summary of grandfather's holiday
Answers
The first long stanza is primarily a recounting of factual information describing how his grandfather’s “neighbors surrounded his house” planning to “burn/ his family out,” as if this act of hatred could be the birth of their racist nation.
The last stanza of the poem continues in a mood of recollection, as Harper narrows the focus to the mundane but necessary acts of existence that define the reality of a man’s life. His language becomes more lyrically evocative, as he is moved by the images of his grandfather. In spite of the grandfather’s resilience and fortitude, he—like so many black men—finds “the great white nation immovable,” and “his weight wilts.” Yet this is not an expression of defeat, because the man has left an impression on “his grandson’s eyes.” As he says of his own father, whose “recollections in part were consummated in my writing,” he was in his actions “their embodiment and their legacy”—an example of what Harper hopes to achieve in his art.