Abel Meeropol Essays

“Strange Fruit” is a song written by Abel Meeropol and was made famous by the singer Billie Holliday. The big release of the song was in 1939, although it was written a few years before. Meeropol was weary about letting it out to the larger public, so he had it played in meetings, benefits, and house parties. Meeropol originally wrote it as a poem, which was inspired by a photograph of lynching. The song has historical context and is better understood once the listener knows some of the background

“One of Billie Holiday's most iconic songs is "Strange Fruit," a haunting protest against the inhumanity of racism” (Blair ). “Strange Fruit” was written by Abel Meeropol and published in 1937. Billie Holiday then went to to sing “Strange Fruits” in 1939, it quickly became one of her most requested songs. Abel Meeropol had once witnessed seeing a photograph of a lynching, aghast by what he had just seen, he decided to compose a poem about it. My overall response to the poem was stupefied because

“Strange Fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees” (Meeropol 4). This is a line well said by the author, Abel Meeropol. Abel Meeropol was a Jewish man who was labeled as a communist. The date that this poem was released was 1937. Abel’s motivation to “Strange Fruit” was when he saw an image of a lynching. Robert and Michael, the two boys that Abel adopted. Were the kids of biological parents, Julius, and Ethel Rosenberg. Although, the boys are adopted, Abel still treats them as if they were one of his own

Billie Holiday could be considered one of the most influential women in jazz, if not one of the most influential women in general. She was one of the first to incorporate anti-racist ideals and progressive thoughts through the outlet of music, influencing many others down the road. Her intense desire for equality and change could be due to the immense amounts of hardship during her younger years, which may have very well carried over into her adult singing career. Billie Holiday was abandoned at

In the Signalman, Dickens creates a sense of suspense by utilising the structure of his story. The story opens with the line “Halloa below there!” which immediately engages the reader’s attention as the readers are curious to know whom the narrator is speaking to. The story begins with one question and ends with another. The readers wonder why the unnamed person whom the narrator is talking to, is ‘below there’. This creates suspense as ‘below there’ hints at an underground environment, which subtly

In Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations, emerges around a young boy who grows up to being a “gentleman”. A young boy who seems to have no sense of identity, an orphan moved from place to place. Young Pip is an orphan brought up “by hand” by his short tempered, foul mannered sister, whom is married to a blacksmith Joe Gargery. Feeling he is a burden on his sister, young Pip is delighted at being given the opportunity to go off to London to improve himself and his life, he takes off with Miss

“A loving heart is the truest wisdom” says Charles Dickens. Having a heart that is able to love portrays the most wisdom and is relevant to modern day and Great Expectations. In Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, the readers are introduced to a boy named Pip that goes to London because a benefactor funds his journey to become a gentleman. Pip later finds out this benefactor is a convict who he met several years before. Pip is in love with a girl named Estella who he met as a young boy at Miss

The Expectations of An Outcast Not many people can say that they have experienced the same economic and social trials as Charles Dickens has. In the Victorian novel, Great Expectations, Dickens tells the transformational story of a young boy named Pip who starts as an outcast but eventually gets brainwashed by society’s ideals and expectations for a gentleman. As an adolescent, Pip is a common child who lives with his abusive sister and her affable husband. Eventually, as he grows, Pip is deluded

How fitting, that A Long Way Home - a chilling memoir of Saroo Brierly, should evoke Charles Dickens opening line in A Tale of Two Cities “It was the best of time, it was the worst of time”. The best of time when Saroo ultimately is adopted into a good-hearted family, the worst of time when Saroo’s family in Khandwa is engulfed in the lugubrious belief that their beloved son is gone forever. Notwithstanding growing up with devoted parents in Australia, Saroo is still manacled into the idea of finding

The novel ‘Jasper Jones’ by Craig Silvey is centred around a young man named Charlie Bucktin living in the little Australian town of Corrigan in the late 1960 's. Charlie is presented with the issues of racial prejudice, shamefulness, and moral dishonesty. He is tested to address the idealism of right from wrong and acknowledges that the law doesn 't generally maintain equity. The thoughts are depicted through Silvey 's utilization of story traditions which are to either challenge or reinforce our

