Megan Dickey
Mrs. Walden
ACP English-L202
6, February 2017
A Call to Revolution for Social Injustice
Martín Espada’s poem “Image the Angels of Bread” is created with a combination of
visionary and angry disgust with injustice in things such as slavery, immigration, and labor.
Espada uses specific comparison to inspire revolutionary thinking while also using grotesque and
blunt diction to establish a tone of disgust and anger. Espada uses historical content which could
correlates with that of a specific country but there is not enough evidence to indicate a specific
focus. His background as a tenant lawyer also provides specific speculation on his tones and
claims presented in the poem. Martín Espada provides an intriguing combination of dream versus
reality and anger versus compassion to identify injustices in the world and throughout history.
He uses this to convey a revolutionary call to action to identify and eliminate such injustice.
Espada’s poem is structured in four different stanzas, each differing in what comparisons
are used to create the tone and purpose of each. One repetition throughout the entire poem is the
phrase “this is the year” and the repetition of this phrase establishes and maintains a
revolutionary characteristic of the poem’s message and also establishes a time frame which
makes for a stronger connection or pull to the poem. The first stanza overall is heavily structured
with tones of revolutionary and visionary mindsets and creates a sense of triumph for victims of
injustice such as “squatter” (line 1), “shawled refugees” (line 7), and “darkskinned men”
(line18). The tones that are revolutionary and visionary are created by the use of comparisons
that highlight significant social issues that require revolutionary revolt such as slavery,
immigration, and police brutality. In both the first and second stanza the phrase “this is the year”
is used in the present tense and is stated as if through fact: “This is the year that squatters evict
landlords” (line 1) and “This is the year that the hands pulling tomatoes…” (line 29). However,
while both stanzas are composed of lines stated as if facts, they differ in the selected
comparisons and what each statement is drawing attention to.
The lines of the first stanza are visionary, reading as if a speech declaring revolution
against injustice, and pair two people of opposing groups from significant social issues; aside
from the “police revolvers” which are not representatives of a specific group of people but rather
a representation of the significant social issue, police brutality. Also the way Espada writes about
the “police revolvers” is an effective use of irony because “police revolvers” and “nightsticks”,
