Death By Langston Hughes Analysis

In the final quatrain, the poem reaches a turning point, as the speaker uses the adverb “then” (9). From this point, the language in the poem becomes less descriptive and more succinct, perhaps suggesting that death is coming closer for the speaker. This blunt, short language emphasises the stark reality of death that faces him. The use of “then of thy beauty do I question make” (9) implies the transience of human life in relation to the immediacy of death. Since the speaker is arguably insulting his lover, he undermines and subverts the traditional notion that sonnets were written about courtship or unrequited love. Due to the speaker’s preoccupation with death, he questions the beauty of his lover, as corporeal beauty is impermanent, unless

Arguably, death is personified as the poem progresses; from “Time” being an allusion to death in the opening quatrain, to the final couplet, where death is heavily implied by the use of “Time’s scythe” (13), as this connotes the image of the Grim Reaper. The implied personification of death may allude to Danse Macabre, wherein death was perceived as a continuing physical presence throughout human life. Hans Holbein’s woodcuts are another example of this widespread rumination on death. The Dance of Death, a widely-accessible satirical work, alludes to Danse Macabre, as the woodcut depicted death personified and often inescapable, as the grim reaper was portrayed carrying off rich and poor alike. This idea alludes to Shakespeare’s previous point of feeling a lack of safety or shelter from

This is a bizarre analogy; as well as conjuring an innocent image of spring, the metaphor suggests an image of death, as “box” brings to mind a casket, similarly, the use of “lie” is synonymous with death imagery. In addition to reinforcing the claustrophobic image of a coffin, the use of “box”, with its physical limitations and defined parameters, suggests a finiteness and temporality to both spring and the life force which it traditionally connotes. Therefore, the box may represent the minuteness of human life in comparison to