Ms.Lacano
AP Lit- 4
27 September 2016
"The last Night that She lived" By Dudley Randall
In the poem " The last Night that She lived" by Dudley Randall in chapter 1 of sound and sense the speaker talks about the last time a mother seen her daughter alive and who was supposed to be alive tomorrow is the blame for it. the speaker describes the surroundings of the last night the girl was alive and how it felt for her to pass away. the speaker uses a lot of imagery describing how the girl looked when she was at her funeral and how her mother looked when she seen her smiling. he uses a lot of emotion to express the feeling to the reader what it feels like to have an innocent life token away. especially an innocent child, the speaker described how the child death was waited out until she died and the little things they noticed. when the speaker stated that it really touched me because you never know how someone feel about the passing of someone and the things that happen during that time.
I liked when the speaker say: " she clawed through bits of glass and brick,/ then lifted out a shoe./ "O here's the shoe my baby wore,/ But, baby, where are you?" (30-33). this line really made me feel the pain the mother feels when she found her daughters shoe but not her. I felt this was the main point of the speaker was to make the reader feel the pain of a mother loosing her child and I felt it. " The last Night She lived" reminded me of the " 16th Street Baptist church bombing", that happen in 1963 and took place in Birmingham. this reminded me of that event because the speaker stated: " for when she heard the explosion,/ her eyes grew wet and wild/ she raced through the streets of Birmingham/calling for her child"(25-28). this brought me back to when I first learned about this event. I enjoyed reading " The last Night that She lived", you can really use this for important reason like black history month it would teach the readers a great lesson and they would have a better understanding of what it means.
It looks like you're actually talking about the poem titled "Ballad of Birmingham" by Dudley Randall. This is definitely a poem about the historical event you reference from 1963. "The Last Night That She Lived" is a poem by Emily Dickinson. I don't have the book in front of me...are they on the same page, was that the confusion?
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