Many people believe that having a lot of money gives you a happier life, one where you have less problems, so we look up to idols who always look like they are having a great time when they go out to expensive restaurants or shops and wear their most expensive clothing. In the short story, "Why, You Reckon?", Langston Hughes shows that just because people have lots of money and can easily get stylish clothing or go out to the fanciest restaurant, it does not always mean that the person is having the time of their life. Money is just a piece of paper but in this time, it makes it clear as day that you need that flimsy paper to buy your
In “Salvation,” Langston Hughes presents his momentous coming-of-age story as a dark and saddening ending to his childhood that provides the reader with understanding of the loss of innocence; and faith he faced and how it impacted who he came to be. Hughes makes a strong implication that children become less and less innocent over time. Hughes himself proves that through the tone of his entire essay. It begins with a light toned; yet still ironic introduction, but ends with a dark, depressing final line. Hughes supplies his reader with multiple literary devices such as imagery, flashbacks, and irony to present this comparison of his younger self and his older self.
***Racial equality has positively enhanced the social status of African Americans in the United States. In the poem “I, Too” by Langston Hughes, he wrote about the frustrations of the black man in his poetry. He never gave up because he saw America in which black and white men would eat at the same table and be considered equal. In the 2nd stanza, he uses metaphors such as “the darker brother” to refer to the black man. Sadly, during that time Hughes was writing, the black man was not equal to others.
The narrator begins the poem with a description of the setting. She is in a train car with a boy she does not know. First she observes him, as she is trying to gather something about who he is. He is described as having “the casual cold look of a mugger”, a bold choice of words and a blatant insinuation based on his appearance. Her careful imagery here actually sets the tone as well, using the idea of a dark, scary, hooded man to create a dark tone.
There are many talented poets, but there is something special about Langston Hughes that makes him unique. He has many eye-opening poems. Langston Hughes is definitely one of a kind. The poems Cross and Mother to Son by Langston Hughes, use figurative languages such as imagery and syntax to provide more climax. Imagery.
A Boy Who Lost His Faith In Langston Hughes’ narrative “Salvation,” Hughes claims that he lost his faith in God because of his inability to see Jesus. Langston Hughes supported his thesis by giving vivid descriptions of the reflections he had about his spiritual encounter at his church when he was an early teen. The audience Hughes may have been trying to target was people who most likely were uneasy or doubted whether or not to have faith in their religion. Hughes’ purpose of the narrative essay was to explain to his audience of his personal experience while receiving salvation, in order to get a better understanding about why he lost faith in his religion due to innocence. Hughes’ inability to see Jesus was illustrated to the audience by
The poem that I chose was Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes I chose this poem because it’s a very confusing and very difficult to understand but if you treat it like a puzzle and take the small parts and put them together and understand what they mean you put the whole picture together. The theme of Dream Deferred was the limitations that African Americans had at the time to come and have the so-called “American Dream”. A simile in the text would be “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun”The author uses this to help his theme by stating that the raisin will become smaller and smaller but it won't disappear. Another part of the poem that contributes is“fester like a sore and the run” this means rejected dream almost physically painful and gets infected and becomes a gross reminder. Finally, the last piece of evidence I could find is “or does it explode” this means that everything is gone and the dream is blown to bits”.
One may ask how a poet can use such vivid similes and descriptive imagery to describe a dream postponed. In “Harlem” Langston Hughes employs similes versus everyday life occurrences to make sense of what can happen to a dream that is in delay. His implementation of realistic symbolism captivates the reader which draws you in, inviting the reader to explore a darker theme of an unrealized dream. “Harlem” connects with people who may have to set aside their dreams while battling an uncertain future. What happens when things don’t go the way you dreamed it?
Langston Hughes“Mother to Son,” shows an example of a mother's life struggles. A mother tells her son of how hard life is. Hughes uses metaphors and imagery in the narrative poem “Mother to Son” to communicate the struggles of life.
The Harlem Renaissance was a time of great diverse culture. However, the acts of segregation, discrimination, and inequality between blacks and whites was still very alive. Poets of the Harlem Renaissance used their voices and writing skills to send a message of the importance and desire for freedom and identity at the time. Three poems that used imagery to express these themes are “A Black Man Talks of Reaping” by Arna Bontemps, “I, Too” by Langston Hughes, and “Any Human to Another” by Countee Cullen.
“All our dreams can come true if we have enough courage to pursue them.” said Walt Disney. If you doubt yourself just once, that feeling will hang over your head and you may never accomplish what you wanted. His constant use of literary devices, connotation, and figurative language shown by similes. Langston Hughes urges that a dream dismissed will stubbornly fade away in his poem “A Dream Deferred”.
In the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, several similes are used to portray the reality of dreams. Hughes employs effective metaphors, inviting us to visualize a dream and what may happen to it after it passes from conscious thought. Could a dream dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or even fester like a sore? (Hughes, 1951, p. 631).
The poem that I chose is Dreams by Langston Hughes. The theme of this short and straightforward poetry is the importance of keeping your dreams alive. Hughes uses a somewhat hopeless and sorrowful tone to portray his message. He uses metaphors, personification, and repetition to convey this theme. In this essay, I will be discussing how each figurative language contributed to the tone of the poem.
Langston Hughes was an American poem born in the early nineteen hundreds, who became known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He published many poems that brought light to the life of people of color in the twentieth century. There are three poems that the speakers are used to portray three major themes of each poem. Racism, the American Dream, and Hopes are all the major themes that Hughes uses to highlight the average life of a person of color. Theme for English B,” “Harlem,” and “Let America Be America Again” were three of Hughes’s poems that was selected to underline the themes.
Langston Hughes is an African American Poet who is very closely connected to his culture and expresses his feelings very thoroughly through his poetry in a jazz style. Langston Hughes is a modern poet who ignore the classical style of writing poetry and instead, in favor of oral and improve traditions of the Black culture. In majority of Langston’s poetry, many of his audience seems to take away a very strong message that many can apply to themselves or to others or his poems gives you an educational background of what’s going on in the African American community right now. For example, Langston Hughes writes a poetry piece called Afro American Fragment, which gives you a great breakdown of what an everyday African American person goes through considering that their whole history is basically taken away from them. Langston seems to show his audience that in books we never hear much about what contributions a African American person has done except for being brought to America and being a slave.