Vermeer’s Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World delivers an interesting view of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer’s paintings and how they open a door into the world during the seventeenth century. Painted to convey the everyday lives of his subjects, Vermeer’s canvases reveal merchant families in their homes engaging in very average actions like reading letters or talking to one another. Adversely, the author Timothy Brook uses the art Vermeer created to portray the beginning

“People share a common nature but are trained in gender roles.” - Lillie Devereux Blake on the topic of gender roles. In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare explores the different roles that each gender is assigned, and sometimes he even breaks them. Romeo and Juliet is about two lovers from two families who are at war with each other. The two meet at a party and it was love at first sight, and they hide their relationship from their families and consistently secretly meet up. The book is about

While the term ‘significant other’ subsumes, theoretically speaking, any person influencing one’s life to a distinctive extent, such as friends, members of the family, partners, idealised absent others such as spirits or idols, this thesis lays a focus on the partners or love interests the antiheroes decide to get close to. In an incestuous interpretation of Shame, Sissy could definitely embody Brandond’s significant other, apart from the fact that she plays a big part in his life anyway; however

Beowulf is an Anglo-saxon story that would have been sung around a fire with the purpose of teaching morals and traits to the listeners. There were three separate parts to the story: the fight and defeat of Grendel, the attack and defeat of Grendel’s mother, and the fight with the dragon which resulted in the death of Beowulf. Each part of the story was added by a different author-thus making each part of the story subject to being analyzed for containing the aspects of the archetypal “Hero Quest”

Good and evil have been shown multiple times throughout the story. Beowulf versus all the different monsters throughout the story are the most prevalent examples of this dichotomy. Many of the evil forces were Cain, Grendel and his mother, and the dragon. These three portray evil in their fighting and their reasoning for fighting/ murdering others. Cain, the allegory, was evil for fighting out of anger and jealousy. In the bible he murdered his own brother, because he was jealous of God favoring

Being a setter in volleyball can be very difficult. A setter has to set the ball very high so that one of the hitters can get a nice hit. Often the setters make a mistake, either by setting it to the wrong hitter or not setting it high enough. Even if they make a lot of bad sets, they can still make the next one hittable. People in real life or characters in books are like this as well; sometimes they do bad things or make bad choices, but they still do some good things. In Charles Dickens’ Great

The Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf, was written in around 500 AD. The author of this epic is unknown. It is about a warrior, Beowulf, that goes on a quest to fight monsters and achieve riches and glory. During this time, Christian monks made edited copies of literature to spread their religion, Christianity. The Anglo-Saxons lived off certain rules that was not supposed to be broken. In Beowulf, the hero faces three different monsters that breaks a rule that goes against the culture of the Anglo-Saxons

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. The aim of this work was to prove that John Steinbeck used many Biblical allusions, notably the allusions referring to the Biblical story in the fourth chapter of the book Genesis, which is the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, to show the inseparability of the good and the evil and the importance of man’s free will in his life and in the case of overcoming the evil. I found out, that although the readers may acknowledge many similarities and the Biblical allusions in East

the crime against Joseph committed by his brothers to other stories in Genesis such as Cain and Abel or Esau and Jacob shows how when God used a more “hands off” approach, people could learn to forgive by themselves. In Genesis, in the Cain and Able story God was young punished immediately and harshly, which created turmoil between Humans and God. During this story Cain became jealous of his brother Abel and killed him. God immediately looked down upon Cain and treated him to the harshest of punishments

is evil enough, but to murder a member of your family (his brother) is considered one of the worst sins you could commit. This is one motive given for all the unhappiness that Grendel and his mother suffer. Their ancestor Cain murdered his brother Abel. On behalf of this crime, all the family is penalized. Beowulf also does not stay in Hrothgar and goes to marry his queen. Once Beowulf has satisfied his obligation to Hrothgar by murdering both Grendel and Grendel’s mom, Beowulf returns home where