The Full Text of “The Bean Eaters”
The Full Text of “The Bean Eaters”
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“The Bean Eaters” Introduction
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Gwendolyn Brooks’s “The Bean Eaters,” first published in her 1960 collection of the same name, follows the slow rhythm of an elderly couple’s daily life. The poem's careful attention to the look and feel of the couple's tiny apartment—both scruffy and homey, poor and warm—subtly examines themes of aging, class, and nostalgia, all through the lens of everyday life in 20th-century Chicago.
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“The Bean Eaters” Summary
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They usually eat beans, this worn-out old couple. For them, dinner is informal. They eat from simple, chipped dishes at a rickety table. Their knives and forks are made of cheap tin.
These two people, who have generally been upstanding citizens, have now lived out most of their lives. But they still get dressed and tidy their home, day after day.
All the while, they reminisce about the past—a process that brings them both joy and pain. As they remember, they hunch over their meal of beans in the secluded room they rent, which is full of old odds and ends.
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“The Bean Eaters” Themes
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Old Age and Memory
“The Bean Eaters” describes an elderly couple huddled over a familiar meal of beans. Having already “lived their day,” the couple now faces a dull and repetitive existence, seemingly going through the motions of life—getting dressed, cleaning up—without any sense of purpose or excitement. All the while, their thoughts of the past bring them moments of both sparkling joy and pain. The poem thus speaks both to the lonely monotony of old age and to the simultaneous consolations and burdens of memory.
The speaker opens the poem with a picture of an elderly couple in decline, introducing these figures as an “old yellow pair.” The couple’s “yellow” appearance might suggest ill health and also recalls the fragility of old, weathered paper. Many years removed from the possibilities of their youth, the couple's lives have been reduced to a repetitive series of humdrum tasks and habits. The speaker says that “they eat beans mostly”—meaning that this plain, bland meal is their staple diet. Similarly, “they keep on” getting dressed and tidying their belongings. The speaker's repetition of words like “plain” calls attention to how simple and unexciting the couple's routines are.
But it wasn’t always this way, the poem implies. In fact, going about their daily tasks reminds the couple of their more eventful past. The speaker describes them “remembering… / Remembering” while they eat, a process that brings the couple both joy and pain—“twinklings and twinges”—as they think about happier times long ago. Indeed, these are two people who have already experienced much of what life has to offer; they “have lived their day,” the speaker says. The contrast of the past tense “lived” with the active, ongoing “remembering” emphasizes that the couple has passed their prime and is left only with their memories in the present.
The couple’s routines remind them of this sad truth too. They “keep on putting […] away” ordinary items like “receipts” and “tobacco crumbs,” these apparently useless fragments of the past (and the memories they conjure) filling the couple’s home to bursting. All this clutter also seem to make more work for the pair, who come across as destined to repeat this cycle of eating beans, tidying, and feeling nostalgic until they die. Thus while the couple’s memories offer them the emotional richness and fulfillment that their present lives lack, the speaker implies that these memories are also burdensome reminders of a lost past.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-11
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Discrimination and Neglect
The elderly couple in “The Bean Eaters” is isolated not just because of their old age, but also because of their poverty—and, given the broader context of Brooks’s work, likely because of their race. By calling attention to the couple’s bleak living situation, the poem critiques the way society neglects and dehumanizes those who are financially struggling—especially when they are also part of a minority group.
The speaker makes it clear that the couple is experiencing poverty, and suggests that they experience discrimination as a result. For example, the speaker refers to their dinner as “a casual affair,” using grandiose language (i.e., calling a meal an “affair”) to exaggerate the couple’s low social status, and inventing the term “chipware” as an elegant descriptor for cracked dishes. This tongue-in-cheek appropriation of upper-class terminology suggests the sharp contrast between the lives of the poor and the rich—who definitely aren't eating off "chipware." The couple is also physically isolated from the rest of society in their “rented back room,” hidden away from the public.
In the poem's title, the speaker even equates the couple with the beans they eat for dinner. In the U.S., cheap beans are often considered a lower-class food, and the speaker invokes this stereotype to illustrate how society “others” or dehumanizes the couple. By referring to the couple as “that old yellow pair,” the speaker also suggests how the world sees this couple through the lens of age and skin tone—again, dehumanizing them based on their distance from the dominant social class. “Yellow” has a long history as a racial slur in the U.S. as well, and the speaker calls upon this sort of derogatory language to suggest that social stigmas have resulted in the couple's isolation and neglect.
