18 pages • 36 minutes read
Victor Hernández CruzProblems with Hurricanes
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2001A 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
Hyperbole
The campesino’s descriptions of flying bananas and killer mangoes are hyperbolic, meaning that they are humorous exaggerations. Through the use of hyperbole, Cruz presents the campesino’s moral lesson in a humorous way because of how seemingly irreverent the poem’s imagery is. Not only are the images of projectile fruit funny, but so are the consequences that the campesino speaks about: He argues that a flying banana can kill someone and can also lead to the destruction of that person’s legacy for the rest of time, damaging their reputation with their descendants thanks to their “ultimate disgrace” in dying by fruit.
Considering the importance people place on things like legacy, honor, and heritage, the campesino’s warning about dying in a disgraceful way suggests that there is something darkly funny in how easily reputations can be made or unmade. It is also humorous that the campesino takes this advice so seriously: He bows his head and takes off his hat in honor of the wind, yet he does this while telling the speaker to fear flying fruit more than hurricanes themselves.
Irony
The comedic irony of the poem helps inform readers about the irony present in the poem’s themes. The poem argues for the importance and danger of small things, especially the potential danger in the seemingly “sweet” and “beautiful” (Lines 34-35) things in life instead of just the more obvious dangers. In having the campesino reveal that the “Problems with Hurricanes” are not the elements most people would tend to expect, but that the greatest danger is the flying fruit, the poem subverts expectations about what the “problems” of the poem’s title actually are.
Dramatic irony is often used in drama and poetry to teach the audience morals or to convey the danger in having certain vices or attitudes. Greek tragedy is famous for using irony to demonstrate that people are not in control of their fate and that destiny is unavoidable. In a similar way, the poem uses irony to illustrate the randomness of the world and the unpredictability of the dangers faced in life.
Form and Meter
“Problems with Hurricanes” is a free verse poem with no rhyme scheme or set meter. The poem has four stanzas with no set line count. Within the poem, Cruz does not make use of any kind of internal rhyme. The poem’s lack of strict form and meter reflects the poem’s subject matter: Just as a hurricane brings chaos and destruction in its wake and cannot be contained, so too does the poem’s form reflect the unrestrained, topsy-turvy nature of a hurricane. The poem’s simple, conversational language also reflects both the simplicity of the campesino as a narrative figure and the Beat poets’ emphasis on writing poetry that was less formal and more experimental in form than traditional poetry.
Cruz also focuses the poem’s sounds on the names of the fruits. When read in Cruz’s accent (See: Further Reading & Resources), these sounds take on more of a musical quality than if read without the Puerto Rican accent. For example, when Cruz reads the poem, “main-goes” becomes “man-goes” with a soft “a,” and he reads words like “bananas” and “avocados” with similar soft vowel sounds, as that is how the vowel “a” sounds in Spanish (“ah” instead of “ae”).
