Hard Rock Returns to Prison for an Altered State of Mind - Essay Sample

Introduction

The poem "Hard Rock Returns to Prison for the Hospital of the Criminal Insane" is a poem by Knight Etheridge. The poem is mainly centered on a heroic character who is referred to as Hard Rock. The poem is primarily an allegory of oral tradition. The writers show the depict the narrators as a legend among the other inmates. Dues to his defiance, the narrator, is sent to the hospital of the criminally insane. Upon returning, Hard Rock has been changed into a different person. Primarily, he is not as strong a person as he previously was, and the rumors are quickly spreading in prison. The poem is mainly about a hero who has fallen after a lobotomy procedure.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

Hard Rock is a person feared in prison because of his character. This is the reason why the other prisoners in prison are afraid of him. In the first stanza, the writer Hard Rock had a reputation of being impossible to bully. This made him suffer significant physical abuse, injury, split lips, a long scar from his temple up through the hair to the top of his head, and cauliflower's ears. The doctors performed brain surgery on him and gave him a shock treatment. When he is brought back to the prison, he is calm as if he had been castrated. This makes the other inmates wonder what was done to him, as this is not his usual form and way of acting. Hard Rock is no longer unruly, and the other inmates are wondering what happened. In stanza, the correctional officers try to put Hard Rock in solitary confinement to punish him. Importantly, a captain of the guards hit with his dinner tray, and he stays calm. He was placed in solitary confinement for sixty-seven days, and also, a prison guard poisoned him with "syphilitic spit."

Other prisoners in prison are trying to test his patience by calling him "black son of a bitch" in stanza four. Hard Rock tries as much as possible to maintain his calm. Moreover, some of the prison guards who knew hos Hard Rock was before the surgery try to shake him and yell at him roughly. The best thing is that Hard Rock does not even move a muscle or respond. Stanza four states that his eyes are "empty like knotholes in a fence." Other inmates believe that Hard Rock is trying to fake his condition even after they noticed that he takes more than three minutes to mention his name. Finally, they are not able to fool themselves anymore, and they stop bothering the brain-damaged Hard Rock.

The Poem

My Kennedy, you inspire me to write.I hate the way you frighten, look and bounce,Invading my mind day and through the night,I am always dreaming about the deadpan flounce.Let me compare you to sing sawdust?You are more deceased, northeast, and succeed.Weep heat toasts the laugh frolics of August,And summertime has the impassive screed.How do I hate you? Let me count the ways.I hate your poker-faced Head, Limp, and head.Thinking of your banal Limp fills my days.My hate for you is the moderate freed.

Now I must away with a humble heart,Remember my small words whilst we're apart.