17 pages • 34 minutes read
History Lesson
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
While “History Lesson” is composed in free verse and uses no formal pattern of meter or rhyme, it is lineated specifically in five tercets, finishing with a couplet. Internal rhyme—rhymes of words in the middle of the lines with other words either at the end of a line or in the middle of the next—abounds as well, evident in the first stanza with “in” (Line 1), “strip” (Line 2), “Mississippi” (Line 2), and “hips” (Line 3). In the second stanza, the short “u” sound in “cuts” (Line 5) echoes in “Gulf” (Line 6) and then in the next stanza in “rush” (Line 7). The long “o” of “alone” (Line 8) resonates with “pose” (Line 10), whose long “o” is then echoed in “opened” (Line 11).
In the fifth stanza, “plot” (Line 14) internally rhymes with and complicates “colored” (Line 15). Internal and slant rhymes, which are imperfect rhymes of words that sound similar but are not identical matches, create a kind of energy in a poem as well as music. Although the language of “History Lesson” is natural and conversational, the poet has paid close attention to the relationship of one word to another and how those relationships affect the emotional impact of the poem on the reader.
The Narrative Poem
“History Lesson” may not have a specific beginning, middle, and end in the manner of a traditional prose story, but it is narrative nonetheless. Story is intrinsic to the poem, if story and narrative can be defined in terms of time. There are characters in the form of the speaker (both her younger and present self) and the grandmother. There is, too, a progression—and regression—of time.
The poem begins with an introduction to the protagonist by describing a photograph of the speaker when she was a young child on a beach. The second stanza develops the setting in a mysterious and vaguely ominous way, as “[t]he sun cuts / the rippling Gulf” (Lines 5-6). In the third stanza, the danger becomes more acute, as little fish glint “like switchblades. I am alone” (Line 8). However, the child is not alone, as her grandmother is on the “other side / of the camera” (Lines 9-10), directing her.
At this point, the reader becomes aware of the history lesson in “History Lesson”: “It is 1970, two years after they opened / the rest of this beach to us” (Lines 11-12). The reader, at this point, comes to discover that it is no simple day at the beach but a monumental moment of two generations claiming their rights. Everything was different just two years ago, and for most of the grandmother’s life—which the reader gets a glimpse of in a description of another photograph, wherein the grandmother is standing on the small allotment of the same beach she was allowed in 1930.
The narrative of “History Lesson” is both linear and cyclical and tells a very American story.
Enjambment & Line Breaks
Enjambment is the extension of a syntactical phrase from one line to another and/or from one stanza to another. While Natasha Trethewey’s “History Lesson” is punctuated for syntactical sense—meaning, it uses punctuation in a traditional way—the enjambment of the phrases provide surprise and music. An example of enjambment is, “The sun cuts / the rippling Gulf” (Lines 5-60). That the sun cuts anything is already a surprise, and it is even more interesting when it can cut a watery expanse. Another example occurs with “I am alone / except for my grandmother” (Lines 8-9). The word “switchblades” (Line 8) appears right before the phrase “I am alone” (Line 8), which builds tension before the emotional release on the next line of having a grandma present. In the fifth stanza, “narrow plot” (line 14) is enjambed to “of sand” (Line 15). Before the reader gets to the sand, however, there may be some speculation as to what the “narrow plot” (Line 14) may consist of—possibly something must less friendly than beach sand, like a grave.
In the final couplet, the grandmother in the old photograph places “her hands on the flowered hips / of a cotton meal-sack dress” (Lines 16-17). Although the poem lands on a very humble image—that of a homemade dress made from a flour sack—the effect is triumphant due to those “flowered hips” (Line 16)—a pure tribute to the womanly strength and beauty of this elder and foremother.
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By Natasha Trethewey
