Langston Hughes' The Weary Blues
Jazz music is often associated with long, lazy melodies and ornate rhythmical patterns. The Blues, a type of jazz, also follows this similar style. Langston Hughes' poem, "The Weary Blues," is no exception. The sound qualities that make up Hughes' work are intricate, yet quite apparent. Hughes' use of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme in "The Weary Blues" gives the poem a deep feeling of sorrow while, at the same time, allows the reader to feel as if he or she is actually listening to the blues sung by the poem's character.
The Blues musical move was prominent during the 1920s and '30s, a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Blues music characteristically told the story of someone's anguish, the key factors, and the resolution of the situation. This is precisely what Hughes' poem, "The Weary Blues," describes. Hughes uses the rhythmic structure of blues music and the improvisational rhythms of jazz in his innovative development of "The Weary Blues." The poem opens by first setting the scene. "Down on Lenox Avenue" the speaker heard a "mellow croon" (lines 2 and 4). The tune was played on a piano and sung by a man with the emotions coming from the "black man's soul" (15). The piano man expresses his feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction with his life in lines 19-22 and 25-30:
"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
Ain't got nobody but ma self.
I's gwine to quite ma frownin'
And put my troubles on the shelf."
"I got the Weary Blues
And I can't be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can't be satisfied-
I ain't happy no mo'
And I wish that I had died."
The piano man, in a slightly backward order, tells how he wished that he had died because he feels so alone. But, instead of an ultimate end, the piano man decides to "put his troubles on the shelf," or rather, push them aside and continue living without the distraction of those pains.
The tone of "The Weary Blues" is quite dark and melancholy. This matches the sorrowful theme of the poem. Sound patterns play a key role in this poem. They enhance the already somber mood by way of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme patterns. Consonance is found within the first line of the poem. "Droning a drowsy?" brings a hard 'd' sound to...
... middle of paper ...
... O Blues!
The end of each of the above lines has the long 'u' or 'oo' sound but doesn't exactly rhyme with the preceding line or lines. This off-rhyme gives this blues poem more dimension. With precise rhyme, the poem would seem too forced but with this off-rhyme, the true flow of the blues is apparent and works very well. Additionally, the near rhyme of the long 'u' or 'oo' sound reinforces, once again, the sorrowful and melancholy theme of the poem.
With the consistent use of consonance, assonance, onomatopoeia, and rhyme patterns of "The Weary Blues," Langston Hughes produces a poem with a great deal of emotion. The feelings of sadness and loneliness resonate throughout the poem. The long, lazy melodies and ornate rhythmical patterns of jazz music and the blues are really brought to life in "The Weary Blues" via Hughes' intricate workings of sound patterns that are cleverly implemented in every nook of the poem. Because of these descriptive sound words, I can almost picture myself walking down Lenox Avenue and hearing the old piano man and his "Weary Blues."
Bibliography:
Hughes, Langston. Selected Poems. New York: Random House/Vintage Books, 1987.
Rhyme-The last words of line one and line three of each stanza rhyme. The last words of line two and line four of each stanza also rhyme. The rhyming words contribute to the rhythm and flow of the poem.
The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, explained the importance of the woman, light and darkness and strength in the African-American community. Hughes made a very clear and concise statement in focusing on women and the power they hold, light and darkness, and strength. Did his poems properly display the feelings of African-American’s in that time period? It is apparent that Hughes felt a sense of pride in his culture and what they had to endure. After all “Life ain’t been no crystal stair!”(Norton, Line 2, 2028)
On the surface a discussion of the "blues" may seem a bit high-minded. How seriously can one take works entitled "Aggravatin Papa," "Need a Little Sugar in my Bowl," "Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer, "when placed next to a work of such literary boldness as Cane; a work that William Braithwhite gushingly refers to as "a book of gold and bronze, of dusk and flame, of ecstasy and pain, and Jean Toomer is a bright morning star of a new day of the race in literature" (Baker 16). A closer examination of both forms reveal startling similarities in theme, structure and content and that most important attribute - spirit.
Blues has played an extreme role in todays’ music. The music genre of blues, helps us express ourselves in which you can feel it from the ubiquitous in the jazz to the blues scale and the specific chord progressions. To start off, the blues is musically originated by African Americans in the deep South of the United States. Growing up in a southern household, I was used to listening to a variety music, but blues was always most listened to. Every time I listen to blues, the lyrics often deal with personal adversity, and it goes far beyond pity.
