“We Real Cool” has several speakers, and they use the first-person plural pronoun, “we.” The short epigraph that precedes the poem identifies the speakers as “The Pool Players,” meaning that they belong to a group of people who play pool together. The poem itself consists of eight sentences, in which these pool players list their various acts of bad behavior, such as skipping school, staying up late, drinking alcohol, and committing other unspecified “sins.” This catalog of deviancy clearly indicates that the pool players think of themselves as rebels. Furthermore, their opening declaration, “We real cool,” shows that they are proud of their rebelliousness. Although the poem doesn’t specify the ages of the pool players, we can infer that they are school-age teenagers, and hence still young enough for their adult behaviors to seem shocking. We also don’t know anything about the gender of the speakers, though the latent aggression makes it likely that the group is made up mostly, if not entirely, of boys. The pride they take in their rebellious behavior, matched with their apparent celebration of dying young, demonstrates just how young and naive the pool players really are.

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