I am completely aware of what an understatement is. I feel as if I’ve known the definition of it my entire life, but, that does not mean I really knew how effective an understatement could be in poetry.

I realized how effective this style could be used when reading Countee Cullen’s Incident.

Here is a passage from my homework a few weeks back that explains my understanding well.

“Understatement is used in Countee Cullen’s Incident. In lines 7-12, Cullen writes about an incident in which he is called a racial slur. Although the reader expects him to teach us all a lesson about how this is bad, instead he continues on about his experience in Baltimore and that that was all he could remember. He does not go on about the incident, but instead decides to state the impact of it on the rest of his stay. He doesn’t tell details of his life in Baltimore. Instead Cullens keeps the poem very short, simple and blunt in the last stanza. This makes the last stanza seem much more powerful to the reader, leaving a larger impact on them when finished reading.”

Although I explain it well in this response, I do not go into as much detail as I wish I had. Because all though I can easily explain the way he uses the understatement, it takes one to read the poem to actually feel it’s effects. The writers decision to use understatement in this poem shows something he never truly addresses; the nonchalantness of racism during his time. He is verbally abused by a stranger, but he does not show his emotional and internal struggle at the moment. This shows how common that was. It lets the reader see that the man could have made a scene, he could have followed the incident with an inspirational and eyeopening epilogue, but instead, he brushes it off. He knows that if he were to, it would make no impact. Cullens realizes that putting the reader in this scenario of knowing about the incident but passing it off as nothing opens the reader’s eyes and helps them realize the overall problem with the situation as a whole.