Literary Criticism of Bars Fight

¶ … Bars Fight" is Lucy Terry's only surviving work. Transmitted orally for approximately one hundred years before going into print, the ballad is considered the first composition of an African-American citizen. Born in 1724 in Africa, Terry, later married Prince, had come to The States after being kidnapped and sold as a slave. In 1756 she became free by marrying Abijah Prince. The two settled in Guilford, Vermont along with their children. Lucy is known to have been a skilful orator, although failing to obtain admission for her son at Williams College, she managed to win a case over an attempt of thievery to which Samuel Chase acknowledged that her arguments stood before any of the Vermont's lawyers. In this paper however, we are not so much concerned with Terry's unofficial lawyer activities, rather the focus is to provide further critical attention in regards to Terry's poem "Bars Fight." In this respect, we will be addressing some contextual issues with a following on literary analysis.

When in 1746 Abenaki Indians raided Deerfield and five people were killed during the raid, Terry became the first known Afro American author when she decided to depict the event in a poem. A resident of Deerfield herself, Terry was terrified by the occurrence and decided to relate the event of the day on paper. It is, in fact, the most solid piece of information that has come to us in regards to what happened that day. None of the members of the community were actually surprised to find that Terry chose to take such an initiative because her house is known to have been a gathering place within the community where Terry would have often recited poems and told stories.

From a technical point-of-view, "Bars Fight" is rather a simple poem constructed in thirty lines and consisting of simple rhymed couplets. The simple structure of the poem resembles what today may pass for free verse. The rhymed couplets can be easily mistaken for intentional humor, however we believe that is due to the simplicity of the composition. Nonetheless, there is a possibility that humor may in fact pass for satire in an attempt from Terry's part to patronize the white community she found herself in, not allowing the audience to depict her intentions. The tone of the poem is rather tragic, depicting the deaths of the five people in the raid with clarity and objectivity. There is no personal attachment from the author's part, just a clear illustration of a tragic episode:

Eteazer Hawks was killed outright,

Before he had time to fight,

Before he did the Indians see,

Was shot and killed immediately.

Indeed, there's no emotion that these lyrics emanate, this is why the verses can actually be perceived so accurately as historical document rather than poetry. And that happens because we often expect poetry to relish on feelings and personal insights, thus it's our expectations of poetry that sometimes stigmatize poets. Although there are no significant literary devices to tempt the reader with, "Bars Fight" captures attention due to the subject it approaches and because of what it represents.

It is often noted that Terry's poem does not provide any literary significant merit, but that it does represent a statement in itself. Indeed, Debbie Clare Olson acknowledges that "though "Bars Fight" is not of significant literary style, that the poem exists at all challenges commonly held beliefs about African-Americans in colonial America and particularly African-American women." (554) We can agree with Olson in that Terry represented, in this respect, the image of African-American women whose intellectual qualities and sense of self-awareness must have initiated what would later on come to represent a bygone era in which Afro Americans would have been subordinated to a "white" society. In our opinion, what "Bars Fight" has come to represent is the mingling of race, literary achievement, and social status in the formulation of black written poetry. We must also consider that in the eighteenth century, few people were able to read and write. That an Afro American slave not only did these, but had a flair for story telling and composing, must be taken into consideration. The poem is easy readable and it allows for a wider comprehension perhaps for masses not so familiar with written poetry. And, even though it does not provide any information on the author herself, nor does it permit for an analysis of race, that does not mean Terry was racial passive. After all, we know she wrote dozens of other poems of which we have no information about, so there really is no way of knowing whether or not she had played with other themes in her compositions. Lucy Terry's poem is no more and no less simple than many of the other eighteenth century compositions and, in this respect, we can acknowledge she is part of the overall American literature, and not exclusively a member of "the Mockingbird school."

Lucy Terry's poem was first published in 1855 in History of Western Massachusetts by Josiah Holland. For the first time in the history of the conflicts between Indians and colonists, five of its victims who had been memorialized by Terry were now witnessed by collective readers, whereas many others rested solely on the memories of ancestors and families. The theme in the poem can thus be reduced to historical memorialization of one event among so many others representative for the era. The poetess offers no personal insight, nor any analyzation for that matter, while it keeps a steady line of describing the raid. It is a tragic theme indeed that which is depicted, with Terry's focus directed more attentively towards Eunice Allen, providing us, in this respect, a six lines formation of her death:

Eunice Allen see the Indians coming,

And hopes to save herself by running,

And had not her petticoats stopped her,

The awful creatures had not catched her,

Nor tommy hawked her on the head,

And left her on the ground for dead.

That Eunice's death was determined by her stumbling because of the petticoats determines the banality of the circumstances, however tragic. Petticoats, seen as restrictive clothing that women were obliged to wear in the eighteenth century, may have been Terry's expression of the restrictions imposed unto women by the society. It is a speculative assessment that would imply that Terry sought more to the poem than just description of a conflictual episode. However, it is an assessment that cannot and should not be ruled out. It would prove the poetess' position in times of great ordeal and oppression more so than the poem actually does. What it goes on testifying is women's presence in colonial years as one that is active and aware. In this respect, that Terry chose not to make any obvious references to racial conditions, may in fact work to demonstrate that her intention was above and intrinsic, not needed to be proven, not necessarily having to stand out immediately. Embracing the perspective would mean Lucy Terry managed to move ahead of later times when Afro Americans writings often reflected race and discrimination directly.