19 pages • 38 minutes read
Gil Scott-HeronThe Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1971A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is in free verse, a poem with no regular rhyme or meter, and comprises 10 stanzas loosely organized around vivid images designed to show what the revolution is not. The first stanza is a direct address to a complacent Black reader, while the second, third, seventh, and ninth stanzas are lists of commercial and pop culture references. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and last two lines of the seventh stanzas are images of Black urban identity, with all but the last two lines of the seventh stanza reflecting highly stereotyped representations of Black Americans. The fourth and eight stanzas also include references to current event programs, also sources of highly stereotyped notions of the United States and Black Americans in particular. The final stanza returns to a direct address to the complacent Black reader and makes a call to action to convince the reader to engage in activism. Although there is no rhyme scheme, Scott-Heron ties the poem together thematically through repetition of lines, such as “The revolution will note be televised” (Lines 5, 12, 18, 24, 39, 46, 54, 55).
Allusion
An allusion is a figure of speech in which a writer makes a reference to another work, character, or person. In “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Scott-Heron alludes to television shows, commercials, contemporary news casts, and important political figures. These allusions serve several important functions. Allusions to real political figures such as Richard Nixon and Whitney Young come in contexts designed to ridicule such figures. “Nixon / Blowing a bugle” (Lines 9-10) seems ridiculous, but the allusion succinctly captures Nixon’s use of the war as a prop for his political ambitions. Moderate Black political leaders favored a formal, understated style designed to put white powerbrokers at their ease. The notion of a buttoned-down Wilkins in Watts in “a red, black, and green / Liberation jumpsuit” (Lines 34-35) is unimaginable because one can count on Wilkins never extending a hand to more assertive Black leaders. Long lists like that in the ninth stanza, which includes allusions to popular household products via their catchy jingles and taglines, are designed to make the reader pay attention to the pervasiveness of efforts to make potential revolutionaries into mere consumers.
Anaphora
Anaphora is a device in which the poet repeats words or phrases at the start of adjacent lines for emphasis. In Lines 1-3, Scott-Heron repeats “You will not” to denounce the passivity of the addressee. “The revolution will not be” (Line 5) appears throughout the poem, including almost every first line of a stanza. This repeated phrase encourages the reader to understand that everything that follows has nothing to do with revolutionary change. That repeated phrase also helps to hold the poem together; in the absence of that line, the poem would be a series of images with little connection to each other. The repeated phrase “[W]ill not be televised” (Lines 57-58) helps close the poem with an emphatic reminder that pop culture and mass media are no friends of revolution. When Scott-Heron revises the repeated phrase by saying what the revolution is—“live—(Line 60), the difference is designed to disrupt the flow of all those lists of what revolution is not and to encourage the reader to participate in the revolution.
