# 7 Rhyme is the Connection

As I read poems, I wonder why they are written so differently. I ask myself questions like, why do poets use dashes in the middle of sentences? Why do they use objects and places to describe ideas and emotions? Why do poets often make the words in the poems rhyme? I am now realizing that poets use certain techniques in their poetry for a purpose. Poets use these methods to help convey their message and ideas to their readers. In the poem, The Hunters of Men, Whittier uses end rhyme to appeal to readers’ sense of sound. The use of end rhyme helps reinforce the ideas behind his poem. Whittier’s use of end rhyme helps paint a picture of the brutality and degradation of slavery. By using end rhyme, he connected two ideas together. Two thoughts and visual images would now be connected because of the end rhyme in the poem. For example, Lines twenty-five and twenty-six read,
“Right merrily hunting the black man, whose sin
Is the curl of his hair and the hue of his skin!”
The use of end rhyme connects the word sin with skin, but more importantly it poses questions. How can a person’s hair type and dark skin determine whether a person deserves to be punished and treated like an animal? Is a person’s dark skin worthy of punishment like sin? Another powerful connection that end rhyme helped form is in lines thirty-eight and thirty- nine. The lines read,
“What right have they here in the home of the white,
Shadowed o’er by our banner of Freedom and Right?”
By rhyming the words white and right, Whittier poses more powerful questions to his audience. How does white skin make them right, or how does white skin determine freedom? Also, how does having black skin signify being wrong and determines the criteria for bondage? Without the use of end rhyme this poem would not have the same impact on the audience. The poem’s tone and attitude and its impact on the audience would be different. By using end rhyme, Whittier’s, The Hunters of Men, paints a clear picture of how barbaric slavery is, and how there is no justification to excuse slavery.