I Hear America Singing I Too Analysis

In the narrative of the American Dream, there are three main steps: starting at the bottom, working hard, and gaining successful. In “I Hear America Singing” by Walt Whitman, “I, Too” by Langston Hughes, and “A Forest Walk” from A Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Whitman, Hughes, and Hawthorne use the motif of building and work to illuminate the mainstream and marginalized viewpoints of the American Dream’s effect on society.
In “I Hear America Singing,” Whitman uses kinetic imagery with gerundive verbs and the symbol of songs to enforce the belief in America’s opportunities are available to anyone who works hard and to emphasize the strong unity of the American society. In the poem, Whitman uses enumeration and lists many occupations.

The speaker, who works in the household, is sent out of the kitchen, which demonstrates how oppression in American society that excludes Black Americans. (LD) Black Americans do the same labor as the workers Whitman suggests. However, Hughes critiques that the building up step of the American Dream is not available to everyone, especially Black Americans. (AI) Whitman argues that to achieve American success, one just has to take action and work hard, but Hughes emphasizes that Black Americans are limited to the access of this dream. Although oppression holds down Black Americans, Hughes uses “But I laugh, / And eat well, / And grow strong” to reveal how this exclusion causes them to build themselves as a resistance. (QR) Hughes also hopes through individually building, Black Americans can one day gain strength together to achieve success. Whitman and Hughes both present the same goals, but Hughes points out the marginalized perspective of the American Dream. In “A Forest Walk” from A Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne writes about Hester Prynne, who a Puritan woman that has a child with a minister, Mr. Dimmesdale, while her husband is lost at sea. Hester has to wear an “A” on her chest (Ms. Turner, Class Notes, 9/19/16). While walking through the forest, Hester’s daughter, Pearl, says to her, “‘Mother,’ said little Pearl, ‘the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your