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Gwendolyn BrooksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The second line of “We Real Cool” sets the location of the poem at The Golden Shovel. This pool hall holds seven young men who speak the majority of the lines in the poem. The name, The Golden Shovel, holds significance because shovels are used for manual labor, including gravedigging. The golden quality of this shovel, in contrast, indicates great worth, importance, and aesthetic beauty. The darker implications of the shovel’s use resonate at the final sentence of the poem: “We / die soon” (Lines 9-10). The shovel evokes the approaching demise of the young men.
The word “we” recurs eight times in the poem. The repetition builds rhythm and rhyme, and emphasizes the collective identity of the young men speaking. This persona poem, unlike others, uses a first person plural perspective to convey the identity of the speakers. The young men speak as one, but their unity seems fragile as they progress, culminating in a prediction of their own death. When the reader takes a pause at the end of each line, each “we” hangs on a note of suspense, further indicating that the group may be vulnerable and dissolve at any moment.
By Gwendolyn Brooks
A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
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A Sunset of the City
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Boy Breaking Glass
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Cynthia in the Snow
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Maud Martha
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my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
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Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)
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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
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The birth in a narrow room
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The Blackstone Rangers
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The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
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The Crazy Woman
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The Lovers of the Poor
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The Mother
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the rites for Cousin Vit
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To Be in Love
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To The Diaspora
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Ulysses
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