Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

Langston Hughes was an African American poet that often wrote about his ancestor’s lives and how they lived their everyday lives while enslaved. He wrote this particular poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, at the age of seventeen while traveling with his father to Mexico (Biography). He had graduated high school and this was one of his first but most well known poems. He does not have much work experience but he does have wisdom and cultural understanding to have wrote this poem. This poem was read out loud at his funeral in 1967. Hughes was only sixty-five when he passed away. The poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” portrays Langston Hughes’ theme of his ancestors slavery through his use of diction, imagery, and repetition.

In this poem,

In both human vein and rivers, race has no factor. You cannot tell the race of a human just by looking at veins under the skin. In the early centuries, white Americans felt they were the more dominant race but Hughes only using the human vein to show all races are equal like a river. We are all equal in Our maker’s eyes. The rivers were here on earth from the beginning of time which make them ancient.

The author mentions four rivers: Euphrates, Congo, Nile, and the Mississippi. All are great, well known rivers. They mark a path Hughes was trying to get us to follow to show the transformation from a young man to an old man, the path of human civilization as a man starting at birth to maturity, and also the beginning of a day to the sunset of evening.

He begins at the Euphrates River being the birthplace of the human civilization. He states he bathed in it when he was a baby. The dawns were young would be early in the morning, early in civilization, or early in a man’s life. Many cities grew and flourished on the banks of the Euphrates River. So this shows us being young and early in the morning. Then the Congo River being a river close to many strong African cities. He says listened to it while he slept. Which can demonstrate he lived beside the second longest river in Africa. It now flows through three African

It is believed Egyptians enslaved 100,000 men to help build the pyramids but scholars have said it was peasants who helped build it (Cheops). Whichever it may be, Hughes says he looked upon it. The Nile is the longest river in the world and the land around it is very fertile and the pyramids are one seventh wonder of the world. Lastly, the Mississippi River, Hughes referred to Abe Lincoln seeing it be muddy and then turning golden in the sunset. Which he states, he heard the river singing when Lincoln went to New Orleans. Lincoln saw first hand slavery in this journey. The Mississippi River runs through ten states and is 2,320 miles long (Nps). He also stated the golden sunset which indicates the end of the