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"The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks tells the story of a man, Rudolph Reed, who is trying to find the perfect home for his family but must also deal with the affects of racial injustice and how it will end up becoming his demise.

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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed is a narrative poem since it narrates how the Reeds move to a white neighborhood and the aftereffects. Throughout the poem, there is plenty of repetition. For example, in stanza 2 there is repetition of the word hungry. It's repeated 4 times, and two of those times the words were next to each other. The poem is also a ballad and each stanza has 4 verses. The poem also has rhyme, for example, in the third stanza the second and fourth verses rhyme with each other.

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The tone starts off with a sense of hopefulness and contentness as the family is described moving into a new home. The tone is hopeful as we see why they wanted to move and then having the opportunity to move to a dream home with "a beautiful banistered stair." The tone then abruptly shifts with the tenth stanza at "The first night, a rock, as big as two fists." The tone shifts into something more sinister and grim as the families harsh time in their new house is introduced. This new sinister tone works to emphasize the unjust treatment the family endures and the events that will follow their mistreatment.

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The poem, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks follows Rudolph Reed and his family who moved into a white dominated neighborhood. The neighbors were unwelcoming forcing the family to deal with racial discrimination, until it became too much and caused the end of Rudolph Reed.

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The poem is positive when the family was talking about their idea of an American dream, but the shifts to a more terrifying tone when explaining the rocks being thrown through the windows. At the end, Mabel was whimpering and blaming herself while all her mother could do was help her to stop bleeding, initiating a defeated tone.

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Simile: "May never hear the roaches falling like fat rain"

"The first night, a rock,big as two fists"

Hyperbole: "But hungry hungry for a house"

Personification: "A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye"

"Patience arched to endure"

Imagery: "A silvery ring of glass"

Symbolism: "Her oak-eyed mother did no thing"

Metaphor: "He ran like a mad thing into the night"

Parallelism: "The first night...The second...The third night"

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The poem follows a ABCB rhyme, this is because of its nature as a ballad. Which also lends itself to a rhythm of alternating lines of 4 stress syllables and 3 stress syllables. It is also a Narrative poem telling a story even including foreshadowing to support this. There are also multiple examples of polysyndeton (stanza 5), repetition (stanza 2), anaphora (stanza 7), enjambment (stanza 3), caesura (stanza 10), and consonance (stanza 9) that effect the structure flow, and rhythm of the poem.

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The excerpt, "Ballad of Rudolph Reed" illustrates Rudolph Reed and his family searching for their ideal home in a safe and clean area. However, when they finally find the perfect home, they face racial inequality when their neighbors were caught throwing rocks at their windows every night. One of these rocks collided with Mabel, Rudolph's daughter, and she was bleeding immensely. In response, Rudolph murdered four of his neighbors out of spite for revenge until he was finally was killed himself.

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Repetition: "I am not hungry for berries. I am not hungry for bread. But hungry hungry for a house. Where at night a man in bed"

Simile: "May never hear the roaches falling like fat rain."

Polysyndeton: "Oh my home may have its east or west Or north or south behind it."

Parallelism: "The first night, a rock..." "The second..." "The third night..."

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The tone in the ballad, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks shifts from hopeful to violent with a brutal sequence of events. The tone begins hopeful, as Reed's family is moving into a new home that they are full of joy for, finally having enough room and a beautiful sanctuary to reside in. The tone shifts to violence in-between line 36 and line 37, where the poem goes from dreaming about having a front and back yard filled with beauty to incidences of racist assaults on their house from white folks. The home is no longer full of hope, but filled with blood and death.

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The poem "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks, describes the tragic reality of racial injustice through the use of tone, visual imagery, and repetition to convey the misfortune of the Reed family, as they move into a white dominated neighborhood feeling immediately unwelcome. Although, they are simply trying to fulfill their dream of owning a house to live in as a normal family, just like any other, their neighbors make it extremely difficult for them to do so with their menacing tactics in order to get them to leave the neighborhood.

