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Theme For English B Langston Hughes Essay

864 Words4 Pages

Keziah Ignace
Prof. Gilchrist
Essay 3
April 17, 2023
Theme for English B – Langston Hughes (Rough Draft)

Harlem, New York City where Langston Hughes at the age of 22, is writing a English poem in a form of responding to his teacher. A young African American in 1959 expresses how he feels as a young man moving from the South to a busy northern city. In the poem, Hughes talks about the culture issues. Hughes is known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance, so his poem consists of race, pleasures, desires, and the setting. It was a start of how the civil rights movement and black artists and poets began to express the struggles of African American culture fighting to have equality. This poem not only portrays how Langston Hughes was younger, …show more content…

African Americans where fighting to have equality and not be charged with crime by enjoying simple life pleasures as a white man can do. In Hughes case he was fair skinned and was able to be in a class with other white folks. During that period movements and riots were made to express how African Americans wanted the same freedom and equality as whites. Through that way Langston Hughes used poetry to express how poorly Africa-Americans we treated during the civil rights movement.

Hughes expresses his likes the quality about what he enjoys as a young man. The poem states he enjoys simple pleasures in life. If anything makes him different it’s the color of his skin. Hughes stated “I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same thing’s other folks like who other races (Stanza 3: line 20,21). Langston enjoys the qualities of life simply as any other person would, but his audience is his white male teacher. The point of those quality’s was showing no matter what the race is we are all still Americans. Hughes is aware that him and his teacher will not want to be a part of each other, but they are still citizens that have similar likes. In the time of …show more content…

“‘Theme for English B.’” Encyclopedia of American Poetry, 2-Volume Set, Second Edition, Facts On File, 2013. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=106923&itemid=WE54&articleId=26399. Accessed 26 Mar. 2023.

Evans, Robert C. “‘Theme for English B.’” Student's Encyclopedia of Great American Writers, Facts On File, 2021. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=106923&itemid=WE54&articleId=482106. Accessed 26 Mar. 2023.

"Where to start with: Langston Hughes; The leader of the Harlem Renaissance wrote poems and plays, short stories and children's books. If you're new to Hughes' work, here are some good places to begin." Guardian[London, England], 6 Oct. 2022, p. NA. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A721240142/OVIC?u=gtechclg&sid=ebsco&xid=62513b91. Accessed 17 Apr.

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