Careful reading of Gwendolyn Brooks’s First Fight. Then Fiddle indicates a meticulously arranged construct of society and universal arguments regarding war and peace. The speaker of the poem demonstrates a commandeering tone and displays a casual indifference to society’s conflicts but stresses the need for society to embrace equilibrium in all aspects that bind society and its people. This artfully constructed sonnet suggests variability in imagery, diction, and degrees of emphasis such that aspects regarding the subject matter are appropriately conveyed. Gwendolyn Brooks chooses to create a sonnet rather than another format in the sense that conveying a theme through an ordered layout stresses significance—especially in the use of iambic pentameter. Despite the harsh sounds surrounding the several lines of the sonnet, Gwendolyn Brooks creates a balance with several euphonies, rhyming schemes, and simplistic elegantly written prose. Through the use of several key literary techniques such as enjambment, personification and imagery, Brooks establishes a paradoxical and ironic environment wherein a society deeply overwhelmed by the need to do great does the opposite (the need to win war to increase territory demolishes the opponent country’s morale). Following the conventions

of an Elizabethan sonnet, Brooks manages to stage the speaker as one giving a final plea to reevaluate war and embrace peace.

Brooks’s poem maintains several themes: war, peace, and rebirth being the ultimate ones. Considering society’s cyclical nature of waging war and establishing peace, with the use of paradox, Brooks’s speaker creates a never-ending title in which when read backwards and forwards convey the same meaning. Ultimately, with the use of countless sonnet conventions, the speaker in Brooks’s sonnet remains steadfast maintaining the idea of rebirth and regeneration of society after long endured hardships of war.

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