Between the World and Me

Between the World and Me paints a vivid image of what is going through the mind of a man who is being tarred and feathered. The scene of the poem is filthy and there are skeletons lying around, giving the poem a dreary and deathly feeling. At first I didn't understand what was going on in the poem and I had to reread it to comprehend exactly what was going on. The first time I read it, all that I got out of it was a scene of random items placed in a mysterious forest. The second time I read the poem I understood that it was told from the point of view of a confused man who would be tarred and feathered later in the poem. I found it interesting that the author described the scene in such great detail, remarking on the look of the trees and other things but just touched on the details of how the man was murdered. I thought that this made the poem seem more realistic in a way because it seems reasonable that someone who was being tortured and killed would not think about every detail, focusing on the pain, but if someone was walking through a curious forest they really would notice small details.