Both ideas collide as Hughes sees human agency as something that will be achieved with time, and Du Bois states that race is seen as a problem in America, even today making it hard for some races to get along and get around. The speaker in Hughes’ poem at the end states that “I, too, am America”, where Du Bois just wants the African American race to have a standpoint within the world, but it is too hard for them with the discrimination. This impact on race in America may have been a problem, but as it improved it could connect with Hughes and the reach for human agency. In “Poem for the Young White Man”, Lorna Dee Cervantes argues on the difficulty of managing a balance between race and human agency.
Throughout much of his poetry, Langston Hughes wrestles with complex notations of African American dreams, racism, and discrimination during the Harlem Renaissance. Through various poems, Hughes uses rhetorical devices to state his point of view. He tends to use metaphors, similes, imagery, and connotation abundantly to illustrate in what he strongly believes. Discrimination and racism were very popular during the time when Langston Hughes began to develop and publish his poems, so therefore his poems are mostly based on racism and discrimination, and the desire of an African American to live the American dream. Langston Hughes poems served as a voice for all African Americans greatly throughout his living life, and even after his death.
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.
African American Struggles in Langston Hughes’ Poems Langstone Hughes is one of the many African American poets who was influenced by racism and conflict. He was also influenced by personal experiences and those of his family as he grew up. His father disowned the family and went to Mexico to avoid the racist interactions and conflicts that frequently came up (Britannica 1-3). It is these conflicts and struggles that were found to influence and inform many of the poems and materials that he did. As a result, man of his poems and materials have struggles and death as major themes, and in these cases, they are structured around the lives of African Americans in their country.
In his poem “Harlem” Hughes highlights the limitations set on African Americans. Opening the poem with the question “What happens to a dream deferred?” he then compares the experience of African Americans using a series of dismal similes, illustrating how since Africans were brought by force into America they have endured miserable treatment, and have shriveled up, like a raisin, in comparison with the former glory of the people and culture (Harlem). Hughes further delves into the subject of inequality with his poem “I, Too.” Within the poem he narrates an everyday example of inequality, how he must eat in a separate room simply because of the color of his skin.
Four years after Hughes wrote this poem this problem still was not solved. In 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested for breaking the segregation laws by sitting in the front of a Montgomery city bus. Many more African Americans felt the same betrayal from the very place they live in. This shows us that Hughes’s awareness of the limitations that African Americans face should be taken seriously. African Americans faced many trials in life way before the 1900s.
Firstly, there is no doubt that the poet uses a simple language, which has been reinforced with a free-verse form. These styles are used together to offer the audience the actual feeling of the colored student. Secondly, the poem, Theme for English B, was written at the time when African-American identities were very much needed. Hughes tries to show the need for accepting the blacks as part of the larger American society and as such need to be treated similarly as the whites. Finally, as much as the whites do not want to accept the blacks as part of the American society, they see themselves as being part.
Hughes’ poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is an excellent example of how he eschewed European tradition when it came to his writing in order to reflect the cultural importance and history of black people. The author’s application of symbolism, imagery, and tone within his poem serve to reinforce within readers the understanding of the strength and resilience of black people. In the first
As a mixed-race child living in the early 1900s, Langston Hughes well-understood but was determined to overcome the oppression of racial prejudice. Despite the hindrances that Hughes faced due to racism, he made many achievements and is a recognized literary figure. Given his first-hand experience, and knowing how countless others struggled, the impact of discrimination was drawn into Hughes’ writing. Through the motifs of light, dark, and dreams, Hughes conveys the difficulty that he as well as other black people faced when striving for their dreams, yet also his hope that they would overcome obstacles to succeed. While considered as a black person, Langston Hughes was not purely African.
“Theme for English B” is a poem by Langston Hughes that opens up to the idea of interdependence between all types of people as it subtly criticizes how people of different races believe that they each have dissonant thinking patterns. However, literary critics Chris Semansky and Jeannine Johnson offer two different interpretations of Hughes’s poem. In Semansky’s version of “Critical Essay on ‘Theme for English B,’” he describes the poem as the student eventually coming to question the validity of the assignment given to him by his white teacher. Hughes calls “into question the notion that one can reveal the truth simply by expressing oneself” (Semansky). Hughes recognizes that one identity affects the societal identity, which explains why
The poem speaks to the experiences of black Americans and their struggle for equality in a society that often overlooked and oppressed them. Hughes uses powerful imagery and language to convey the message of hope and resilience in the face of adversity. He declares in the brief poem that he still sings like an American despite feeling forgotten and pushed away by the dominant members of society and describes how he felt like a neglected American citizen due to the color of his skin. The poem also highlights the struggle of African Americans during the time period, as they were not given the same rights and opportunities as their white counterparts. Hughes uses repetition to emphasize the importance of keeping going even when things are hard.
His poems really show his feeling through them. They also flash into his life and around the time he grew up. One of the poems is “Negro Speaks of Rivers” and in this poem you can really focus in on his own thoughts and views. This essay really shows that the African culture has seen the biggest changes is the times of history. He also mentions a part of slavery in his poem, the speaker says “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln / went down to New Orleans,” (Hughes 8).
During a time of racial oppression, Langston Hughes was a voice for African Americans suffering from discrimination. His many poems and short stories shined a light on the hardships of being black in America. His poem, “The South,” demonstrates his love/hate relationship with the South and how he wished to be accepted there. His use of personifying the South makes the poem even more influential to the American public. Hughes shows the injustices of racism through the literary devices he uses to portray the North and the South, and his writing drew attention to the problem.
The poem called I Look at the World by Langston Hughes takes a unique approach to show how people have insecurities and depression through poetry devices and symbols. It This particular poem is about an African American man realizing that he has been pushed into a corner. What he means is he feels that his freedom is limited because of the color of his skin. Even though this representation may be hard to understand at first glance, such as lines 13 and 14 where it says, “And I see that my own hands can make, the world that is in my mind.”
In this two-three-line stanza, Hughes conveyed his message through a very simplistic tone and language. He compares his race to the sun, and how they’re dazzling. This poem expresses the working class’s struggles, as the second stanza states the hard jobs such as: “washing, ironing, cooking, scrubbing, sewing,”. This suggests that no matter the task, the African-Americans did it with dignity and grace. It also infers that God’s plan is what they are submitting to, but there is still hope for a better future.