The speaker grants the couple dignity and respect by calling them “Mostly Good.” Yet after humanizing them (and securing readers’ sympathy), the speaker notes that the pair are nevertheless confined to their boring, lonely routines, creating a sense of injustice. In other words, no matter how well these people lived their lives, they are destined to isolation, monotony, and anonymity. They don't even have names to mark them out as individuals. The couple at the heart of the poem—both human and anonymous—thus reveal the neglect and erasure that poverty, ageism, and racism inflict.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-11
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Bean Eaters”
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Lines 1-2
They eat beans ...
... a casual affair."The Bean Eaters" opens with a description of a lonely couple, worn by age, eating their usual meal of beans. The watching third-person speaker calls this couple an "old yellow pair," an image that evokes oxidized paper or a tattered old pair of shoes. This couple seems to have weathered a lot together.
By calling the couple a "pair," the speaker signals that these two are very close. The members of a "pair" are made for one another, and each is incomplete without its other half. (Think of a pair of headphones or a pair of pants.) The couple's closeness suggests that they've shared a long and loving relationship. But perhaps that they've grown so closely together as they've aged that they've lost their separate identities.
The couple's meal—and the poem's title, "The Bean Eaters"—suggests that this "old yellow pair" doesn't have much money to spare. They're not just eating beans for dinner tonight, they eat them "mostly." This cheap, plentiful food will become the poem's central metaphor for the couple's poverty.
But while this couple isn't rich, the sounds in these first lines suggest that they're not too unhappy, either. Mellow, assonant long /oh/ and /ee/ sounds in "They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair" ease the audience into the scene; there's certainly something sad in this repeated meal of beans, but also something gentle. And the strong end-stops in these first two lines evoke the couple's unhurried pace. It's as if they're pausing to catch their breath as they move around their room, getting dinner ready.
There's also a touch of humor in the poem's second line: "Dinner is a casual affair." Readers might expect to see "Dinner is a casual affair" on an invitation to a cocktail hour, not as a description of an elderly couple eating beans at home. The speaker here appropriates upper-class language to ironically highlight the couple's poverty. The lighthearted mood of this line has an edge, creating a tension between an upper-class "casual affair" and the stark reality the couple faces.
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Lines 3-4
Plain chipware on ...
... Tin flatware. -
Lines 5-6
Two who are ...
... lived their day, -
Lines 7-8
But keep on ...
... putting things away. -
Lines 9-10
And remembering ... ...
... twinklings and twinges, -
Line 11
As they lean ... vases and fringes.
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“The Bean Eaters” Symbols
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Beans
The old couple in this poem "eat beans mostly." This cheap, plentiful food, often used to bulk out a dinner when money is tight, symbolizes poverty. Alongside their battered dishes and their creaking table, the couple's bean-based diet suggests that they don't have much money at all.
Beans don't just turn up twice within the poem, but also right at the start in its title. The reader never learns the couple's names: they're known only as "The Bean Eaters." This suggests that the world views this couple through the lens of class and wealth: they're not Joe and Sue, they're "bean eaters," people defined by their lack of money. Known only by the beans they eat, the couple lose their identity to their poverty.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 1: “beans”
- Line 11: “the beans”
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Clutter
The clutter that fills the couple’s modest home—"beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes"—symbolizes their memories, the remains of all that they have lost. These objects are mostly scraps and leftovers: “receipts” are records of a time when a purchase was shiny and new, while “tobacco crumbs" might fall from the stub of a cigarette or an emptied-out pipe. Perhaps those "dolls" belonged to a child, now grown; maybe those "beads" fell from a broken necklace, once worn for nights on the town. The couple's home is “full of” these items: they're surrounded by the remnants of better times.
The couple may be a little buried in all these bits and pieces, but they also cherish them, spending their time "putting things away." The clutter of their house suggests both the burdens and the pleasures of nostalgia.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 8: “things”
- Line 11: “beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes”
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“The Bean Eaters” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Assonance
While assonance appears throughout "The Bean Eaters," it's densest in the opening stanza. Take a look at the first line:
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Assonance emphasizes long /ee/ and /oh/ sounds, encouraging the reader to linger on this image of a worn-out old couple huddled over their beans. The long /ayr/ sounds of "pair," “affair," "chipware," and "flatware" do similar work, drawing attention to the simplicity of the couple's meal and the cheapness of their utensils, highlighting their poverty.
In the following stanza, long /oo/ sounds create internal rhymes:
Two who are Mostly Good.
Two who have lived their day,Here, assonance calls attention to the anaphora of “Two who," and creates a feeling that this old couple are so used to each other that they just about "rhyme" themselves.
