The Strange Fruit

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The “Strange Fruit”

The song by Billie portrays a time of gruesome acts that happened in the 1900s. The imagery employed describes of the lynching that occurred to the listener. The lyrics are very powerful and communicate the dehumanization that took place among the black people in the south. The use of imagery of nature is brilliant, the song describes how black people got lynched, and their bodies fed on by the crows. The lyrics in stanza three goes like, “Here is fruit for the crows to pluck, for the rain to gather, for the wind to suck, for the sun to rot (Holiday, Billie).” It highlights how humans were left dead for long and the bodies’ decomposition was up to the mercy of nature. The use of nature in this line describe how dead bodies got scorched and destroyed by forces of nature.

I believe that the imagery employed in the song of the crow plucking the bodies resembles the scene of Jesus crucifixion. Jesus was crucified alongside two delinquents whose eyes were also plucked and torched by the crows. The allusion signifies how the lynchers gave their dehumanize acts religious justifications. As the song continues, the theme of religion to justify their acts of acts of violence and dehumanization against the bodies of blacks in the south, keep recurring and is dominant throughout the track (Holiday, Billie). The sickening, as well as horrific atmosphere conveyed by the song, is illustrated as we feel the wind suck and the rain gather, we perceive the dreadfulness of black bodies dangling on trees with the leaves covered by their blood. We can have a smell of the burnt rotten corpses’ flesh and the bodies rotting under the sun. The lyrics communicate a taste of the resentment of all the lives alongside the strange fruit claimed by the act of lynching, as the crows loudly pluck at the bulging eyes of the dead bodies. The imagery invokes precisely the haunting power held by supremacy and the death confronting harm it can generate. 

Works Cited

Holiday, Billie. "Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit Lyrics." Metrolyrics.Com, 2017, http://www.metrolyrics.com/strange-fruit-lyrics-billie-holiday.html.