11 pages • 22 minutes read
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Chosen” opens with a wish for death—“Diverne wanted to die” (Line 1)—and ends with a celebration of the life to which she gave birth, that of Pomp Atwood. Dramatic irony is a device in which the speaker—in this case, a third-person omniscient narrator—reveals information contradicting the audience’s knowledge or sense of what is true. In the first stanza, the audience is set up to feel Diverne’s terror and her attempt to harden herself in response to fear by “[killing] part of her heart” (Line 3). The dark misery of “that August night” (Line 1) comes undone after the birth of Pomp—“her life’s one light” (Line 5). By the poem’s final lines, the narrator reveals Diverne has come to see her life as intertwined with that of the man who assaulted her, which would contradict a reader’s understanding of how someone would view their rapist. The narrator also goes as far as to say that the encounter wasn’t rape, despite the conditions—“her raw terror” and “his whip” (Line 14)—that made it so.
Nelson’s use of dramatic irony complicates the reader’s understanding of these encounters between white men and enslaved women.
Plus, gain access to 8,650+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
African American Literature
View Collection
Birth & Rebirth
View Collection
Black History Month Reads
View Collection
Books on U.S. History
View Collection
Family
View Collection
Fantasy
View Collection
Poetry: Family & Home
View Collection
Religion & Spirituality
View Collection
Romance
View Collection
Science Fiction & Dystopian Fiction
View Collection
Sexual Harassment & Violence
View Collection
Short Poems
View Collection
The Past
View Collection