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Blackberries Yusef Komunyakaa

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Countless people start their lives in situations that they would not have picked for themselves if they had been given the choice. This seems to be the case in the poem “Blackberries” by Yusef Komunyakaa. The speaker reflects on what he had to do as a child and seems to feel guilty and regretful of his actions.The speaker in this poem seems to be reminiscing on his life as a child and the things he could not have yet in life. The speaker uses the simile “They left my hands like a printer’s / Or thief’s before a police blotter” (1-2). In these lines the reader comes to the conclusion the young boy is stealing the blackberries he is picking. These lines could lead the reader to believe that the speaker feels guilty about taking the blackberries because he compared himself to a thief in a police station. While the speaker seems to feel guilty about taking the berries, …show more content…

The speaker states “The big blue car made me sweat” (19). This shows that the people who had the things the speaker could not have like a “big blue car” made him nervous since just seeing it made him sweat. The speaker states “I saw the boy / & girl my age, in the wide back seat / Smirking” (21-23). He could have been sweating at the idea of the children his age watching him. These children watching him try to make money would have been embarrassing to him since they did not have to work for the things they had and he did. The speaker could have been sweating at the thought to the children his age finding out that he had stolen the berries he was selling. As well as making him nervous, the people in the car made him feel inferior. With the children smirking at him, the speaker more than likely felt ashamed of what he had done especially with the evidence of the blackberries staining his hands like a “thief’s before a police blotter”

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