All Aboard Dunbar’s Train
A Pennsylvanian train station during the Reconstruction period, which is likely a similar setting evoked by Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Goin' Back" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_railroads_in_North_America) Paul Laurence Dunbar was a storyteller. Throughout his writings, Dunbar projects a deeply intricate perspective, with readers rarely able to connect with Dunbar as the speaker in his works. By forming these stories, Dunbar, although born in 1872 and publishing the majority of his popular works after the 1890s, goes back to the Reconstruction period frequently in his works. Narrative poetry forms the vessel Dunbar uses to transport readers into vivid perspectives, leaving the reader to analyze the environments that forged the speaker’s lifetime and confront the emotions, troubles, and life paths of newly freed African Americans. However, Dunbar used his storytelling not just to document the past, but as an opportunity to stretch his audience further in proces...