by Tim Price

Created on: April 30, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

Gwendolyn Brooks compared the life of a young black girl to the life of a young white girl in her poem "A Song in the Front Yard," This comparison is made more obvious when the symbolic uses of a front yard and a back yard are examined. Brooks seems to get her message, life is not always more fun on the other side, across with her successful use of symbols and situational irony.

The symbolism begins on the first line of the poem where Brooks discusses that the speaker has stayed in the front yard all her life. Realistically speaking, one cannot stay in a front yard all her life so a front yard must be symbolic for something else. A front yard can have several meanings in this poem. First, a literal front yard is a place people can see from the street. It is generally inviting, orderly, and does not change too much from the neighbor's front yard. This leads one to assume a front yard can symbolize order, consistency, and the status quo. The speaker is apparently bored with her life in the front yard as is made clear by her admission in line four "A girl gets sick of a Rose." In the 1940's this front yard was very much a white mans world; A world before the explosions of women's suffrage, and racial desegregation in a country that was literally white or black.

In the fifth line, the speaker decides she is ready for a journey to the back yard. A back yard is a place that you cannot see from the street. It is a place you must be invited to. A place where the weeds grow and the static order of the front yard are challenged by the aesthetic disorder in the back. The back yard is representative of a secluded freedom and individualism. It is place that the weeds grow untended. (Line 3). The back yard is an area where the speaker determines that she will have a good time. (Line 8). It is symbolically a place of African American culture. In one sense Brooks uses her knowledge of racial segregation and uses the back yard as a place where people hide things for example white people hiding the black people in the backyard. In another sense, Brooks uses her indelible black pride by crowning the backyard as a place that the white person wants to be. A sort of secret garden for this young white girl as she desires to explore the mysterious freedom the black culture has to offer. In this sense the black children are not forced to play in the backyard they are allowed to play there. The white girl with her front yard of responsibility and stringency can only look back and

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