20 pages • 40 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksThe Ballad of Rudolph Reed
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1963A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Old House
The old house, which appears in Stanzas 3 and 4, is a symbol for poverty and racism. Brooks uses poetic and figurative language to describe the house—its crumbling plaster “[s]tir[s] as if in pain” (Line 10), for example. Recasting the shabby old housing in figurative language allows Brooks to connect Reed’s dream of a spacious house to the universal desire to protect and shelter one’s family. In American culture, a house is a key element of the American Dream; hard work allows even working-class people to secure housing for their families. Brooks characterizes Rudolph Reed as an uncompromising man with strong character and aspirations, so the house doesn’t match the man. The shabbiness of the house shows that for Black Americans, the overlap between racism and class inequality is the main impediment to achieving that dream.
The New House
The “House” (Line 31) appears in its capitalized form in the eighth stanza, and it symbolizes the fulfillment of Rudolph Reed’s dream of equality and fairness. The physical structure of the house includes walls that have “windows everywhere” (Line 38), “a beautiful banistered stair” (Line 39), and a “front yard for flowers and a back yard for grass” (Line 40). Multiple windows, enough real estate to have two yards, and multiple floors mean this house is much more expensive than the old house. Reed’s ownership of the house means that he has a concrete representation of his arrival to the middle class. In economic terms, home ownership makes him the equal of his white neighbors. Despite their shared class, these neighbors cannot see Rudolph Reed and his family as equals. Their destruction of the windows of the home are just the first step in destroying the home in an effort to put the Black Reed family in its place, that is to say, back in the impoverished neighborhood the family was able to afford to leave.
The Rocks, The Knife, and the Thirty-Four
The rocks, the knife, and the "thirty-four" (a gun) are all symbols of violence. The rock that shatters the windows on the first night is “big as two fists” (Line 41), and the second is “big as three” (Line 42), symbolizing the escalation of the violence Reed’s white neighbors are willing to use to drive his family from the neighborhood. The rising count of symbolic fists in the rocks is also a gesture to the danger of mob violence, which ultimately kills Rudolph Reed.
Reed refuses to let this violence against his family go unchecked. When he finally decides to fight the people hurling rocks into his home, he goes armed with a butcher knife and a gun. The knife is an old weapon, and it symbolizes that his urge to fight is a primal, universal one to protect his child from harm. The gun is a more modern weapon, and it symbolizes the more militant phase of what would have then been the modern civil rights movement.
Related Titles
By Gwendolyn Brooks
