Summary answers of poem brothers
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Answer:
The Brothers Poem or Brothers Song is a series of lines of verse attributed to the archaic Greek poet Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BC), which had been lost since antiquity until being rediscovered in 2014. Most of its text, apart from its opening lines, survives. It is known only from a papyrus fragment, comprising one of a series of poems attributed to Sappho. It mentions two of her brothers, Charaxos and Larichos; the only known mention of their names in Sappho's writings, though they are known from other sources. These references, and aspects of the language and style, have been used to establish her authorship.
The poem is structured as an address—possibly by Sappho herself—to an unknown person. The speaker chastises the addressee for saying repeatedly that Charaxos will return (possibly from a trading voyage), maintaining that his safety is in the hands of the gods and offering to pray to Hera for his return. The narrative then switches focus from Charaxos to Larichos, who the speaker hopes will relieve the family of their troubles when he becomes a man.
Scholars tend to view the poem's significance more in historical rather than in literary terms. Research focuses on the identities of the speaker and the addressee, and their historical groundings. Other writers examine the poem's worth in the corpus of Sappho's poetry, as well as its links with Greek epic, particularly the homecoming stories of the Odyssey.
Brothers Summary
“Brothers” is a poem of conventional meter, iambic pentameter, and conventional form, question and answer. The subject matter, however, is disturbing. A man to be lynched is asked why he has acted like a beast. He responds that his beastlike shape slumbers in all of those quiet African Americans who have for years taken abuse and discrimination while acting as loyal servants. After his body is burned, those who lynched him ponder his last “muttered” words: “’Brothers in spirits, brothers in deed are we.” The explanation they seek is in the title of the poem: They have committed a crime against him as he has committed a crime against them. Ironically, however, the man who is lynched committed one crime; the men who lynched him committed the crime of killing him and collectively creating the beast he had become.