I am going to reanalyze Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” I will be analyzing how his use of tone, Symbolism, and metaphors give the reader a greater understanding of this poem. After conducting this additional analysis my understanding of the poem has increased. Moreover, I understood the importance of timing within the poem. This increased understanding has led me to revise my week four poem. Because, the essence of this poem was not correctly explained nor did I appreciate the deep thought that was applied in writing this poem. The main differences between the week four and todays revision is I chose to focus on the writing style and relating it to the poems learning outcomes. Because of this my thesis was revamped along with the supporting evidence. Despite the revision, the organization of my presentation has not changed. I found writing this paper was harder to write due to the length of the poem. Additionally, having to develop a new perspective to analyze became a challenge because I have previously written on this topic. This essay is strong in content and it will validate my thesis statement. I do not believe there is a weakness in this essay.
I’d ask that my professor examine my content for clarity and comprehension. In addition, I would like the professor to address my thesis statement and my opening paragraph. I want to ensure that my interpretation of the poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is correct. Lastly, inspect the essay for proper MLA formatting techniques, in text citations, and the work cited page for accuracy.
Sincerely,
Cory Jamison
Cory Jamison
Dr Macon
ENGL 200
February 27, 2014
Langston Hughes was an influential figure during the Harlem Renaissance. He was...
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...e. His use of metaphors was both elegant yet simplistic in creating imagery for the reader. Additionally, there were no wasted words in this poem. This speaks to his artistry and his ability to create simple sentences that have profound meanings. Langston Hughes writing style in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” proved to be versatile and unique.
Langston Hughes is a profit of his time. He was a motivator, a poet, an innovator, a Negro who was accepted by blacks, whites, women, and men during the Harlem Renascence. Langston Hughes did not always follow the rules of poetry. However, he had a Cunning ability to create poems in a fashion that challenged the minds. By using tone, symbolism, and metaphors Langston Hughes deliver a timeless poem, named “The Negro Speaks of River.” Though his innovative techniques the reader can discern the beauty of African America heritage.
Langston Hughes wrote during a very critical time in American History, the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes wrote many poems, but most of his most captivating works centered around women and power that they hold. They also targeted light and darkness and strength. The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, both explain the importance of the woman, light and darkness and strength in the African-American community. They both go about it in different ways.
When reading the literature of Langston Hughes, I cant help but feeling energetically charged and inspired. Equality, freedom, empowerment, renaissance, justice and perseverance, are just a taste of the subject matter Hughes offers. He amplifies his voice and beliefs through his works which are firmly rooted in race pride and race feeling. Hughes committed himself both to writing and to writing mainly about African Americans. His early love for the “wonderful world of books” was sparked by loneliness and parental neglect. He would soon lose himself in the works of Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence, Carl Sandburg and other literary greats which would lead to enhancing his ever so growing style and grace of oeuvre. Such talent, character, and willpower could only come from one’s life experiences. Hughes had allot to owe to influences such as his grandmother and great uncle John Mercer Langston - a famous African American abolitionist. These influential individuals helped mold Hughes, and their affect shines brightly through his literary works of art.
Hughes, a.k.a. Langston, a.k.a. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed.
Because of that, his writing seems to manifest a greater meaning. He is part of the African-American race that is expressed in his writing. He writes about how he is currently oppressed, but this does not diminish his hope and will to become the equal man. Because he speaks from the point of view of an oppressed African-American, the poem’s struggles and future changes seem to be of greater importance than they ordinarily would. The point of view of being the oppressed African American is clearly evident in Langston Hughes’s writing.
Through the exemplary use of symbolism, Langston Hughes produced two poems that spoke to a singular idea: Black people have prevailed through trials and tribulations to carry on their legacy as a persevering people. From rivers to stairs, Hughes use of extended metaphor emphasizes the feeling of motion which epitomizes the determination of the people. Overall, the driving feeling of the poems coupled with their strong imagery produce two different works that solidify and validate one main idea.
During the early to mid-twentieth century Langston Hughes contributed vastly to a very significant cultural movement later to be named the “Harlem Renaissance.” At the time it was named the “New Negro Movement,” which involved African Americans in creating and expressing their words through literature and art. Hughes contributed in a variety of different aspects including plays, poems, short stories, novels and even jazz. He was even different from other notable black poets at the time in the way that he shared personal experiences rather than the ordinary everyday experiences of black America. His racial pride helped mold American politics and literature into what it is today.
During the 1920's and 30’s, America went through a period of astonishing artistic creativity, the majority of which was concentrated in one neighborhood of New York City, Harlem. The creators of this period of growth in the arts were African-American writers and other artists. Langston Hughes is considered to be one of the most influential writers of the period know as the Harlem Renaissance. With the use of blues and jazz Hughes managed to express a range of different themes all revolving around the Negro. He played a major role in the Harlem Renaissance, helping to create and express black culture. He also wrote of political views and ideas, racial inequality and his opinion on religion. I believe that Langston Hughes’ poetry helps to capture the era know as the Harlem Renaissance.