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extended metaphor: oak (starts at "Rudolph Reed was oaken. His wife was oaken too")

repetition: "hungry hungry" , "dark little..."

anaphora: "I am not hungry" , "May never" , "Nary" , "And"

personfication: "stir as if in pain"

simile: "falling like fat rain"

antithesis: "east or west" , "north or south"

alliteration: "steep and steady stare"

parallelism: "first night...second...third" , "by the time he had hurt his first white man...by the time he had hurt his fourth white man"

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Visual imagery: "With his dark little wife, And his dark little children three."

Repetition: "Where every room of many rooms Will be full of room."

Personification: "A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye."

Simile: "The first night, a rock, big as two fists."

Metaphor: "(Though oaken as man could be.)"

Alliteration: "And a beastly butcher knife."

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The poem "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks shows a tone shift from line 36 to line 37. At the beginning of the poem, the tone is hopeful and optimistic as the family is hoping for a better life and home than the one they are in. From line 37 to the end of the poem, the tone switches to one of dread and violence when the family's house begins to be vandalized, especially when Rudolph is killed for defending his daughter.

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The tone shift in, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" takes place in stanzas 8-10 when the mood of the poem transitions from hopeful to defeated and vengeful.

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The tone starts off as hopeful as the main character Rudolph states his aspirations of obtaining a new house for his family to stay in. Rudolph ends up achieving his goal and is able to live in a new house providing for his family. The tone then shifts to suspense as he now realizes he has to defend his family from the racism that roams in his new neighborhood. The tone shifts one more time over to gruesome as he dies trying to defend his family to the racists.

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The poem "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks presents the tragedy of a mental break by using perspective-based juxtaposition, similes that evoke specific connotations, and a central nature metaphor to show what can occur when someone reaches their limit. Despite Rudolph caring dearly for his family and wanting nothing but the best for them, his strong devotion to defending them led him to cause irreparable harm to others around him including his own family when he finally reached his limit.

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Metaphor: "Though oaken as man could be." This metaphor compares someone's strength or solidity to that of oak wood, suggesting the person is as sturdy and resilient as oak.

Alliteration: "steep and steady stare." This phrase uses the repetition of the 's' sound to create a sense of smoothness and consistency in the description of someone's gaze, emphasizing its intensity and unwavering nature.

Repetition: "Where every room of many rooms Will be full of room." The repetition of the word "room" emphasizes the abundance of space within each individual room, suggesting a place of great spaciousness or expansiveness.

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The poem "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks describes the struggles Rudolph Reed and his family encounter while looking for a suitable home, including racial injustice and discrimination. They search for a place where they can live, but are greeted with hatred. People toss rocks at them and show disrespect multiple times. Then, they got hit with a silvery ring of glass, which made Rudolph Reed angry since the glass hurt Mabel and left her wounded. Rudolph Reed went out to hurt the men that had been discriminating against them, however, in the end, he was the one that got killed. Brooks shows the harsh reality of racial injustice, highlighting Rudolph's will to give his family a better life in spite of their challenges.

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Enjambment: "and his two good girls and his good little man Oakened as they grew."

Caesura: "A neighbor would look, with a yawning eye"

Simile: "The second, a rock as big as three"

Personification: "plaster stir as if in pain"

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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed by Gwendolyn Brooks begins with an African-American family, described as "oaken," much like that of an oak tree: strong, yet easily uprooted in the face of a storm. This is a family desiring a house free of insects and free of unnecessary commotion, even more so than food. However, as the family moves into their home in an all-white neighborhood, they are quickly faced with racial violence and they quickly become the center of hostility. In the face of such discrimination, the father Rudolph Reed sends into a violent frenzy, but in the end, their family is uprooted and left in shambles with his ultimate demise. Utilizing a "ballad" format, which is a type of narrative genre, Brooks illustrates the efforts of Black families to own a home, and ultimately achieve the American dream.

