The Mother's Experience in Randall's "Ballad of Birmingham"
Written under test conditions in class, IB SL English Literature (unseen poem)
The poem’s title, “Ballad of Birmingham”, tells us what sort of poem this is – a ballad, that is meant to be sung or recited. Each stanza is a quatrain with an ABCB rhyme scheme. This rhythm gives the poem a melodic feel, and it may thus be seen as a warning against the excessive love of a mother, as she sends her child to church, only for the child to die there.
The first through to the fourth stanzas are written as dialogue between mother and child. There are regular refrains, in particular, “No, baby, no, you may not go.” The assonance here contributes to the singsong rhythm, and the repetition drives home the point that the mother is unwilling to budge on her stance. It is unclear how old the child is – this may be a deliberate choice to keep the message abstract, so the ballad can be seen as a warming applicable to all parents; the child remains ungendered for the same reason. In the first stanza, the child asks to go downtown, “instead of out to play”. The use of the verb ‘play’ here suggests that the child is used to their mother treating them like an infant, although they are clearly struck by important issues and want to make a difference by marching alongside others in the streets of Birmingham. That the mother sees the child regardless in this way is also clear in her referring to it as ‘baby’ a diminutive, as well as explicitly describing them as a ‘little child’. Therefore regardless of the age, the poet shows the mother’s experience as initially being the harsh realisation of her child growing up, and as a result of caring about issues like a Freedom March, put themself in danger. It is ironic of course, that her interference sends the child to their death. This is representative of the Oedipal mother, whose strangling input in her child’s life is suffocating, and here fatal, though clearly well-intentioned.
She is obviously also frightened for her child’s well-being early on in the poem – vivid imagery is used to explain how and why the protest march is too dangerous. The consonance in “For the dogs are fierce and wild and clubs and hoses, guns and jail” converges on sibilance, and is used to emphasise first how many different dangers would be present “that aren’t good for a little child.2 the rejoinder she hears, “But, mother, I won’t be alone”, is thoroughly unconvincing to her. Even though the child would like to protest against a perceived injustice and “make our country free”, she is unmoved. She is so unmoved, in fact, that she replies exactly as before – this repetition also, then shows that she is set in her ways. “You may not go, // for I fear…” excellently summarises the events of the first half of the poem. She now says, “For I fear those guns will fire”, again using consonance to better paint a picture of the nightmare she imagines might come about if the child goes to the march. She now draws upon a different sense; and indeed, throughout the poem, each of the five senses is used so listeners can imagine the scene in detail. She compromises: “But you may go to Church instead // And sing in the children’s choir”. It is notable that she thought it worth emphasising that it is the children’s choir; even though, of course, it is, we can see that this is further pushback against her child’s growing up, so she makes them go to church exclusively alongside other children, rather than the grown-up business of protest marches.
Therefore in the poem as far as the exchange between the mother and child goes, the mother’s experience is explored as a terrified one, one that sees her child develop, and as a result potentially endanger themselves – hence the mother in refrain tells them they ‘may not go’, exerting whatever influence she can muster to keep the child safe. As we turn to the fifth stanza, we observe the grand irony.
The last line of this stanza is the first line focussed on the mother with less than seven syllables: as a result, the meter feels unnatural, and vaguely ominous – the whole stanza, in utilising relaxed, routine verbs, like ‘combed’ and ‘brushed’ and ‘bathed’, therefore has the feeling of the calm before the storm. Reference is made both to her ‘night-dark hair’ and ‘small brown hands’ – given that the context is that this is Alabama in the early 1960s, it becomes clear that the mother’s fear was of racism towards her child, probably going to a march against it – hence the worry about police dogs, and guns, and jail. Therefore the experience of the mother turns from a justified fear that her child might experience what she likely has, to a sense of ominous calm. She “smiled to know her child // was in the sacred place”. This shows that the mother’s experience is now put to ease – the irony is exacerbated, since she believes (probably, if she sends them to church choir) that if the child dies, they go to heaven: the archetypal sacred place. The sense of foreboding is maximised with, “But that smile was the last smile // to come upon her face”. The repetition of smile, with its modifier changed from ‘that’ to ‘last’, is a transformation that has the feeling of finality, and possible hyperbole. She is no longer in control of the smile – previously, ‘she’, the subject, ‘smiled’; now the smile ‘[came] upon her face’. This shows that she is now not in control of her emotions as she had desperately tried to control the fate of her child so they didn’t come to danger.
“The explosion” also has the air of finality, and the definite article makes it sound like the only one, because to the mother, it is the only one that mattered. The adjectives, ‘wet and wild’ to describe her eyes tell us again that she is not in control – ‘wild’ in particular makes her seem manic and desperate. Again, she is no longer the subject of the sentence: rather, “her eyes grew wet and wild”. We are told she ‘raced through the streets’ … ‘calling for her child.’ The imagery here is again vivid, and the frenetic desperation continues to shine through.
The manic wave subsides, to be replaced by a depressed outcry. She arrives at the church and “clawed through bits of glass and brick”. The verbs ‘clawed’ makes her seem animalistic, barely human – a cluster of pure emotion. When she finds a show, she “lifted [it] out”, as if to the heavens. This line is punctuated with a period, and not enjambed. Thus the shoe stops her in her tracks, and she says, “O, here’s the shoe my baby wore.” This is the first time she speaks, but not to her child, like an appeal to the heavens, mirroring Jesus’ own cries on the cross. The poem ends on the rhetorical question, “But, baby, where are you?” – but it is clear that they have been killed.
Therefore it has been shown how the mother’s experience in this poem ranges from a desperate, protective mother who seeks to look out for her child safety, and therefore sends them to church; after a brief, calm, then a frantic search, she finds they would have been safer on the march.