The Climax of I Want You Women Up North to Know :: Want You Women Up North to Know

Lines 85-97 of Tillie Olsens first published poesy I Want You Women Up North to Know contain the climactic turning point of this poem, and the vocabulary and form reflect this change. Instead of being humble and disjointed victims who anticipate mostly anonymous, the workers ar transformed into an angry and unified group of unambiguous individuals. This shift in mood is accomplished by three devices imagery, grouping, and capitalisation of proper call. The imagery in this portrayal helps turn the tone of the poem from victimization to anger. In addition to fire images, the over completely language is entirely stripped down to b are ugliness. In previous lines, the sordidness has been intermixed with satisfactory euphemisms the agonizing work is an exquisite dance (24) the trembling hands are white gulls (22) the cough is gay (25). But in these later lines, all aesthetically pleasing terms vanish, leaving sweet and blood (85), peeled andbony children (89), and a skeleton bod y (95). Another way this passage turns the mood of the poem is by using grouping and form to data link the workers together, both in inference and appearance. Previously, distributively workers location has been treated as an isolated story, literally separated from the others by a blank line. However, lines 85-97 are crowded together without spaces, suggesting unity by the rattling appearance of the lines. All of the grievances are briefly repeated, and then a chronological succession of ands binds the one-sentence recaps together. Yet in spite of this sense of solidarity, each persons story is given its own sentence with a period boundary, subtly emphasizing their individual importance solidarity is acceptable, but anonymity is not. A last significant device in this passage is the use of capitalization. The proper name of the workers have been sporadically capitalized earlier in the poem, but here they are all consistent and correct. Again, this is an emphasis on individual importance, an insistence that each of these people deserves a unique proper name. The earlier all-lowercase names the like catalina rodiguez (16) actually blend into the lines of poetry, suggesting crouching and obscurity, but here the uppercase letters in their names stand out clearly from other words. Interestingly, although the personal names are capitalized, christ (96) is left in lowercase, similar to the previous manipulation of god (57, 60, 62). This contrast with the capitalization of the worker names implies that God and the Nazarene have failed the workers and are now overshadowed by a budding pledge in the workers.