The poem’s final long line is a list of the many items that jog the couple’s memories:
As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
The /ee/ and assonance here is both musical and meaningful: those repeated vowel sounds fall pleasantly on the ear, but they also subtly evoke the monotony of the couple’s routines and the heaps of mementos they live in.
Where assonance appears in the poem:- Line 1: “eat,” “beans,” “mostly,” “old,” “yellow,” “pair”
- Line 2: “affair”
- Line 3: “chipware”
- Line 4: “flatware”
- Line 5: “Two,” “who”
- Line 6: “Two,” “who”
- Line 11: “lean,” “beans,” “beads,” “receipts”
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Consonance
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End-Stopped Line
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Imagery
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Metaphor
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Repetition
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"The Bean Eaters" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Yellow
- Chipware
- Flatware
- Twinklings
- Twinges
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(Location in poem: Line 1: “this old yellow pair”)
Damaged by age, like paper that has yellowed over time. "Yellow" has also historically been used as a derogatory term for a light-skinned Black person.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Bean Eaters”
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Form
"The Bean Eaters" doesn't use any conventional, established poetic form, but rather invents its own. It's built from two quatrains, or four-line stanzas, followed by one tercet, or three-line stanza (though the length of the final line might make that last stanza look like a quatrain at first glance).
This simple shape reflects the old couple's life. The two four-line stanzas suggest the monotony of their days, setting up an expectation that the next stanza will be just the same. But then the final three-line stanza, in which the couple start "remembering," breaks from the established pattern. This break suggests that the couple's memories offer relief from the boredom and weariness of their routines.
The third stanza also breaks from routine with its long, long final line, which lists all the seemingly useless items that fill the couple's home and jog their memories. This line suggests both the overwhelming clutter of the couple's apartment and their long, long lives.
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Meter
This poem doesn't follow a consistent meter. Instead, it uses easy, natural rhythms that sound almost like normal speech, reflecting the poem's everyday subject. For instance, take a look at the stresses in the first two lines:
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair.
Dinner is a casual affair.Here, without moving into a regular pattern, stresses lean on the couple's age and habits: the beans they mostly eat and their aged yellowness.
However, the speaker sometimes settles into an iambic (da-DUM) rhythm, as in lines 7-8:
But keep on putting on their clothes
And putting things away.The steady rise and fall of the iambs evokes the monotony of the couple’s daily life. Similarly, the regular rhythm of line 11 suggests the pile-up of old junk in the couple's apartment:
[...] is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.
Here, the steady march of stresses (along with the polysyndeton of all those "ands") makes it seem as if this list of clutter could go on forever.
The movement between irregular, conversational rhythms and regular, pulsing ones mimics the couple's life: repetitive, but enlivened by occasional “twinklings and twinges” of memory.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Bean Eaters" doesn't have a rigid rhyme scheme—but it does use a lot of rhyme. Its rhymes follow this irregular pattern:
AABA BCDC EFF
There's also some internal rhyme here, like the repeated "Two who" in the poem's second stanza.
The poem's rhymes evoke the humble repetitions of the couple's daily life: recalled sounds echo their always-the-same day-to-day routines, as well as the "remembering" that is so central to their shared life.
Rhyme might also subtly reinforce the couple's close companionship. Perhaps these "Two who are Mostly Good" have known each other so long that they rhyme, too.
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“The Bean Eaters” Speaker
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This poem's speaker is a third-person observer who guides the audience through the scene with plain, straightforward language. This speaker is also omniscient, able to see inside the old couple 's minds and reflect on their feelings and thoughts.
Brooks often uses this kind of removed-but-sympathetic third-person speaker in her poetry, a choice that helps her poems to present stark realities objectively. Rather than making the poem less moving, the speaker's slight distance from the scene leaves plenty of room for the reader's own feelings. The narrator's subtlety suggests that this old couple's experience speaks for itself: it's poignant enough without emotive commentary.
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“The Bean Eaters” Setting
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"The Bean Eaters" is set in an elderly couple's tiny, well-worn apartment. Brooks's own comments about the collection in which this poem appears suggest a specific time and place for that apartment: mid-20th century Chicago, likely in the Bronzeville neighborhood. Within the poem itself, howeve, the setting isn't made quite so specific—a choice that allows readers to draw on their personal experiences as they imagine the scene.
This apartment is a "back room" with plain, broken-down furniture. The couple doesn't own the place but rents it, and perhaps has lived there for quite a long time: the pair has accumulated a whole roomful of odds and ends. There's a sense here that the apartment, like the couple, has seen better days. While the apartment is dingy and isolated, it's also full of memories, "twinklings and twinges" that take the couple back to old times.
