'The Ballad Of The Landlord' By Langston Hughes

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The Ballad of the Landlord "The Ballad of the Landlord" written by Langston Hughes and published in 1935 deals with the topic of the ongoing discrimination black people still had to suffer from. More specifically, the ballad revolves around a time, when black arrivals from the south only found housings, which belonged to white Landlords, who did not have any interst in maintaining tho se buildings. The author's aim of the text is to raise awareness for that issue and to express his anger towards those white landlords. The poem consists of 33 lines, which are divided into seven stanzas. Six of seven stanzas have four lines, whereas the last stanza has nine lines. Moreover, the poem has an alternate rhyme, although there are some exceptions to it. The metre used in the poem is trochee. …show more content…

Firstly, one can see that the first verses begin with an anophara and an apostrophe: "Landlord, landlord" (l.1 and l.5) The author uses this anaphora to indicate how urgent the issue is by desperately screming for the landlord repeatedly. Secondly, one can see that the author makes use of rhetorical questions throughout the poem in line 3, 9, 13, 14 and 15 for instance: ("What you gonna get eviction orders?") (l.13) The author uses more and more rhetorical questions to let the persona appear angrier and angrier throughout the poem. With rhetorical questions one does not want an answer and the persona does not want to her an answer but has rather settled for his opinion and engages more and more in his anger. This mood is highlighted by some sarcasm as well, for example: l.17-18 ("Um-huh! You talking high and mighty.") This sarcasm illustrates, that the persona in the poem is very provocative and is not afraid of being punished. However, from that phrase the author lets him appear as somewhat childish by writing

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