Langston Hughes work shaped the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s. Hughes differentiates from other writers as he refuses to make a distinction between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. His objective was to illustrate in his poems the culture of African Americans, and include both their suffering and their love for music and language itself. Hughes wrote Theme for english b in 1951, during this time period there was a huge difference in the equality between races. The schools designated for African Americans were inadequate in terms of buildings, transport and teachers salaries when compared to schools provided for white.
The speaker of the poem is 22, he is black, he was born in North Carolina and went to several schools including Winston-Salem, Durham and now he finds himself in college on a hill in Harlem. This can indicate what happened with the great migration when African Americans were moving from the South to Northern environments. The Civil Rights movement was about to begin, but equality still needed a long time to come. The speaker can be described as ambitious and tenacious as he continued with his education. The college he is attending is described to be on the hill, this created an image that he is the only black student which is high up on the
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When the speaker says he likes to work, read, learn, and understand life, this can be interpreted as unusual as it is not seen in a common basis for every other student. This is when the student starts to differentiate himself and illustrate he is a philosophical being. He points out he would like to “understand life”, the speaker is referring to understanding why people treated black citizens in an inferior