The apartment's combination of clutter and warmth, broken-down furniture and sweet nostalgia, suggests both the couple's poverty and the deeper value of their lives.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Bean Eaters”
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Literary Context
“The Bean Eaters” is the title work of Brooks’s 1960 collection of poetry, which explores hope and injustice through the lens of everyday life in the Chicago neighborhood where Brooks grew up.
Brooks felt her poetic career was split into three distinct eras. Her earliest work was lyrical, focused on self-expression; her mid-period focused on politics, advocating for racial harmony. The Bean Eaters comes from her mid-period, and the (largely white) literary world praised it for its “wider appeal." But finally, Brooks devoted herself to Black poetics: poetry by, about, and for Black people.
The artistic innovations and organizing efforts of Black artists in the 1960s propelled Brooks into her Black poetics phase. Brooks attended the Second Black Writer’s Conference at Fisk University in 1967 and supported the Black Arts Movement (BAM), which reflected the ideals of the Black Power Movement in an artistic context. Rather than trying to gain a stronger foothold in exclusive, white-dominated literary institutions, BAM artists aimed to speak to and strengthen Black communities by creating their own aesthetics, support networks, and institutions. Brooks would publish her later collections with the two major independent presses associated with BAM—Broadside and Third World Press—as well as her own small press.
Brooks's parents encouraged her to write from a young age: her father often recited the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar at home. Like Dunbar, Brooks explored Black American culture both sympathetically and critically. Another important influence was the acclaimed Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes. Brooks was only a teenager when she met him at a local church; he would become her great friend, offering mentorship and writing glowing reviews of her work.
As a young woman, Brooks joined a Black writers' workshop led by Inez Cunningham Stark, a formative experience for her. Also in attendance were such luminaries as Margaret Taylor Burroughs, Alice Walker, and Margaret E. Danner. Brooks herself became a mentor when she started her own poetry workshop in the late '60s, where she worked with leading BAM figures Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, and Haki R. Madhubuti.
Brooks became one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century: among other honors, she won the Pulitzer Prize, becoming the first Black American to do so.
Historical Context
In the early to mid-20th century, the United States saw a massive population shift known as the Great Migration. During this time, some six million Black Americans relocated from the (rural) south to industrial urban areas in the north, west, and midwest. Hoping to escape the discrimination, racial violence, and economic depression of the Jim Crow South, Black Americans faced increasing discrimination and violence in northern areas as housing and employment became more competitive.
In Chicago, housing options for Black Americans were highly restricted, forcing them into a “Black Belt.” This neighborhood became known as Bronzeville, and became the center of Black life and culture in Chicago, a vibrant community that gave birth to innovations in fields from medicine to film to journalism.
As Bronzeville prospered, white property owners introduced their own competitor businesses, hoping to capitalize on the Black community's success. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, many Black-owned businesses were forced to close, while white-owned companies were able to secure financial backing. Furthermore, overcrowding, neglect from white landlords, and “urban renewal” initiatives meant Bronzeville residents suffered displacement, demolitions, and discrimination.
Brooks grew up in Bronzeville and lived in Chicago all her life. While she had a relatively comfortable childhood, she still experienced racism, colorism, and sexism, and felt that it was important to truthfully represent the prejudices that infect communities from both outside and within. Brooks became deeply involved with progressive politics and community organizing, regularly publishing poetry in the Chicago Defender and joining the NAACP Youth Council as a teenager.
In the 1930s, when Brooks had a family of her own, she was forced to move frequently due to a lack of housing for Black people in Chicago. Brooks famously received news that she had won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry on the same day her electricity was turned off because her family couldn’t afford the bill. While Brooks eventually became a prominent (and financially stable) poet, her work stayed grounded in day-to-day life in Chicago.
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More “The Bean Eaters” Resources
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External Resources
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Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks — Read a collection of interviews with the author. The first interview contains a brief discussion of “The Bean Eaters.”
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to Brooks reciting a selection of her poetry, including "The Bean Eaters." Her reading of "The Bean Eaters" begins at 22:10.
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Biography of Gwendolyn Brooks — Read an overview of the poet's life and works.
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The Love Between Hughes and Brooks — Learn more about the relationship between the author and her mentor, acclaimed Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes.
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The Black Arts Movement — Read a detailed history of the Black Arts Movement, of which Brooks was a member.
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Digital Access to the Collection — Read Brooks’s 1960 poetry collection, which is titled after this poem.
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The History of Bronzeville, Chicago's "Black Metropolis" — Watch a video interview with a resident of Chicago’s Bronzeville district, the neighborhood that inspired much of Brooks’s work.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks
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