Essay Questions

What are some examples of how juxtaposition is used to strengthen the poem’s imagery?

Considering that the imagery of the poem throughout is one in which the bodies of lynching victims hanging from trees is compared to low-hanging fruit, one might think the imagery didn’t really need a dose of gasoline to make the fires flare. And, truly, descriptions of bodies swinging in warm southern breezes and crows plucking at the eyeballs seems more than powerful enough to convey the message. What the poet does, however, is replicate the historical whitewashing of the slave era by juxtaposing the horror with examples of sugarcoated history. The first stanza creates a portrait of leaves spattered with and roots drenched in blood only for the second stanza to present the Disneyesque rewriting of that history. This “pastoral scene of the gallant south” punctuated by the “sweet and fresh” bouquet of magnolias needs only Scarlett O’Hara to make it seem like a really nice place. In between, however, the second stanza also presents the real truth where “bulging eyes and the twisted mouth” of the lynch victim is fetid with the odor of charred skin.

Why is the magnolia tree singled out from all possible species to represent the Uncle Remus version of Dixie?

The only other type of tree specifically mentioned in the poem is the polar, but it appears in a line associated with the darker truth rather than the myth. By contrast, the eminently detectable smell of the flowers produced on magnolia trees is a centerpiece of the juxtaposition strategy. Indeed, “sweet and fresh” doesn’t even begin to truly convey the intoxicating aroma of the state flower of Mississippi. And the state tree of Mississippi? The magnolia. And Mississippi’s official nickname? The Magnolia State. And which state holds the dubious record for being the site of the most lynching incidents in America between 1882 and 1968 with 581? Take a guess.

Only a handful of states had not reported a lynching by the time the author composed this verse, so why does it notably being by identifying Southern trees specifically and producing this strange fruit?

The forming of a posse which results in citizen justice that often includes lynching is a common trope of the Western genre. But the victims of frontier justice outside the states which formed the Confederacy almost always—in reality and in fiction—tended to be white. In fact, outside the South, the overwhelming number of lynch victims were not black. It was only in the south where lynching almost always carried a racial component and even when the victim did happen to be white, the reasons becoming a victim usually had to do with supporting civil rights. And since nearly eight in ten lynches during the Reconstruction and Jim Crow era took place in former slave-holding states, the central thesis of the poem identifying lynching as an inextricable part of the southern history only retains it soundness if it is specifically pointed out that this strange fruit did not grow on all trees across the country.