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Towards the end of the poem, the author uses an example of a simile, "He ran like a mad thing into the night." Brooks usage of simile compares Rudolph Reed to moving throughout his neighborhood at night like a crazy man when he was trying to get revenge for hurting his daughter. By referring to Rudolph as a "thing", it further emphasizes the way the neighbors dehumanized him since he was African American and not the same color as them. This parallels the way society feels about African Americans and expresses that the neighbors never really accepted their family's presence in moving into their community. Next, Brooks incorporates an example of a heroic couplet, '"Rudolph Reed was dead. His neighbors gathered and kicked his corpse. "N****-" his neighbors said."' The heroic couplet conveys a moralistic theme by highlighting the white men's immoral and unjust racial crimes. By emphasizing the immoral unjust crimes of the white men towards the innocent family, this emphasizes it truly does not matter where your location is, racism still persists. The usage of the derogatory slur from the oppressors enforces the theme that the white men truly never accepted the idea of the family moving into their community. Even when Rudolph Reed's corpse lay still on the cold ground, the white men still degraded him as if he is an object, dead or alive.

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The poem, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks tells the story of a black family who moved into a predominately white community and experienced racial violence from their white neighbors. After having rocks thrown through their windows multiple times, Rudolph Reed's strength to hold against the violence had finally snapped after he saw that his daughter, Mabel, had gotten injured from the shattered glass. He left his house with a gun and a butcher knife, and killed four of his white neighbors before they were able to kill him.

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The structure of The Ballad of Rudolph Reed is seen as a narrative poem with 15 stanzas with 4 lines each. There is no meter, but there is a rhyme scheme of ABCB. In the first stanzas the rhyme scheme is “...oaken, too, man, grew..” ‘too’ and ‘grew’ rhyme. This ballad is a narrative because it is telling a story of this family who were assaulted in their own home. There are quotes in the poem to emphasize the narrative, stanzas 2-5 state, “I am not hungry for berries…”. Having a narrative ballad emphasizes the emotion and adds connection between the reader and poem.

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The poem is broken into 3 sections consisting of 16 ballad stanzas. It has a common ballad structure of stressed and unstressed syllables to invoke a form of tension in the tone. The structure is emphasized through the use of repetition in stanza 2 and consonance in stanza 9.

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In Brooks's narrative poem ¨Ballad of Rudolph reed¨, the author employs several devices to paint a picture of Rudolph reeds battle for equality and justice. Brooks uses a unique rhyme scheme, with an AbAb pattern that rotates between stressed and unstressed words an example is¨Rudolph Reed was okay. His wife was okay too. And his two good girls and his good little man Oakened as they grew.¨

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The poem, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks portrays the consequences of discrimination, through the use of extended metaphor regarding mental fortitude, parallelism connecting civility to insanity, and imagery illustrating violence in order to depict the sudden break in sanity and the devastating effects it has on a family resulting from the strain of racism. Although Rudolph Reed fits the description of a mentally strong and joyous man who has a deep love for his family, witnessing the harm of a loved one, resulting from racist actions, enacts a barbaric rampage causing death and destruction, in the effort of protection.

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Gwendolyn Brooks' "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" explains the tragedies of racial violence through the use of metaphor, simile, and personification in order to demonstrate the racism that a family encounters after striving for their dreams. Although Rudolph and his family are initially blinded to the intolerance that their neighbors display, they are succumbed to the racial violence of their neighbors when they grow increasingly aggressive.

