4.

Richard Corey

The poem describes a man who seems to be the epitome of what everyone wants to be; rich, well dressed, well mannered, and well off. However, at the end of the poem he shoots himself in the head. This shows the feeling of disillusionment that the author was feeling at the time. The poem was in essence saying that being this ideal of a successful human being does not guarantee you happiness. The story of the poem flies in the face of traditional American thinking about success.

Mending Wall

The poem tells a story about two men who are building walls between each other, seemingly thinking that this is what they should do. The poem has a moment in the middle where the man who is like "an apple orchard" wonders to himself why "good fences make good neighbors". He ponders this for the rest of the poem, but ultimately continues on his path of building the wall of stone between himself and the pine man. The Modernistic qualities of the story are evidenced by the questioning of the norms that the orchard man seems to accept at the beginning of the poem. He wonders to himself what it would be like if he were to not have a fence up separating him from the world.

A Dream Deferred

A Dream Deferred asks the question what does injustice look like in a society? The poem is very modernistic in that it questions the American dream by suggesting that it is like rotting meat that is being waved in front the African Americans of the country.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

The poem shows a mans feelings about his African heritage. It describes his pride of being of African descent and is modernistic in that it shows the world from a very different perspective than the traditional white one.

Incident

Incident describes a boy riding on the subway in Baltimore who is called a nigger by a white man for no reason whatsoever. This moment sticks with him for the rest of his life as his major memory of Baltimore. The story is Modern in that, like A Dream Deferred, it shows the inequality between blacks and whites and shows things from a perspective that does not think everything is well and fine.