Between the World and Me

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1935

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Mob Violence and Racial Hatred

Content Warning: This section of the guide features references to racially-motivated violence and murder, specifically lynching.

The speaker presents racial hatred and mob violence at its most ugly and extreme. The scene unfolds gradually, as the horrified speaker puts together in his mind the gruesome events that happened in the wood clearing. He is able to imaginatively enter the victim’s body and his state of mind; thus, the murder is presented, in effect, from the victim’s point of view.

A white mob—made up of those bent on violence as well as others who come to watch and gloat and antagonize the others (like the sex worker who wears red lipstick)—seizes the Black man and the chase ends. The mob strips him and beats him bloody. People are shouting, urging the attackers on, and feeling righteous in their anger. They want to see the man burnt alive. He cries out but his voice cannot be heard in the din. He is covered with hot tar that tears at his skin, and the feathers enter raw flesh, compounding his pain. The scene is created with stark imagery that is neither poetic nor subtle but vividly descriptive of the mob, the man, and the natural environment. The imagery is visual, auditory, and tactile. The visual imagery piles up thick and fast; just a few examples are the white bones, the torn tree branches, the faces of the crowd, and the tattered clothes of the dead man. Auditory images include the mob’s bloodthirsty screams and the dogs’ barks. The tactile imagery is focused on the victim, who describes the physical sensations he experiences as he is tarred, feathered, and set on fire. The entire scene is cruel, inhuman, and pitiless—a celebration of torture and death by those who embody an entrenched and ruthless racist ideology. It is so shocking that even nature seems to protest against it: The stump of the sapling points “accusingly” (Line 5) to the sky.

Pity, Compassion, and Transformation

The speaker says nothing about himself or his background, but he is blessed with an extraordinary gift of imaginative empathy, to the extent that he in effect becomes the lynch victim; in the act of merging with him, he experiences everything the dead man went through.

There is little in the opening stanza that prepares for this transformation. The speaker “stumbled suddenly upon the thing” (Line 1); he has no idea what it is or what will happen as a result of his discovery. The key to the transformation is the word “pity” (Line 11), which he feels immediately after surveys the scene and realizes what he is looking at—the bits and pieces left behind after a lynching. What he sees is no longer the “thing” he first came upon but the remains of a man who once lived and breathed and enjoyed and suffered just like everyone else. Except that he was marked out for a cruel, painful, unjust death. It is pity and compassion that triggers the miraculous transformation that the speaker experiences, and, as a result, he becomes the dead man. The process by which this happens is clearly delineated. It starts at Line 14, where he observes the bones “melting themselves into my bones” (emphasis added). By the end of the fourth stanza, the transformation is complete: “And a thousand faces swirled around me, clamoring that my life be burned...” (Line 17). From then on there is no distinction between speaker and victim; through pity, they have become one entity, and the speaker’s life, because of what he has experienced and learned, will never be the same again.

Learning Through Fear

The speaker’s transformation as he becomes the dead victim and experiences the man’s terror is the moment that something dreadful thrusts itself “between the world and me” (Line 3). For a few minutes, the speaker is no longer himself; that horrifying experience takes over him, so that he is no longer the person he was, enjoying a morning walk in the woods. It is as if that world has been obliterated and a new, destabilizing, and awful reality has taken possession of him, interposing itself between his usual self and his normal experience of life.

When the intensity of that experience fades, it nonetheless leaves a permanent trace in his being, as suggested by the final line, that he is “now dry bones and [his] face a stony skull staring in yellow surprise at the sun” (Line 25). He must now live with the knowledge he has assimilated in those few desperate minutes. The indelible, searing knowledge of what can happen to a Black man at the hands of racist white people radically affects the way he thinks, feels, and acts. It colors his perceptions and understanding, thus continually (not just in the moments he reexperienced the lynching) interposing itself “between the world and me” (Line 3). In that terrifying experience, he certainly felt great fear but the knowledge he acquired will stand him in good stead in the future, painful though it may be. It is as if his eyes are now opened and he knows the nature of the society in which he lives. His interactions with the world are no longer innocent and free, but darkened by knowledge of the worst of human nature and the threat of violence that he lives under at all times. Psychologically scarred he may be, but he is also armed with knowledge of the truth.