The Story Archive

The Bean Eaters

Gwendolyn Brooks · 1960 CE · Poem · Modern / American · Contemporary

Seven pool players at the Golden Shovel say they are real cool, left school, lurk late and die soon, in eight lines of two beats apiece. An old couple eat beans off chipped plates among their twinklings and their twinges; a Mississippi woman frying bacon thinks about the boy her husband killed; a man buys a house on a white block and is warned off it. The book her publisher thought too political, and the hinge on which her work turned outward.

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Attributes

Genre
PoliticalPsychological
Theme
Race & IdentityWar & ViolenceClass & InequalityJustice & Revenge
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanScapegoat
Plot structure
MeditationEpisodic
Symbol / motif
BloodThe HouseThe City
Conflict
vs Societyvs Person
Mode / tone
ElegiacRealist
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues