White Roses and Candles
Despite being just 50 words long and comprising just two stanzas, this poem's symbolism is remarkably complex, with much of it operating on two levels at once. For instance, both white roses and white candles are symbols traditionally associated with purity and innocence. At the same time, however, the presence of specifically white rose and white candles on the funeral pyre of a young black girl also endow the imagery with negative connotations associated with white supremacy and racism.
Dark Madonna
The reference to the dead girl as a Dark Madonna is another example of symbolism working on two levels. A comparison made simply to the Madonna would have been enough to underscore the reference to the Virgin Mary symbolizing that the dead girl was still young enough to have lived in complete innocence before her death. By explicitly referring to her as “Dark Madonna” the positive aspect of her innocence is partly corrupted by the unnecessary introduction of racial differences into the matter. The use of the specific phrase “Dark Madonna” becomes a symbol representing the much larger issue of how racial distinction is unnecessarily used for the particular purpose of creating class division.
The Wedding Ring
At its most superficial level, the information that the mother had to pawn her wedding ring in order to pay for the white roses and candles symbolically suggests the low economic status of the family and in this way becomes takes on a positive note commenting on the love the mother has for her daughter. That the mother had to resort to sacrificing something so personal in order to afford a “white” funeral for her brown daughter, on the other hand, also symbolizes the greater sacrifices white society has demanded of black society who wish to rise to an equal status.
Pride
The imagery of the final two lines of the poem presents a fantasy of the mother in which her dead child can actually witness the presentation of her body for the funeral service. In the mother’s fantasy, the little girl excitably approves of the white roses and white candles to the point that it causes her to dance and sing. The subtle symbolism in this imagery suggests that the mother had already successfully inculcated in her young daughter her own perspective toward white society as being something to emulate no matter what the cost and what sacrifices might be required.
The Brown Girl’s Death
Arguably, the poem's single most complex symbol is derived from an absence in the text. The references to the purity and innocence of the girl allude to her being relatively young at the time of her passing. No information at all is provided as to the circumstances of that death. The reader never finds out how she died and knows only that she died very young. This lack of specific details becomes, by virtue of its absence, a symbol of the reality of how white society reacted to death in black society. That reality essentially boils down to simply not caring. The fact that it doesn’t matter how the young girl died is a harsh indictment of the reality it wouldn’t have counted of any concern to any white member of the community.
