We Real Cool Literary Elements

There are two different speaker perspectives represented in this poem. The first begins and ends in the first stanza and serves as an observer or documenter of the seven pool players. The first perspective is devoid of judgment.

The second perspective is the collective, first-person plural voice of the pool players.

Free verse with internally rhyming couplets

The brevity and airtight descriptive language of the poem leave no room for similes and metaphors, but the language lends itself to symbolic interpretation. For example, the Golden Shovel is a symbol for the figurative shovel with which the players dig themselves into metaphorical hole, making it harder and harder to reverse the consequences of their decision to leave school as they grow older. The game of pool is a symbol for the performance of masculinity and masculine competition. Their thinned gin is a symbol for their shared voice, which both allows for everyone to be represented, but also weakens their individual senses of self.

Every line of "We Real Cool" engages with alliteration, assonance, or both. In the third, fourth, and fifth stanzas, "Lurk late," "Strike straight," "Sing sin," and "Jazz June," are all alliterative.

The structure of internally rhyming couplets (technically internal rhyme because every line ends with "We") is layered over with more instances of soundwork. For example, Brooks doesn't just rhyme "late" and "straight" in the third stanza, she gives each line's respective verb a hard "k" sound which contributes to the symmetry and flow of the lines.

An example of dramatic irony in this poem is that when the speaker utters the line "We real cool," in order to perform "coolness" for the reader, it has the exact opposite of its intended effect. Instead of confirming their coolness to the reader, the speaker has made obvious their insecurities surrounding their public image. It is dramatic irony because the speaker believes that by saying, "We real cool," the audience will think they are cool, but the audience is more likely to read into their words and interpret them as insecure.

poetry

The Golden Shovel Pool Hall

Serious, sober, subdued

If we are to claim that this poem has protagonists and antagonists, we could say that the pool players are the protagonists, and they are antagonized by oppressive authoritative systems.

The major conflict is that these young men are stuck in a system that oppresses them, but their resistence, which manifests as skipping school, drinking, and playing pool, only contributes to their inability to escape the forces which hold them back.

The final line, "We / Die soon," could be interpreted as an instance of foreshadowing, or at least a fating of these young men and other young men on a similar path.

The final stanza alludes to the Jazz Age and the prejudicial connotations of jazz imposed upon the genre by whites in power.

The word "we" in this poem begins to take on a more specific meaning than the first-person plural pronoun. In "We Real Cool," the word is defined through repetition as young Black men living in cities, resisting the power structures which force them to live always with one eye open, looking over their shoulder, having to lurk rather than live in the open.

There are no actual onomatopoetic words in this poem, however the "k" sound in the word "strike" in the line "We / Strike straight" mimics the sharp sound of pool balls striking each other on the table.