Hard Rick Essay, Research Paper
William Penn one time wrote No hurting, no thenar ; no irritants, no throne, no saddle sore, no glorification ; no cross, and no Crown. This quotation mark strongly relates to Etheridge Knight s Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane, for the chief character of Knight s Hard Rock excessively is faced with the battle between his desire for elevated position among his supporters and rebelliousness of the norms of the society. During the epoch of 1950s and the 1960s, our state was overcome by the battle for humanity and human right to vote. In 1955, Dr. Martin Luther King led the charge against the authorities for unjust intervention of African Americans by accepting leading of the first great Negro nonviolent presentation of modern-day times in the United States. His leading and rebellious force was the first great moving ridge of the Civil Rights Movement to brush the state. Etheridge Knight boldly parallels the life of Hard Rock and that of Dr. Martin Luther King by exemplifying the obvious differences and vague similarities.
The rubric of the verse form itself is an of import component in understanding the correspondence that is formed between the two persons. In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King set his nonviolent tactics in full swing in Birmingham, Alabama for which he was subsequently arrested and imprisoned. It is interesting to observe how both, Hard Rock and Dr. King, get down their battle for freedom in prison and parturiency. With this thought in head, one could successfully reason that in Knight s rubric, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane, Hospital for the Criminal Insane is implied as mentioning to the society s African American members who crazily believe that their battle would ensue in alteration for better. Webster s dictionary defines the word insane as mentally sick, huffy, brainsick, moonstruck and senseless ; all excessively many words that clearly depicts the African American community through the eyes of White America.
Difficult Rocks battle is illustrated in the first stanza, when the writer uses expressed imagination and metaphor to depict the physical and mental features of Hard Rock. He had cicatrixs, split violet lips, lumped ears, wales above his xanthous eyes, and one long cicatrix that cut across his temple and plowed through a thick canopy of kinky hair, reinforces the writer s description of Hard Rock as being an person solid in his beliefs who was known non to take no crap from cipher. These cicatrixs and hurts that have been inflicted upon him are grounds of his battle to interrupt free of the unmerited norms of the civilization at the clip. Similarly to Hard Rock, Dr. Martin Luther King was a figure that had defied all authorization and opposition to stand for what he believed in and face the iniquitous universe to give up itself before him. Though he did non hold any seeable cicatrixs on his face, as did Hard Rock, to turn out his battle for justness, he had broken liquors and esteems that were merely seeable through his runing eyes.
The 2nd stanza of Etheridge Knight s Hard Rock allows the reader a alone chance to witness the effects bestowed upon Hard Rock for his clang against the society that did non wish to accept him. Etheridge Knight in
her 2nd stanza brings reader s attending to the WORD by capitalising the text for its significance. The word WORD symbolizes the chitchat and guesss that had been crawling throughout the prison from ear to ear like a serpent through dark hunting for its quarry. The rumours glistening through the prison cells adopted that the physicians had eventually cured him and accordingly caused Hard Rock to no longer keep the award of a average nigga. It is in fact rather enchanting to observe the writer s usage of enunciation in tie ining Hard Rock as a disease infecting the society and non as a human being demanding just justness. Etheridge Knight audaciously correlates physicians, the curers of disease and infection, with extinguishing a disease, which in this instance happens to be Difficult Rock himself. Likewise, during 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King excessively was viewed upon as an infective disease upseting the normal flow of civilization and tradition that had to be eliminated to continue the tradition that America was build upon.
The 3rd stanza contains the conversation of two captives reminiscing Hard Rock s feats for which he was denounced the awful sentence that robbed him of his true nature. This stanza is alone in a manner that it provides a reader with non merely an history of what had occurred prior to his anguish, but besides goes on to stress the thought of Hard Rock as being a concrete character withstanding all authorization without dismay of the effects that might expect him. The duologue, Ol Hard Rock! Man, that s one loony nigga, is important in mode that it solidifies the correspondence between the life of Hard Rock and that of Martin Luther King. Like Hard Rock, Dr. King, excessively irrespective of fright of any injury, continued upon his journey to contend for the justness he believed was inevitable.
The 4th and the last paragraph tie in together, for they both depict Hard Rock s trial after the surgery and relay the letdown of the captives for the defect of their hero. Prisoners in this verse form mean the African American community that excessively desired the ends of freedom, as did Hard Rock and Martin Luther King, but lacked the bravery to revenge against the society. Hard Rock s deficiency of response to the racial twit of the bushwhacker was the first grounds of his failure, which related to the blackwash of Martin Luther King. As in the letdown and denial of the captives upon the deficiency of action on portion of Hard Rock, the African American community upon Martin Luther King s blackwash was engulfed in war between happening another strong leader to replace Dr. King s vision and bravery or fring their hopes and desires for infinity.
Etheridge Knight s Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane is an outstanding verse form for it focuses on the life of one of the America s greatest leaders to of all time populate. Knight forms an interesting and appealing analogues between Hard Rock, an person with great virtue and history of insane force, to that of Martin Luther King who cherished the thought of nonviolent presentations. Both persons are caught up in a society that rejects their freewill of idea and desires, but are driven by the will to win in their end for freedom.
