breakfast. However, her bacon burns, meaning that the woman’s thoughts are far from breakfast, and she is worried about something (Brooks line 13). At first, the reader notices that Caroline is trying to justify her husband’s actions. She imagines herself as “the milk-white maid, the “maid mild,” her husband as “the Fine Prince,” and the murdered teenager as “the Dark Villain” who wanted to defame her and ruin “the Happiness-Ever-After” (Brooks 6,8,9). The woman thinks that everything turns out very well, and she is the heroine of a wonderful ballad. However, very soon, her opinion changes, and now she thinks that the villain was actually a weak teenage boy “with a mouth too young to have lost every reminder / Of its infant softness” (Brooks 28-29). This thought ruins Carolyn’s fun, and she looks at the situation from another perspective.
In the following lines, the author describes how the woman is convinced of her suspicions and gets horrified because of it. Mrs. Bryant admits to herself that “she could not remember now what that foe had done / Against her, or if anything had been done” (Brooks 44-45). This is when the whole picture of the recent events begins to crumble. The reader starts to see in Carolyn not a villain but a frightened woman who is afraid to appear in front of her husband without lipstick on her lips so as not to seem unworthy. Therefore, she is another victim who lives with the villain and cannot protect her children. Actually, when Mr. Bryant mentions that he wanted to kill all Black people and then slaps their kid during breakfast, Carolyn can “think only of blood” (Brooks 95). Finally, when Mr. Bryant kissed his wife, “a hatred for him burst into glorious flower” (Brooks 133). It was when Carolyn finally stopped seeing her husband as a prince and realized that he was the villain.
When reading this poem, it is essential to be aware of the terrible event it describes and to know the details of Emmett Till’s murder. According to Tell, on August 24, 1955, Emmet allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant (55). Whitaker provides more information stating that the teenager tried to ask her out and grabbed her by the waist when the woman tried to leave (191). It is uncertain how Carolyn’s husband learned about Emmet’s actions, but four days later, on August 28, he and his brother went to the house of Emmet’s great uncle, Mose Wright. They grabbed the boy and drove him to the river. This is where the two men beat the boy almost to death, shot him in the head, and then threw his body into the river (Whitaker 194). Emmet’s mother decided to have an open-casket funeral so that the whole world could witness the cruelty and violence of some White people.
To draw a conclusion, one can say that Brooks’s poem is indeed a significant literary work that provides people with valuable insights regarding the murder of the teenage boy. There are many deep ideas and metaphors in this poem that remind the reader that the motives of someone’s actions are not always evident. Emmett may or may not have behaved as the witnesses claimed, but before blaming Carolyn for her lie, one should think about how she might have felt. In this poem, the reader observes her changing consciousness, as a result of which the woman may have repented of her deed.
Works Cited
Brooks, Gwendolyne. “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.” Poetry Society of America, 1960. Web.
Tell, Dave. “Can a Gas Station Remember a Murder?” Southern Cultures, vol. 23, no. 3, 2017, pp. 54–61. Web.
Whitaker, Hugh Stephen. “A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Murder and Trial of Emmett Till.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, vol. 8, no. 2, 2005, pp. 189–224. Web.