In "The Wrong Street" by Cornelius Eady, one of the last lines says, "but now you run in an Old story." The poem is about a man who is basically in the wrong place at the wrong time, being accused of a crime that he did not commit and trying to run away, but realizing that he can't. The question is what is the "old story" that the narrator is talking about.
My interpretation of this line was that the "old story" contained the basic elements of a person who was falsely accused of a crime because of his skin color and being in the wrong place after the person who had actually committed that crime had run away. The old story is the familiar one of a person caught in circumstances that they have no control over, and because of something they cannot get out of the situation. Usually in these situations, the person caught in the situation finds a way out, either by someone else noticing who they were or by the person caught noticing some facts that don't match up. These outs don't exist in the situation at hand. The figures of authority don't seem to differentiate at all between the people of the same skin color. This means that any other person of the same skin color (presumably black) who was caught in this place at this time also could have just as easily been accused of the crime.
I think that the "old story" represents what I said earlier, someone being accused of a crime that they didn't commit because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this specific case is different because there is no way out for those falsely accused. The other reason that this is different is because of how the accused were accused. You can assume it was mostly because of their skin color and gender, and this promotes the question of how much people should be judged by how they look and their defining characteristics. How well can you really know a person if you only know what they look like?
Although the answer to this is probably very complicated, I think the fact that this situation is called an "old story" points to an answer that would say that at this time the figures of authority thought you could tell almost anything about some people by just how they look. The "old story" could also refer to the familiar stereotyping of these people as dangerous.
What is your interpretation?
My interpretation of this line was that the "old story" contained the basic elements of a person who was falsely accused of a crime because of his skin color and being in the wrong place after the person who had actually committed that crime had run away. The old story is the familiar one of a person caught in circumstances that they have no control over, and because of something they cannot get out of the situation. Usually in these situations, the person caught in the situation finds a way out, either by someone else noticing who they were or by the person caught noticing some facts that don't match up. These outs don't exist in the situation at hand. The figures of authority don't seem to differentiate at all between the people of the same skin color. This means that any other person of the same skin color (presumably black) who was caught in this place at this time also could have just as easily been accused of the crime.
I think that the "old story" represents what I said earlier, someone being accused of a crime that they didn't commit because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this specific case is different because there is no way out for those falsely accused. The other reason that this is different is because of how the accused were accused. You can assume it was mostly because of their skin color and gender, and this promotes the question of how much people should be judged by how they look and their defining characteristics. How well can you really know a person if you only know what they look like?
Although the answer to this is probably very complicated, I think the fact that this situation is called an "old story" points to an answer that would say that at this time the figures of authority thought you could tell almost anything about some people by just how they look. The "old story" could also refer to the familiar stereotyping of these people as dangerous.
What is your interpretation?
Your reading makes a lot of sense. There's a sense of exhaustion, or exasperation, in this poem--the subject is stunned to suddenly find himself playing out this all-too-familiar scenario, to have inadvertently walked onto this "stage," which the poem depicts as fodder for a 5-second spot on the evening news. The particularly postmodern horror of realizing you're going to be on the news, and as a chalk-line body sketch as well. There's a sense in the poem of disbelief, of both recognizing the scenario and not believing one has stumbled right into the middle of it. How simple it would have been to avoid--correct directions to the restaurant.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but think here of the widespread reactions to the Ferguson shooting. It's not outrage at this unprecedented single event; the event gains significance *because* its outlines are so familiar. There's a "Not again!" quality to the commentaries. And how many similar cases have appeared in the last month since Ferguson? The guy in Ohio shot dead in a WalMart for holding a BB gun for sale in the store. The guy in Utah shot in the back while carrying a cosplay samurai sword. And so on, and so on. The "old story," with occasional new twists.