Incident

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1925

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Baltimorean

The young white boy who calls the speaker a racial slur symbolizes the power of racism. The boy’s treatment of the speaker forces the speaker to confront the fact that they will never be welcome in the city due to racism. The encounter with the boy is thus the speaker’s first realization of how alienating it is to be in a society to which one can never fully belong. The staring boy also shows just how people enact racism. The staring boy never puts his hands on the speaker. Nevertheless, his staring, sticking out of his tongue, and speech all serve to “discipline” the young Black speaker for daring to stare at and smile at a white person on terms of equality.

Baltimore, Maryland

Baltimore symbolizes both childhood wonder and the pain of racism. At the start of the poem, the speaker eagerly looks at the sights of Baltimore because doing so is a novel experience. Baltimore captures the speaker’s imagination and gives the speaker a sense of freedom, likely a reflection of the idealized notion that Black migrants to cities had as they moved from the rural South. The speaker’s sense of wonder ends when confronted with racism. Baltimore then becomes a city where the speaker forgets “all the things that happened there” (Line 11) except the encounter with the little boy. The ability to forget the entire city of Baltimore is a measure of how deeply wounding the Black child’s realization of the power of racism is.

The Ride

Cullen doesn’t identify what it is on which the speaker rides through Baltimore, but whatever the ride is, it symbolizes the speaker’s innocence and freedom from fear. Initially, the ride is one that allows the speaker to marvel at the city and the little white boy. The poem opens with the speaker in motion, free from the concerns of life on the ground. What is on the ground around the speaker is “old Baltimore” (Line 1), a part of the city that was home to Black Baltimoreans because of increasingly restrictive laws, and the staring boy. Once the speaker has the encounter with the boy, the ride disappears from the narrative, symbolizing that the speaker is now mired in a world in which racism is a reality to the speaker.