Hard Rock

Poetry can uniquely use different elements and devices to get across a certain point by the author. Etheridge Knight did this in his poem in order to evoke the feelings and emotions attached to each of his characters. This was especially true for the character Hard Rock, whose role as the jail martyr and hero leaves a great impression on the reader. His rapport with the other inmates too was paid great attention to within the poem.

Hard Rock was the jail martyr and hero. He was looked up to by the prisoners and feared by the guards. One time he was so out of control it took eight guards to put him into solitary, he smacked the captain with his dinner tray. There was also a myth that he bit a guard and poisoned him with syphilitic spit. He was so bad that in order to control him half of his brain was removed and replaced with electricity. It must have been real fear to do that to someone. When Hard Rock came back to the prison he was not the same. “A hillbilly called him a black son of a bitch.” (page 840) He didn’t respond to things he normally would go nuts over.

The inmates describe Hard Rock as

“known not to take no shit

From nobody, and he had the scars to prove it:

Split purple lips, lumped ears, welts above

His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut

Across his temple and plowed through a thick

Canopy of kinky hair.” (page 840)

Knight uses strong metaphors to describe Hard Rock’s appearance, which makes it easier to visualize what he really looked like. He also describes him as the “Destroyer, the doer of things” and makes two references to the Bible by saying the WORD around, making Hard Rock somewhat Godly. Throughout this poem the inmates are not directly described but are made