17 pages • 34-minute read
Go Down, Moses
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Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The lyric is a traditional song of lamentation that moves nevertheless to a vision of hope. The lines capture the feeling of a people in chains who feel their liberation nearing by manipulating vowel and consonant sounds. Because the lyric lightens despair with hope, the form and meter reflect that dynamic of both tragedy and hope. To suggest that dynamic, for instance, the lines balance gentle long vowels and sibilant consonants (particularly “s”) with harsh guttural “p,” “c,” and “d” sounds.
The meter is rhythmically tight to assist musical delivery and to make memorization of the song easier. Each line is a set of four two-syllable beat-units.
The only exceptions are Lines 3 and 4. Here form and meter shift along with a change in mood. As Moses is commanded to confront the Pharaoh and demand the freedom of the Israelites, the song marks the new era for the enslaved Israelites with lines that break free of the poem’s otherwise consistent meter.
In addition, these lines also break the lyric’s otherwise regular rhyme pattern. In most of the song, each line ends with a word that rhymes with another in that stanza. However, Lines 4 and 5 violate that pattern: “land” and “go” obviously do not rhyme. Thus, the lyric uses form and meter to give gravitas to God’s command.
Call and Response
The back-and-forth form of “Go Down, Moses” reflects its inception as a song or spiritual. In this call and response structure, a speaker/leader voices the unfolding storyline while a chorus provides a running refrain, answering the speaker usually with a line repeated or echoed for thematic emphasis. The call and response format is a defining element in jazz, rhythm and blues, and more recently in hip hop and rap.
Although “Go Down, Moses” has been anthologized as a conventional poem without the parenthetical response refrain, its roots as a song make the call and response fundamental to its cultural significance. Along with the other spirituals created by enslaved people in the American South, the lyric is enhanced by performance in which its give-and-take ritual creates the community feel essential to spirituals.
“Go Down, Moses” represents the centrality of music to those from sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbean Basin cultures; kidnapped from their families, homelands, religions, heritage, languages, and identities, they built a new artistic form of sorrow and hope.
Direct Address
Like all of the spirituals that came to define the torments and joys of the experience of the enslaved in antebellum South, “Go Down, Moses” is addressed first and foremost to the enslaved people themselves.
Most of the song offers a straightforward account of the biblical story of Exodus, drawing parallels between the long-suffering Israelites in Pharaoh’s Egypt and the long-suffering African and Caribbean peoples in the South.
However, in the closing two stanzas, the speaker stops the allegory and addresses listeners directly: “You won’t get lost in the wilderness” (Line 19). The speaker reassures us that we will break free of bondage and closes by consoling that “we” (Line 23) need not always weep and moan. The use of first- and second-person pronouns transforms the lyric from a Christian hymn to a song advocating for taking direct action to ensure the end of slavery, just as Moses did. The speaker’s direct address thus moves the closing stanzas into a radical endorsement of imminent emancipation.
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