Here's the original poem:
Foolology
Shaken by his bad press, the wolf
presses north, leaving caribou to
the fox,
Raven, the snow player gets his
before buzzards with bright red
collars move in to dine near the
bottom of a long scavenger line
This poem is about a skunk, no
rather about a man, who though
not of the skunk family uses
his round-eye the way skunks do
After he eats, his friends eat
He is a fool and his friends are
fools but sometimes it's hard to
tell who is the biggest fool this
fool or his fool friends
By the time they catch us
we're not there
We crows
Nobody's ever seen a dead crow
on the highway
First moral: Don't do business
with people for whom April first
is an important date
they will use your bank balance to
buy eight thousand pies, tunics,
ballet slippers with bells and
a mail order lake in the middle of
a desert for splash parties
Second moral: Before you can spot the
fools in others you must rid yourself
of the fool in you
You can tell a fool by his big mouth
Wow. The section of Inquiry by Design we are working on as a class is supposed to be hard, but sheesh, I had trouble wading through this one. Even after breaking it into pieces (snow player= drug dealer?) I had no idea what to make of the poem. We worked in groups to decode the difficulty, and ended our discussions with a class Socratic Seminar. I finally came up with a thesis that I liked, and I had to write about the message that Reed was trying to send. All in all, I was proud what I came up with in the end.
My paper:
“Foolology”
“Next time you point a finger, I’ll point you to the mirror.” One of the key lines in the song “Playing God” by Paramore, its message is similar to that stated in the poem “Foolology” by Ishmael Reed. The message in the poem is that personal faults must be acknowledged before looking for faults in others, even if it is difficult. The entire poem demonstrates this theme from the “morals” that it gives, to the perspective of the author.
The poem includes what the author calls “morals” at the end, little lessons to be taken away from the poem. The second moral states, “Before you can spot the/ fools in others you must rid yourself/ of the fool in you” (30-33). To be able to accurately judge someone, the person judging must know that they themselves are imperfect. His second moral also means that only people who have no faults can judge others, when in reality, nobody is perfect. By this logic, there should be no judging within a group or society, because only people who are faultless should be able to judge others.
The perspective that the author chooses to take also furthers this theme. The final message stated in the poem, “You can tell a fool by his big mouth” (34), combined with the previous part of the moral make the author seem as though he is a fool. This is because describes ways that other people can be fools, therefore he thinks he has ridden himself of the fool within him. The tone in which he writes the poem makes it sound as if he separates himself from the fools, or that he is greater than them. He takes on a gloating tone, and by doing that, he makes himself a fool as well, because of his bragging or “big mouth.”
Reed spends the entire poem describing fools and the ways not to be a fool. He gives morals to help, and also demonstrates how he himself is still a fool. This proves the idea that it is hard to stop being a fool, because it becomes a habit. This message can be related to life too. People have the capability to be better, and not be fools, by being humble without bragging and not judging others when they are not perfect either. It may be hard to change, as Reed shows, but making the small changes will better society as a whole.