Langston Hughes was probably the most well-known literary force during the Harlem Renaissance. He was one of the first known black artists to stress a need for his contemporaries to embrace the black jazz culture of the 1920s, as well as the cultural roots in Africa and not-so-distant memory of enslavement in the United States. In formal aspects, Hughes was innovative in that other writers of the Harlem Renaissance stuck with existing literary conventions, while Hughes wrote several poems and stories inspired by the improvised, oral traditions of black culture (Baym, 2221). Proud of his cultural identity, but saddened and angry about racial injustice, the content of much of Hughes’ work is filled with conflict between simply doing as one is told as a black member of society and standing up for injustice and being proud of one’s identity. This relates to a common theme in many of Hughes’ poems: that dignity is something that has to be fought for by those who are held back by segregation, poverty, and racial bigotry.
To analyze Hughes’s poem thoroughly, by using Eliot’s argumentative essay, we must first identify the poem’s speaker and what is symbolic about the speaker? The title (“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”) of the poem would hint off the speaker’s racial identity, as the word Negro represents the African-American race not only in a universal manner, but in it’s own individual sphere. T.S. Eliot’s essay, mentions that “every nation, every race, has not its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind”(549). In another sense, different societies have their own characteristics, however, with a racial mixture, shadowed elements can be formed. If one were to analyze in between the lines of Eliot’s essay and Hughes’s poem, he...
Langston Hughes approaches racism with loud desires being shouted out to end it, but has a brilliant way of showing it a lot more civil-like through his poetry. Through the use of Symbolism, Tone, and Anthropomorphism, we can see how Hughes places his words and writes them to show his true feelings. Overcoming it and enhancing the life of those who are colored, his goal is strived for by every minority. Langston Hughes is incredibly skilled in portraying racism through symbols like “walls” and tone by keeping many parts monotone but shouting three stanzas later. His use of these literary devices help to understand his goal. Establishing equality which is key when it comes to having a unified society.
Part of the energy that fuelled the Harlem Renaissance was the belief that black cultural achievement in the "high" arts would socially and spiritually uplift the race. Clearly this has not happened. Where the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance remains, is a profoundly romantic one for the black middle-class on the streets, where a great majority of black culture is made. The spirit and ethnicity of African American literature involves various themes such as: folk styles; protests against dehumanization and discrimination; moral and racial consciousness; cultural nationalism; rebellion against racism; and a search for self-realization by the characters. On the other hand, the universal theme of nature, love and death are also represents by these authors' works.
Analyzing the poem’s title sets a somber, yet prideful tone for this poem. The fact that the title does not say “I Speak of Rivers,” but instead, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1) shows that he is not only a Negro, but that he is not one specific Negro, but in his first person commentary, he is speaking for all Negroes. However, he is not just speaking for any Negroes. Considering the allusions to “Mississippi” (9) and “Abe Lincoln” (9) are not only to Negroes but also to America, confirms that Hughes is talking for all African Americans. This poem is a proclamation on the whole of African American history as it has grown and flourished along the rivers which gave life to these people.
Langston Hughes was deemed the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race," a fitting title which the man who fueled the Harlem Renaissance deserved. But what if looking at Hughes within the narrow confines of the perspective that he was a "black poet" does not fully give him credit or fully explain his works? What if one actually stereotypes Hughes and his works by these over-general definitions that cause readers to look at his poetry expecting to see "blackness?" Any person's unique experiences in life and the sense of personal identity this forms most definitely affects the way he or she views the world. This molded view of the world can, in turn, be communicated by the person through artistic expression. Taking this logic into account, to more fully comprehend the message and force of Hughes' poetry one must look, not just to his work, but also at the experiences in his life that constructed his ideas about society and his own identity. In looking at Hughes' biography, one studies his struggle to form a self-identity that reflected both his African American and mainstream white cultural influence; consequently, this mixing of black and white identity that occurred throughout Hughes' life is reflected in his poem "The Weary Blues."
Langston Hughes is one of the most famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Mississippi in 1902 and later moved to Ohio where he attended Central High School. When Hughes graduated high school he went to Mexico to visit his father and while crossing the Mississippi River he was inspired to write “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was his first published poem when he was eighteen years old. When Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 the Harlem Renaissance was in “full swing”. In 1925 at the age of twenty-three Hughes received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues”, Hughes was famous for incorporating blues and jazz rhymes into his poetry, which is what he did in his poem “The Weary Blues”. Hughes was at a banquet where he received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues” and was asked by a man named Carl Van Vechten if he had enough poems to make a book. Hughes said yes and Van Vechten promised that he would find Hughes ...
Symbolism embodies Hughes’ literary poem through his use of the river as a timeless symbol. A river can be portrayed by many as an everlasting symbol of perpetual and continual change and of the constancy of time and of life itself. People have equated rivers to the aspects of life - time, love, death, and every other indescribable quality which evokes human life. This analogy is because a river exemplifies characteristics that can be ultimately damaging or explicitly peaceable. In the poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes cites all of these qualities.