A Deeper Look: Langston Hughes's 'Ballad of the Landlord'

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Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes writes the poem “Ballad of the Landlord” in 1940, a time of immense discrimination against people of African descent. The poem details an account of a tenant, later found out to be an African American, who is dissatisfied with his rental property. The tenant is politely asking the landlord to make the needed repairs on the realty, but instead the landlord demands to be paid. The tenant refuses to pay the rent, and the police are called after a threat is made towards the landlord. The police arrest the tenant, and he is jailed for ninety days with no bail. Langston Hughes’s “Ballad of the Landlord” is a startling poem that underlines the poor living conditions and discrimination African Americans had to cope with in the nineteen-forties by illustrating an account of an African American tenant’s troubles with a Caucasian landlord through the use of simple words and many literary devices.
Obvious to most, the theme in “Ballad of the Landlord” is racism and discrimination. It is apparent that the tenant is discriminated against by the landlord, the police and the newspaper. The newspaper only shows one side especially in the headlines: “MAN THREATENS LANDLORD,” when the tenant had a justifiable reason for the threat (31). The theme is an important aspect to Hughes’s poem because it is the basis for the purpose and meaning of the poem.
The rhyme scheme in “Ballad of the Landlord” generally follows the simple-4 line rhyme scheme, in which the rhyme pattern is A B C B; this standard form also shows the simplicity of the main speaker, the tenant. The rhyming words are found at the end of the second and fourth lines in each stanza. This phenomena is found throughout the entire poem except for th...

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...angston Hughes writes a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows just how relevant discrimination was in every day life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps develop the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.

Works Cited

Hughes, Langston. “Balled of the Landlord”. An Introduction to Literature. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, and William E. Cain. 16th ed. New York: Longman, 2011. 765-766. Print.

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