Literary Elements in Langston Hughes’s “Cross”

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The plain and colloquial language in Langston Hughes’s “Cross” such as “old man” (1, 3, 9), “ma” (10), and “gonna” (11) is appropriate to the speaker’s straight forward discourse about the challenges faced by a racially mixed young man . This language successfully portrays the speaker’s wise, yet simple perception of the difficulties he is facing as a biracial child born into slavery. This ordinary dialect effectively represents the characters and setting of this tragic poem. The speaker uses his vernacular to transport the audience to a place and time relevant to the subject of the poem.
Langston Hughes eloquently introduces three main characters to the audience in this brief yet striking poem. He first introduces a young, confused, and angry speaker to the audience. This young man is represented as “Being neither white nor black” (Hughes 12). The weight of this simple yet important statement could easily be missed by the casual reader. Hughes uses this statement to successfully demonstrate the confusion and anger felt by this biracial young man. The reader is next introduced to...

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