Incident by Countee Cullen

10/14/15 homework

Dear Students,

Read the poem below and answer the following questions in complete sentences:

   
     Level 1: Please write 3 sentences to complete the assignment

     Level 2: Please write 5 sentences to complete the assignment 
     Level 3: Please write 7 sentences to complete the assignment

**All homework must be signed by a parent.**

Incident

by Countee Cullen

Once riding in old Baltimore,

Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,

I saw a Baltimorean

Keep looking straight at me.

Now I was eight and very small,

And he was no whit bigger,

And so I smiled, but he poked out

His tongue, and called me, “Nigger.”

I saw the whole of Baltimore

From May until December;

Of all the things that happened there

That’s all that I remember.

1.      What might lead a child to insult another child this way?

2.       Look at the last stanza.

          Look at the title

          What is ironic here about the title?