In the first line, the alliteration of the letter w in the words weak and weary adds to the tired drained feeling the narrator is experiencing. The sound w flows through your lips with little effort, almost as easily as a vowel would. The second line repeats the phonetic k sound in quaint and curious which helps make the items he is reading seem peculiar. The hard aspiration draws attention to the words letting us know what the narrator is reading should not to be overlooked. In the third line, the n-n-n in nodded, nearly napping sound feels ominous. The repetition of the n sound feels drawn out and tired but with a little force. Not quite as hard as a d, it feels like someone trying to stay awake.
Lanston Hughes focuses more on rhythm then on rhyme, for example, the poem "The Weary Blues" reads like a blues song, which is what the poem is about. "Mother to Son" is a conversation a mother has to a child about what era life has been, and that no matter how hard life may seem, one should never give up climbing the "stairs". The poem seems to shift from good English to Black English and then back again, which to me shows...
In both “Sonny’s Blues” and “The Weary Blues”, music serves as a form of catharsis; in “SB” Sonny is able to escape his troubled life, and in “WB” the Negro man expresses his sadness about his difficult life. The portrayal of music differs in that it’s more of a joyful presence in “SB” but a grim and depressing one in “WB”.
...ce taking place within a limited audience, allowing it to grow and develop to eventually define the culture of the New Negro. The transcendent quality of the blues, featured in the poem by Langston Hughes, may be placed in opposition to McKay as there is undeniable value in shared experience. While the nature of blues music within the poem is undeniably black and meant to connect black people, the poem presents music as something that is important for expression and formulation of identity as a dynamic community. The two poems, in their depiction of the performances, propose different solutions to the black condition of isolation. While McKay suggests that the strength to counter oppression and alienation is present in the hidden capacity of the individual, Hughes presents a man who is kept alive through struggle and persistence fueled through a communal tradition.
Perhaps the blues was representation of optimism and faith for the entire city of Harlem and all of African-American descent. Music is portrayed fluently and abundantly throughout the entire story of “Sonny’s Blues”. Despite the fact that Sonny frequently plays the piano, there is always a juke box playing, the “humming an old church song”, a “jangling beat of a tambourine”, a tune being whistled, or a revival meeting with the singing of religious words (Baldwin 293-307). The repetition of music in the short story is a realistic portrayal of how regular the blues, musically and emotionally, was present in an African-American’s life during the era of racial discrimination. Flibbert explains that the rooted, burdensome emotion felt by African Americans is difficult to put to words, other than describing it as the blues. He best defines the blues as “a mental and emotional state arising from recognition of limitation imposed-in the case of African-Americans-by racial barriers to the community” (Flibbert). Though a definite definition exists, the blues cannot simply be construed. To cope with this unexplainable feeling of blue, the African-American folk genre of jazz music was created. Finally, the blues was something African-Americans owned and that the white man could not strip them of. Though music appears to show up at the most troublesome times in “Sonny’s Blues”, it brings along “a glimmer of life within the
Langston Hughes- Pessimism Thesis Statement: In the poems “Weary Blues”, “Song for a Dark Girl” and “Harlem” the author Langston Hughes uses the theme of pessimism through the loss of faith, dreams and hope. First, one can look at the theme of pessimism and the correlation to the loss of faith. One can see that in “Song for a Dark Girl” an African American girl is sadden by the loss of her love. For this young and innocent girl to have to lose someone she loved so young.
Mid 20th century Harlem, it can be a depressing place for African Americans and their communities. In "Sonny's Blues" we learn about how the Narrator and his brother Sonny go through a tough time together in Harlem and how the blues gets them through the pain that occurred in Harlem at this time. Throughout the story there are four reoccurring themes, Suffering, Imprisonment, Redemption, and the blues. The themes play an interesting role into shaping the characters and reveal the authors intentions of the story.
The constant rhythm throughout the poem gives it a light beat, like a waltz; the reader feels like s/he is dancing. The rhyme pattern of...
In the poem Langston Hughes uses a range of illusions, rhetorical questions, figurative language and
To start, the structure of the initial assignment that the student must focus on is given differently then the rest of the poem. The majority of the poem is written in free verse. These verses are typical of the jazz-poetry style that became popular during the Harlem Renaissance. The easy style of jazz-poetry gives a dialogue feel to the poem that the reader can connect with. “As it appears, Langston Hughes’s outstanding collection of poems exemplifies the greatest of those qualities of jazz and blues, and his talent truly makes these poems come alive in the same way that jazz and blues music comes alive for the audience as well as for the musicians” (Davidas 1). You truly begin to see the internal struggle the student is having with his assignment and how he is grappling with more then just an assignment for English
Goldman, Suzy B. "James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues": A Message in Music." Negro American Literature Forum 3rd ser. 8 (1974): 231-33. St. Louis University. Web. Apr.-May 2014.