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The Weary Blues By Langston Hughes

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The pain of a Negro musician The poem’s purpose was to vocalize the hard ship of the dark culture and to utilize the blues, which at the time was viewed as African American music. Blues was a way for African Americans to deliver messages and expression. The purpose of the poem is to express the suffering of African American people. The poem has a lot to do with the torment and mishandle of African Americans. “Hughes uses the blues itself as songful lament for the black experience in America” (Brown). This source indicates that the purpose of the poem is to show the suffering of the black people. The theme of the poem is to express black culture through music. This source will be used to indicate the meaning, purpose, expression of the poem and the literary techniques that the poem uses. Poetry for Students discussed that the narrator contrasted the blues singer’s black skin with the white keys of the piano …show more content…

Hughes opens his poem with a speaker who comes across a “Negro” musician in the lines, “I heard a Negro play. / Down on Lenox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light” (“The Weary Blues” 3-4). Per the source Poetry for Students, the source discusses a speaker’s memory of hearing the bluesman sing and play (“The Weary Blues”). This line of the poem is important because it gives the reader a clear picture of where the blues singer was located and the setting of the poem. In the essential sentence, the musician is recognized as an African American male referred by the term Negro, a term that is now out of date, yet was current when this work was formed. The source Poetry for Students, explains the theme of the poem as “Black Culture.” Hughes’ poem gives an image of sadness and pain. The poem expresses the culture of the old ages and the pain that the musician is dealing

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Part of the argument of the article focuses on the Hughes black race at a time when blacks were facing lots of discrimination. The article explores some of Hughes works citing some excerpts from his pieces. The piece further highlights some other blacks who suffered similar bias to clarify the plight of Hughes during his time.

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The purpose of “Why, You Reckon?” by Langston Hughes is to accurately display, through the times of that century and human emotion, that despite money, power, and the color of your skin there can still be an unhappiness of the soul. There is evidence in the beginning of the short story of two men’s unhappiness in life the symbol of them being uncontent was their hunger. “Man, ain’t you hongry.... Well, sir, I’m tellin’ you, I was so tired and hongry and cold that night.” (253- 254).

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Authors tend to use political and or social statements to express themselves in literature. Paul Laurence Dunbar talks about the inequality and discrimination that African Americans were facing in his poem “Douglass.”

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For Baldwin, the blues are not a specific genre of music, but rather something more universal. The narrator explains that the blues are "the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph" (Baldwin p.139). Given this definition, the story "Sonny's Blues" is a blues piece in itself because it begins with the suffering of two brothers, follows their growing sense of communion, and ends with the triumph of brotherly love over suffering. The narrator admits that this formula isn't new, but claims that "it's the only light we've got in all this darkness" (Baldwin p.139). The story “Sonny's Blues" is an attempt, much like Sonny's actual music, to relate with its audience and, through understanding and compassion, to relieve suffering.

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In the poem, Langston Hughes outlines the African American, as not being recognized as having a place within society, and being an oppressed group of people. This is shown in the first line of the poem when he says “I, too, sing America. ”(Hughes, 1) By saying, “I, too, sing America,”(Hughes, 1) the audience can interpret that, Langston Hughes sees society as a choir, all ‘singing’ together. This is saying that he, is also part of that ‘choir,’ and has an equal voice within this society. The audience can also see how he is not equal, as he is

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In this poem, the author shows the solemn mood by giving the blues a pronoun. Towards the beginning of the poem Hughes says, “He made that poor piano moan with melody” (Hughes 3.3). Giving the blues the pronoun “he”, the author personifies the song and

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The gender of the speaker cannot be defined since there are no indications to suggest the speaker’s gender. The main idea of the poem is the integral part of music in African American culture as a “hypodermic needle / to [the] soul” soothing the weariness and pain from the “smoldering memor[ies]” of “slave ships” (6). In stanza 1, the larger theme of social inequality is addressed through the allusion of the slave trade by trumpet player’s memory “of slave ships / Blazed to the crack of whips,” (6-7).

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In this case repetition is used to regularly insinuate a sense of desperation and isolation. In addition to this, the first two lines of the stanza rhyme. Blues music was created and first sung by the African slaves who would sing to convey their hardship and isolation from others. Blues music to the African slaves was a strategy to explain their feelings and help them cope with their suffering.

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