A Generation Nourished by Blood
by: Simone Shadd
“Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from poplar trees”
(Meeropol 19).
“Strange Fruit” is categorized by the Norton Anthology as a song of social change. As an extended metaphor for the violence facing the southern black population; the piece uses rhythm and rhyme scheme to create a grotesque image of a bleak reality. During its inception, the lynching Strange Fruit depicts was commonplace. Cruelty colored by bigotry lends itself to the humiliation and exploitation of the victim. Hate crime lacks humanity because it is not motivated by individual grievances; rather it is motivated by an unyielding commitment to a superiority complex enmeshed in the roots of American culture. Written at a time in which violence against the black community was frequent to the point of banality, Strange Fruit attempts to shock the senses and awaken its audience to their role as complicit bystanders. One may not ever witness lynching firsthand, but the song commands the attention of the mind’s eye and demands one let the mind wander to the scene of the crime.
Consistent meter allows the tragedy of lynching to be unmarred by the confusion of a phrenetic rhythm. The melodic tone is developed by the work’s emphasis on both the middle and the end of each line, preventing any of the message from being lost. For example, the trees that bear the murdered corpses are specifically “southern” therefore the pause immediately following the phrase “southern trees” is meant to illustrate a deeply ingrained but regional violence (Meeropol 19). Readers are not meant to forget the specific pain inflicted on the southern black population, hence by briefly pausing one is given the time to reflect and remember which region is responsible for these atrocities. In the next line, the middle and end pauses highlight the location of the blood the victims’ bodies have left behind on their trees of execution. Special attention is given to “leaves” and “root” demonstrating the pervasiveness of the crime (Meeropol 19). Presenting an image in which no part of the landscape goes untouched by the legacy of lynching, one is left with the notion that the repercussions of murders like the one depicted are inescapable because their consequences, however large or small, are everywhere. A new generation will inherit the brutality of the last because not only is the “blood on the leaves” but it is a part of the “root” (Meeropol 19). The line ends in “root” where the rhythm lands the heaviest, showing the impact of violence against African Americans and its place as a part of southern identity (Meeropol 19). If it were only on the “leaves” it could be washed away, and the fortunes of black Americans could change with the seasons, but the problem is not ephemeral and by ending the line with a longer pause substantiated by a comma, one is reminded that this type of destruction is intrinsic to southern American culture (Meeropol 19). If blood is in southern roots, then southern culture is born of and begets blood because it knows nothing else.
Rhyme scheme serves to reinforce the sentiments established by rhythm. When reading the song “fruit” and “root” are separated by lines but connected by sound (Meeropol 19). As one cannot grow the fruit sans root it follows that one cannot consume violence if violence is not first created. Fruit, a normally healthy form of nourishment, adopts a sinister form when developed from roots covered in blood. Fruit is eaten, consumed and meant to feed those who partake. However, when the “fruit” is described as coming from a tree with “blood at the root”, those who indulge in it will eat something overrun by ruthlessness and will be sustained by hatred (Meeropol 19). In the next two lines “breeze” and “trees” are given prominence as a comparison to the overtly violent tone of the first two lines of the stanza (Meeropol 19). In the world of the song, violence is only backdrop in the scene of the south. Therefore, the “southern breeze” and “poplar trees” illuminate the image the south has of itself despite its cruel tendencies as demonstrated by the body swinging in a setting that might otherwise be considered peaceful (Meeropol 19). The juxtaposition of the bodies against the pastoral south indicate a cognitive dissonance through which white southerners can believe in their gallantry and politeness even while they permit black southerners to perish at the hands of their peers.
“Strange Fruit” uses rhythm and rhyme scheme to demonstrate an unsightly truth about life in the south. The song portrays the brutality of lynching, but it also condemns the hypocrisy of white southern values by setting a murder in an idyllic scene embodying the desired purity of the southern aesthetic. The easily comprehensible rhythm drives attention to the explicit content of the words. Rhyme and rhythm work in tandem to reveal the pain experienced by the black community and the culture of denial prevalent among the white community that compels that pain to flourish.
Work Cited
Meeropol, Abel. “Strange Fruit”. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, vol.2, 3rd ed., edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Valerie A. Smith, W.W Norton & Company, 2014, pp. 19.