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The tragedy of a mental break is exemplified by Brook’s utilization of foreshadowing. Brook describes Reed’s commitment to providing a better life for his family with, “All I know is I shall know it, And fight for it when I find it (lines 19-20).” This declaration of Reed’s desire for a new life for his family foreshadows the events later in the poem in which he physically fights his oppressors–those who threaten his family’s safety. This a reflection of the African American’s common experience in the desire to elevate their social status by homeownership. This connection to a societal trend works to show how such foreshadowing parallels the discrimination that can result in one reaching their mental limit, thereby causing them to behave in a manner they otherwise would not. By alluding to this eventual tragedy, there is irony at play as Reed expresses his metaphorical will to “fight for” his family, then having to literally fight and die for his family. Fighting for one’s home carries a connotation of bravery and righteousness, like a knight. Reed meets his end after going on a “savage” rampage, and he is seen more as a wild animal who needed to be put down. As such, this draws a comparison to the fact that many African-Americans were unsuccessful in their attempt to break through the pressures of racial stereotyping and discrimination.

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As the ballad comes to an end, Brooks continues to implement an extended metaphor to emphasize the family's resilience despite the sinister events that have plagued their night. While Mabel is whimpering, feeling the guilt of her father’s death, “Her oak-eyed mother did no thing…” Mabel’s mother isn’t showing any emotion, maintaining a straight face while tending to her distraught daughter. The mother’s eyes are described as oaken, which expresses the resilience and strength the mother holds in such a vulnerable, raw moment. Oak tree’s are known for their strength, and their capability of withstanding external factors until they can no longer handle the pain. This is seen in Rudolph , as “Rudolph Reed was oaken.” until he finally snaps after Mabel is hurt and, “He ran like a mad thing into the night..” Unlike Rudolph, the mother maintained oaken, emphasizing her strength in hiding her emotions and staying focused for her daughter. The mother saw the pain that came from Rudolph Reed breaking and did not want her daughter to see her befall the same dreadful fate as her father. The mother bears  the racism around her with resilience, knowing that giving in to her racist community, and avenging Rudolph, will not help her daughter. The mother’s oaken-eyes exemplify the consequences of discrimination, as she has to keep her anger within her, even after the racist assaults on her home, in order to avoid any more dire consequences. At times it is better to stay silent in the face of adversity as the repercussions may result in more problems; one must pick and choose their battles for what is best for themselves and their family in the moment.

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The poet uses an inverted sentence to demonstrate that the actions you do have consequences. The agent describes the man as a, "Black old, tough old, hell of a man" to persuade him to move into a neighborhood that he will be harmed. This action leads to the consequence of death for both 4 neighbors and Rudolph. The consequences of this are detrimental to the family specifically because they are black. This demonstrates that every action taken has a consequence, whether it be good or bad. Another example of inverted sentence is when the author accentuates," his dark little wife, And his dark little children three." He does this to establish a powerful emphasis on the fact that consequences for this family are especially dire considering they aren't welcomed into their new neighborhood based off of their skin color. This piece of poetry demonstrates to us that all consequences have actions.

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The poem "The Ballard of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks illustrates the repercussion of an unjust society through the use of sensory imagery, attentive alliteration and drastic repetition. In order to elucidate the hatred the community has towards the Reed family, provoking Rudolph Reed to become filled with wrath leading him to kill 4 men. Although Rudolph Reed strongly desired a safe home and community for his family, the racist acts done by the community turn their lives into a nightmare.

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The tone shift in, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks takes place in stanzas 8-10, when the mood of the poem transitions from hopeful to defeated and vengeful.

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The transition is emphasized when Rudolph Reed is explaining the way the house is going to be decorated with, "a front yard for flowers and a back for grass," and then mood switches when, "But nary a cursed Rudolph Reed." The conversion of the overall attitude of the poem highlights the way Reed's life changed along with his perspective on how he continues to gain his justice.

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The poem, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" by Gwendolyn Brooks displays the consequences of racial injustice through the use of a simile marking the breakdown of Rudolph Reed's character, a heroic couplet showing the degenerate morals of a white neighborhood, and parallelism that draws to themes of violence to highlight how morality unfolds and people fall victim to violent and malevolent natures when exposed to discrimination and conforming to a prejudiced group. Although Rudolph Reed is a strong, stubborn, family man, he turns to violence to protect his family and is driven to barbarous murder by his neighbor's threats.