Answers

=**Answers**=


 * 1.** In the first poem you see slaves as they toil in the fields and dirt to sow seeds in the ground and reaping what they can carry. In the second poem you can hear the thunder clapping and see the rain falling.


 * 2. a)** The speaker plants deep because he is afraid that the wind will blow the seeds away or that the birds will eat what he has sown.


 * b)** The "stark, lean year" implies that the fields or ground haven't been producing a lot of food.


 * 3. a)** The speaker "scattered seed enough to plant the land from Canada to Mexico".


 * b)** The speaker is only allowed to harvest what he can carry in his own two hands.


 * c)** The people or person who owns the land reaps what the speaker has sown.


 * 4. a)** The natural event the poem describes is a thunder storm.


 * b)** The speaker's attitude toward this event is positive, the speaker describes the storm in a pleasant manner.


 * c)** Words that best convey this attitude are when the speaker says, "thunder blossoms gorgeously", "bell-like flowers", "full-lipped flowers", and "dripping rain like golden honey".


 * 5. a)** Bontemps suggests that African Americans have received very little in exchange for their hard work.


 * b)** Bontemps poem comments on the idea "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap" because the black race was enslaved to sow and work hard for slave owners while they received little to nothing in return. They did all the hard work and got nothing out of it, when they should have received everything.