Langston Hughes Landlord

In “Ballad of the Landlord”, by Langston Hughes, the poem describes a confrontation between a landlord and an African American tenant, who is probably living in the ghetto of a big American city. The tenant tries to inform the landlord of the terrible condition the home is in, leaky roofs and broken steps, and reminds him that maintenance is much needed, but the landlord seems to ignore his problems and tells him that his ten-dollar rent is due. The tenant hearing this response from the landlord angers him and he refuses to pay the rent until the maintenance problems are fixed. The tenant then threatens him by saying that he’ll cut off the heat and throw his furniture onto the streets, and the tenant responds with a threat also. He threatens that he will throw a punch to the lips to shut him up. The landlord calls the police because of that threat and the tenant is sentenced 90 days without bail imprisonment. The speaker is trying to convey the extent of social injustice in America. Ballad of the Landlord discusses the unfair inequality between African American tenants and Caucasian landlords. The landlord exploited the tenant and the police helped the landlord by exploiting the tenant even more. Also, the media was aware of the incident and portrayed the

The reader can easily visualize the poem and see the tenant and landlord going back and forth. Imagery is used to put the reader into the tenant’s situation like when Hughes writes, “Copper whistle!”, “Patrol bell!”, and “Iron cell”. There are two significant words in the poem and they are repeatedly used. Those words are “tenant” –a slave who is treated poorly- and “landlord” –refers to dominant person-. When Hughes wrote, “The roof needs to be fixed”, the message that is given off from that is that the world’s human rights needs to be