Question No. 4 • What role do italics serve in Ballad of the Landlord? Answer
Answers
The question refers to the poem “Ballad of the Landlord” by Langston Hughes.
One stanza of the poem is written in italics. The stanza is:
Police! Police!
Come and get this man!
He’s trying to ruin the government
And overturn the land!
The italics serve two purposes - of showing that this is the landlord’s speech and of highlighting racism as it existed in society.
The poem begins with the tenant (who is a Black person), requesting the landlord to get the leaky roof and broken stairs fixed. The speaker then reacts to what the landlord says about extra payment and being evicted. The landlord’s speech is not directly quoted. We understand what he said only through the tenant’s reaction. The only direct words of the landlord that the readers get to know about, is in this stanza written in italics. So, italics have been used to avoid confusion and clearly tell the readers that this is landlord speaking and not the tenant.
Secondly this speech in italics highlights the racism that existed in America against the Blacks. The landlord very conveniently calls the police and accuses the tenant of much bigger and purely imaginary conspiracies and gets him arrested. The landlord does not talk about his own faults or the real problem. Instead he takes advantage of the tenant’s skin colour and gets him arrested for going against the government and the laws (which the tenant has not done). The stanza in italics is full of discrimination, ill will, dishonesty and highlights the plight of being a Black individual at the mercy of the Whites.
More information on poetry:
https://brainly.in/question/40342476 ("The Daffodils" by William Wordsworth)
https://brainly.in/question/40598337 ("The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost)
https://brainly.in/question/43626038 (“Sweetest Love, I Do Not Go” by John Donne)