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We Have Tomorrow Like A Flame By Langston Hughes Analysis

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When people think of the Harlem Renaissance they think of music, literature, art, and the ability for African-Americans to be able to showcase their talents. This was a time where such authors like Langston Hughes were able to take their thoughts and portray them in a different light for the world to see. Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri where he lived for a brief period until his parents split and he was forced to live with his grandmother. He lived with her until thirteen when she shipped him back off to his mom in Lincoln, Illinois. Upon graduating high school, he attended Columbia University for one year then decided to travel to Africa and Europe before settling down in Washington D.C. Langston Hughes was not known to target any specific …show more content…

At this time, the dream was equality and being accepted as citizens of the United States. Hughes felt that this goal of liberty and quality for African Americans was very hard to reach or match. A poem that resembles this thought well is titled “Youth”, where Hughes writes, “We have tomorrow… Bright before us… Like a flame” (Hughes 39). This poem has a lot of analysis towards the American Dream. It talks about how yesterday was a thing of the past and that it cannot be changed. He talks about how each day, African Americans must march on towards their dreams. Despite prejudice, oppression, and poverty that African Americans faced at this time, Hughes points to a positive in that the only way their dreams will come true is if they focus on the present day and what they can do to fix things. They cannot be looking at the past and what has happened. His message to the audience in this poem is towards the youth, in particular African-Americans. The only way dreams will be achieved is coming from the youth who want to make a difference. By informing the youth at a young age allows them to understand the challenges they will face, and what can they do to help rise above and achieve the American Dream of an equality society for all African-Americans. Through the American Dream, this allowed African-Americans to aspire to be something within our society and the equality that they

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In the poem, “ Let America be America again”, Langston Hughes asserts that America does not live up to what it actually should be. Hughes’ tone seems to be angry and [exasperated]. He implicates the perspective of one particular group, but many people. The poem represents that many people come here with high hopes and big dreams but they are let down. He states that [prosperity] is one of the reasons that there is an economic inconsistency where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer.

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Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem: Dream Deferred” and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men share a similar theme. Certain circumstances cause dreams to be impossible to achieve, and all people endure this in different ways. In “Harlem: Dream Deferred”, the speaker suggests that deferred dreams can “crust and sugar over-- / like a syrupy sweet” (Hughes 8-9).

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The poem vividly presents the delayed dreams of African Americans, who are left to endure poverty and despair. The lines “What happens to a dream deferred?/ does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?” (Hughes) evoke feelings of Hopelessness and frustration. The dreams of marginalized individuals are crushed by a society that shows indifference to their struggles, resulting in moral corruption as the oppressed turn to desperate measures. The poem suggests that a society that neglects And fails to fulfill the dreams of its citizens will ultimately succumb to moral decay and social

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The poem calls for the return of the great America that he and others have been promised. The poem is told in first person point of view indicating that Hughe’s is the speaker of the poem. Hughes uses the first person point of view to include his personal point of view of what it is like to be an African American. The people Hughes describes in his poem are mainly the poor, the immigrants, the African Americans, and the Native Americans. They are the people who have worked to find the American Dream, but have only found that it was not meant for them.

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Langston Hughes was one the most well known names during the Harlem Renaissance. He was a writer whose pieces ranged from novels, to plays. He wrote short stories, children’s books, translations and anthologies as well. However, his most well known pieces were his poems. Langston's writing reflected the idea that black culture should be celebrated, because it is just as valuable as white culture.

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Langston Hughes is one of the most well named writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Mr Hughes wrote for a variety of people from children books to plays but his most famous work are his poems. He moved to Harlem to attend college but he dropped out and began spending all his time in harlem writing and working to support himself. All of his writings reflected the African american culture because he believe it was just as important as the white culture. Some of his most famous pieces of work was “ Let America Be America Again” ,”One Way Ticket” and “Democracy”.

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America is well known as the land of the free and the home opportunity. Although it is said everyone is equal in every way, that has not always been the case. Langston Hughes is a poet who tried to emphasize the idea of equality among all human beings. Hughes underlined the basis of the American Dream with what is and what should be in the societal era he lived in. In hindsight he believed his poems helped others realize the injustices that all minorities had to face during this era.

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Writers and poets emerging during that time were recapturing the African-American past. Topics such as southern roots, new urban living, and African heritage were a few of their focuses. Langston Hughes was one of these poets transforming the Black image to the rest of the world. He was largely known for the raw emotions he emitted into his poems. Laced with Jazz and Blues undertones, Hughes’ poems that forced you clearly think about what he said.

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This provides the reader with the ultimate message of the poem that Langston Hughes tries to get to the world. Langston Hughes claims that “There’s never been equality” in America, that it lacks freedom in this so-called homeland of the free (Hughes, Line 16). This goes back to Hughes' message on how African Americans had endured inequality by Hughes telling that they never had equality. The use of connotations in the poem allows readers to hold the feeling of appeal to the poem and to add more personal feelings to words. The topic that African Americans do not have equality affects readers by making them reflect on how lucky they do not have to deal with inequality.

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This viewpoint is very confident for the future and seems to allude to Hughes knowing that one day African Americans will be seen as equal to everyone else. Maya Angelou also has a well-known poem titled “Still I Rise” in which she talks about how even with everything going against her and all African Americans, they still overcome it all and stand strong. This poem is confident as well, but in a different way than Hughes’s poem. Hughes’s poem is confident that people will one day see him for who he is, but Angelou’s poem is confident because it accuses

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Biography/Context: Langston Hughes (1902-1967) is widely considered as one of the most successful African-American poets of all time. He was also a columnist, playwright, novelist, and social activist for African-American rights. Consequently, Hughes wrote all sorts of literature about 20th century African-Americans living in Harlem--a major black residential within the Manhattan borough of New York City--and soon became an extremely influential figure in the Harlem Renaissance, which was the rebirth movement of African-American culture in the arts during the 1920s. Hughes also had great admiration for music, and was inspired by a variety of genres/musicians such as boogie, Bach, jazz, and blues. His special love for blues music caused

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Therefore, the whole theme about this poem is everything is a mystery and a question and it will take years to potentially to find an answer. To begin, Langston shows in his first stanza his extreme miss for Africa and how much his history as an African American man has changed ever since his ancestors are officially part of the United states. Langston begins stating “ So long, So far away Is Africa. Not even memories alive Save those that history books create.” Langston explains how

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His metaphor puts a final image to the struggle of oppression during the Civil Rights Movement and what happens to a black man or woman when a dream is deferred. Hughes wants his readers to not only imagine but feel how African Americans felt during the Civil Rights Movement when he wrote this poem. He wanted to convey the pain, anguish, disrespect, and ultimately, the conclusion of what may happen to a dream that continues to be deferred. What would happen to a dream deferred?

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