The Significance of S.O.A.P in Ballad of the Landlord. While it’s by no means uncommon for a landlord to be exploitative of a tenant, black Americans have historically (and to this day) faced more extreme discrimination in housing as well as the legal system. This leaves many in unreasonably poor living conditions, but unable to do anything about it. Langston Hughes’ work primarily focuses on the experiences and injustices black Americans faced in the 1910s - 1960s. In Ballad of the Landlord, Huges uses S.O.A.P. to express that black tenants face unjust treatment and persecution in the housing legal system. Through multiple speakers, the reader is given further insight into the wild progression of events. We first hear from the tenant’s perspective. They …show more content…
They say, “You ain’t gonna be able to say a word if I land my fist on you.” (lines 19-20) in a heated moment, and the speaker changes to the landlord. The landlord instantly called the police. We then hear the arrest take place through a narrator, and lastly read the press headline “MAN THREATENS LANDLORD TENANT HELD NO BAIL JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 SAYS IN COUNTRY JAIL!” (lines 31-33). Hearing from these four speakers allows us to compare their actions, perspectives, and tones. Hearing from the tenant, we can understand why they’re upset, and the speaker shift highlights the aggressive overreaction of the landlord, police, and press. The poem tells the story of a black tenant’s experience, while intentionally highlighting how unfair the situation is. The audience for the poem is those who don’t see or understand racism and injustice’s existence. As a reader, we start out by hearing valid complaints in front of the tenants. They say things such as “You gonna cut off my heat?” (line 14) in response to a threat from the landlord. But it’s important to note that it is quite literally illegal (and rather cruel). So we can see now that the landlord is the one
To depict the unfair daily lives of African Americans, Martin Luther King begins with an allegory, a boy and a girl representing faultless African Americans in the nation. The readers are able to visualize and smell the vermin-infested apartment houses and the “stench” of garbage in a place where African American kids live. The stench and vermin infested houses metaphorically portray our nation being infested with social injustice. Even the roofs of the houses are “patched-up” of bandages that were placed repeatedly in order to cover a damage. However, these roofs are not fixed completely since America has been pushing racial equality aside as seen in the Plessy v. Ferguson court case in which it ruled that African Americans were “separate but equal”. Ever since the introduction of African Americans into the nation for slavery purposes, the society
In his poems, Langston Hughes treats racism not just a historical fact but a “fact” that is both personal and real. Hughes often wrote poems that reflect the aspirations of black poets, their desire to free themselves from the shackles of street life, poverty, and hopelessness. He also deliberately pushes for artistic independence and race pride that embody the values and aspirations of the common man. Racism is real, and the fact that many African-Americans are suffering from a feeling of extreme rejection and loneliness demonstrate this claim. The tone is optimistic but irritated. The same case can be said about Wright’s short stories. Wright’s tone is overtly irritated and miserable. But this is on the literary level. In his short stories, he portrays the African-American as a suffering individual, devoid of hope and optimism. He equates racism to oppression, arguing that the African-American experience was and is characterized by oppression, prejudice, and injustice. To a certain degree, both authors are keen to presenting the African-American experience as a painful and excruciating experience – an experience that is historically, culturally, and politically rooted. The desire to be free again, the call for redemption, and the path toward true racial justice are some of the themes in their
The 1930’s were an interesting time for many African-Americans. Even though they had been freed from slavery decades ago, they still felt oppression. Langston Hughes does a fantastic job of describing this oppression in the poem “Ballad of the Landlord”. The author’s purpose for writing this poem is to show the problems that African-Americans dealt with in the 1930’s which is exemplified through the use of hyperbole, change of lines in stanzas, and repetition.
Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues and jazz
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin , Missouri . His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico . He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln , Illinois , to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland , Ohio . It was in Lincoln , Illinois , that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University . During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington , D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
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.
This image is the author’s perspective on the treatment of “his people” in not only his hometown of Harlem, but also in his own homeland, the country in which he lives. The author’s dream of racial equality is portrayed as a “raisin in the sun,” which “stinks like rotten meat” (Hughes 506). Because Hughes presents such a blatantly honest and dark point of view such as this, it is apparent that the author’s goal is to ensure that the reader is compelled to face the issues and tragedies that are occurring in their country, compelled enough to take action. This method may have been quite effective in exposing the plight of African-Americans to Caucasians. It can be easily seen that Hughes chooses a non-violent and, almost passive method of evoking a change. While Hughes appears to be much less than proud of his homeland, it is apparent that he hopes for a future when he may feel equal to his fellow citizens, which is the basis of the “dream” that has been
Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes wrote 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; he is jailed for ninety days with no bail. Langston Hughes’s “Ballad of the Landlord” is a startling poem that underlines the 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 theme, dialect, tone and multiple speakers.
Langston Hughes was an activist for the African-American community and made significant artistic contributions to the Harlem Renaissance throughout his career. In one of his most famous poems, “Harlem [Dream Deferred]”, he addresses the limitations and oppression of African Americans after the Great Depression. Many African Americans dreamed of equality, but often times that dream became neglected and pushed aside. In his poem, Hughes responds to a question about a deferred dream with a series of vivid similes, inquiring what happens to a constantly ignored dream.
“I dream a world where… love will bless the earth and peace its paths adorn.” -- Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was a large influence on the African-American population of America. Some of the ways he did this was how his poetry influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and the Harlem Renaissance. These caused the civil rights movement that resulted in African-Americans getting the rights that they deserved in the United States. Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was young and his grandmother raised him. She got him into literature and education; she was one of the most important influences on him. He moved around a lot when he was young, due to his parents divorce, but remained a good student and graduated high school. After this he traveled the world and worked in different places, all the things he saw in his travels influenced him. In 1924 he settled down in Harlem where he became one of the important figures in the Harlem Renaissance. He enjoyed listening to blues and jazz in clubs while he wrote his poetry. The music that he enjoyed greatly influenced the style and rhythm of his poetry. The poem “Dream Variations” by Hughes is about an average African-American who dreams of a world where African-Americans are not looked at or treated differently and they can rest peacefully. Yet in real life this was not so, black people and white people were not equal. And the world was not as forgiving and nice as in their dream. This poem is a good example of Hughes writing because it is typical of three things. The first is the common theme of the average life of an African-American and their struggles. Secondly, the style of his writing which is based on the rhythm of jazz and blues- he uses a lot of imagery and similes. Lastly, his influences which are his lonely childhood and growing up as an Afric...
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. The poems “Visitors to the Black Belt”, “Note on Commercial Theatre”, “Democracy”, and “Theme for English B” by Hughes all illustrate the theme of staying true to one’s cultural identity and refusing to compromise it despite the constant daily struggle it meant to be black in an Anglo centric society.
Thesis: The poems “Negro”, “I Too”, and “Song for a Dark Girl” by Langston Hughes was written around an era of civil inequality. A time when segregation was a customary thing and every African American persevered through civil prejudice. Using his experience, he focuses his poems on racial and economic inequality. Based on his biographical information, he uses conflict to illustrate the setting by talking about hardships only a Negro would comprehend and pride only a Negro can experience, which helps maintain his racial inequality theme.
Langston Hughes is a key figure in the vision of the American dream. In his writings his African-American perspective gives an accurate vision of what the American dream means to a less fortunate minority. His poetry is very loud and emotional in conveying his idea of the African-American dream. Most of his poetry either states how the black man is being surpressed or is a wish, a plea for equality. He does not want the black man to be better than everyone else, but just to be treated equal. Able to meet their dream with the same level of success and failure as everyone else.