Strange Fruit and Lady Lazarus

• Engels
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 6

This term you are going to work on literature and the topic we have chosen for you is ‘hardship’. There are multiple ways people experience hardship and how they deal with it. Some every single day. Others every once in a while.

Before we start:

discuss which aspects influence people’s lives and how and why people cope with life struggles in different ways. How do you deal with things that are difficult?

How is the poem used to illustrate what you learnt in the video? Explain why you think it is/isn’t successful. 

Make sure to quote from the poem in your writing.

This anti-lynching poem was written by Abel Meeropol, a teacher, songwriter, and member of the American Communist Party. He published it in a union publication in 1937 and then set it to music. It was most famously performed by Billy Holiday, who first sang “Strange Fruit” in 1939. After the conviction and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for espionage in 1953, during the early Cold War, Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne adopted and raised the Rosenberg’s two sons, Michael and Robert

Write 3 questions you would have liked to have asked the poet.

Sylvia Plath - Lady Lazarus

Life and Death

Born: October 27, 1932, in Boston (VS)

Famous novel: The Bell Jar

Wrote about a sense of alienation and self-destruction closely tied to her personal experiences and, by extension, the situation of women in mid-20th century America.

Published her first poem at the age of eight.

In high school she sold her first poem to a magazine.

Life and Death

She went to Smith College on a scholarship, and she achieved considerable artistic, academic and social success.

After Smith College she went to Newnham College in Cambridge (England)

She married the English poet Ted Hughes; they had two children

However, she also suffered from severe depression, attempted suicide and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalisation.

Sylvia Plath died on February 11, 1963 (aged 30) London (England) after committing suicide

• Read the poem again and explain in minimum 100 words how the content reflects the theme of the reader: Hardship. Be sure to quote from the text.
  
  
• Have a look at the Literary Poetic Terms at the end of the Literature Reader and try and find use of them in the poem, explaining the effect of its/their use in the poem.