Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The poem is narrated in third-person by an unidentified speaker protesting the inhumanity of racism.
Form and Meter
The poem consists of three quatrains each with two rhyming couplets. It is written in a steady form but with no strict meter.
Metaphors and Similes
The speaker uses the phrase “strange fruit” as a metaphor for the black victims of lynching in the South. Hence the bitter crop refers to the attitudes and trauma that racial prejudice causes in the black community.
Alliteration and Assonance
“Southern trees bear strange fruit”
“Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze”
Irony
Trees are symbols of life but in the poem, they symbolize death because they were used as apparatus for hanging.
Genre
Protest
Setting
The poem is set in the American South during the era of Jim Crow laws.
Tone
Grim and bleak
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist of the poem is the black people in America. The antagonist is the cruelty and inhumanity of racism.
Major Conflict
The injustices and inhumanity towards black people are normalized by systemic racism.
Climax
The climax occurs when the speaker juxtaposes the beautiful scenery in the South with the ugliness and horrors of lynching.
Foreshadowing
N/A
Understatement
The speaker understates the image of lynched dead bodies by referring to them as strange fruits.
Allusions
The poem alludes to the widespread lynching in the Southern states during the Jim Crow era. It was inspired by the 1930 photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
In the last stanza the rain, wind, and sun are metonymy for the different seasons.
Personification
The speaker personifies the rain and the wind to emphasize the power of the natural world.
Hyperbole
N/A
Onomatopoeia
“Pluck” is an example of onomatopoeia.
