The Cross By Tengston Hughes Summary

2322 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of racism in langston hughes poetry

Moreover, the title of the poem in itself describes the suffering of the African-American race and their struggle for an identity. “The Cross” shows the African-American’s identity dilemma as a heavy burden or a cross that the African-Americans are forced to bear. At the same time, the title associates the suffering and the struggle of the black race with Christ’s crucifixion.
Another poem that revolves around the same theme is Hughes’ “Mulatto” which is considered a highly dramatic confrontation between a white father and his unacknowledged bastard mulatto son:
I am your son, white man!

Georgia dusk
And the turpentine woods.
One of the pillars of the temple fell.
You are my son!
Like hell!
The moon over the turpentine woods
The southern night
Full of stars
Great big yellow stars.
What’s a body but a toy?
Juicy bodies
Of nigger wenches
Blue black
Against black fences
. . .
What’s the body of your mother?
A nigger night,
A nigger joy,
A little yellow
Bastard boy (Hughes 160-61)
At the beginning of the poem, the impression of passion and violence are evoked through the staccato shouting of the speakers. The son-father conflict immediately surfaces: “I am your son, white man!” to which the father’s rejection is prompt: “You are my son! / Like hell!”. This answer implies the father’s direct accusation of the inherent inferiority of his mulatto son. The father goes on insulting both the “bastard son” and his mother whose bodies are nothing to him but a “toy” in a “nigger night”. Moreover, phrases such as “Juicy bodies”, “Of nigger wenches”, “Black blue”, and “Against black fences” suggest that the relationship between the white father and the black mother is devoid of any emot...

... middle of paper ...

...ississippi. In “Bitter River”, Hughes believes that the water of the Mississippi turns poisonous since the bodies of the African-Americans were being thrown into the river after being lynched.
Moreover, Hughes’ use of the word “blood” is meant to carry two implications. Firstly, it may refer to the kinship—his estranged father that Hughes wrote the poem while he was on his journey to meet him. Secondly, it may evoke the issue of race and black color. In most of his poems, Hughes was preoccupied with the issue of the black race which “laid the foundation for the special bond between Hughes and African-Americans that led him at one time to be hailed as the poet laureate of the Negro race” (Andrews 310). Meanwhile, Hughes’ use of the irregular and unrhymed lines of the poem invokes the suffering of the African race that is violated by slavery and racism.

Show More
Related

  • How Does Langston Hughes Use Strength In Mother To Son

    1500 Words  | 3 Pages

    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)

    Read More

  • Susan Glaspell's Trifles

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes Thesis

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hughes says, “They hung my black young lover / To a cross roads tree.” (3-4). One can see that the narrator, this young girl has just loss her lover. Her lover got lynched and this causes our reader to have a broken heart. One can see that due to society and racism

    Read More

  • Messages from Point of View in Langston Hughes’ I too

    1046 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Perseverance in Mother to Son and The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

    836 Words  | 2 Pages

    The founding fathers constructed the Constitution with the notion that “all men were created equal.” However, many minorities still struggle for the same rights and opportunities as others. “Mother to Son” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” are poems written by Langston Hughes that use symbolism to exemplify the struggles of African Americans as they attempt to persevere through adversity. Hughes utilizes the stairs in “Mother to Son” and the rivers in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” as his main modes of symbolism.

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes And Claude Mckay Analysis

    1136 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • A Deeper Look: Langston Hughes's 'Ballad of the Landlord'

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ites a short 33-line poem that simply shows the barriers between races in the time period when racism was still openly practiced through segregation and discrimination. The poem captures the African American tenant’s frustrations towards the landlord as well as the racism shown by the landlord. The poem is a great illustration of the time period, and it shows how relevant discrimination was in everyday life in the nineteen-forties. It is important for the author to use the selected literary devices to help better illustrate his point. Each literary device in the poem helps exemplify the author’s intent: to increase awareness of the racism in the society in the time period.

    Read More

  • Langston Hughes' Poetry

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    The contradiction of being both black and American was a great one for Hughes. Although this disparity was troublesome, his situation as such granted him an almost begged status; due to his place as a “black American” poet, his work was all the more accessible. Hughes’ black experience was sensationalized. Using his “black experience” as a façade, however, Hughes was able to obscure his own torments and insecurities regarding his ambiguous sexuality, his parents and their relationship, and his status as a public figure.

    Read More

  • Biography of Langston Hughes

    1369 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... They focus more on the cultural aspects of identity that Hughes is very proud of, while poems “Democracy” and “Theme for English B” touch on some of the social concerns that created a struggle for dignity as a black person in the early/mid twentieth century. The “Democracy” is a slightly stern and direct request to take action and fight for civil rights. The “Theme for English B” is a compassionate and low-key personal anecdote that reiterates the unpracticed concept that “all men are created equal”. Despite the difference in tone and subject, all four poems relate to the central theme that dignity is something that white men may take for granted, but Langston Hughes, as a black man and a writer, sees and feels dignity as a fight and a struggle that he faces and that the black community as a whole faces every day.

    Read More

  • Silhouette Langston Hughes

    663 Words  | 2 Pages

    Hughes’s night scene in his poem, “Mulatto,” when the mixed boy confronts his white father, is depicted by “The moon over the turpentine woods. / The Southern night / Full of stars, / Great big yellow stars” (Mulatto - Hughes 873). Hughes uses a natural scene of the night sky, lit up by a large ivory moon, but also glittered by countless singular stars to not only show separation of the races but also to account for the ones that are not completely black or white. The author describes the stars as yellow and also portrays the white man’s mix son as “a little yellow / bastard boy” (Hughes 874). The use of a completely different color, yellow, is to illustrate how different mulatto people are when compared to their black and white ancestors. In one man’s interpretation of Hughes’s poem in his essay, “‘A Little Yellow Bastard Boy’: Paternal Rejection, Filial Insistence, And The Triumph Of African American Cultural Aesthetics In Langston Hughes's ‘Mulatto,’” Robert Paul Lamb analyses the contents of several African American works

    Read More

  • T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Modern Poetry

    840 Words  | 2 Pages

    To analyze Hughes’s poem thoroughly, by using Eliot’s argumentative essay, we must first identify the poem’s speaker and what is symbolic about the speaker? The title (“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”) of the poem would hint off the speaker’s racial identity, as the word Negro represents the African-American race not only in a universal manner, but in it’s own individual sphere. T.S. Eliot’s essay, mentions that “every nation, every race, has not its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind”(549). In another sense, different societies have their own characteristics, however, with a racial mixture, shadowed elements can be formed. If one were to analyze in between the lines of Eliot’s essay and Hughes’s poem, he...

    Read More

  • I, Too by Langston Hughes

    694 Words  | 2 Pages

    When looking at the poem, Hughes expresses the pride that he has in his heritage and in who h...

    Read More

  • The Negro Speaks of Rivers

    554 Words  | 2 Pages

    Analyzing the poem’s title sets a somber, yet prideful tone for this poem. The fact that the title does not say “I Speak of Rivers,” but instead, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” (1) shows that he is not only a Negro, but that he is not one specific Negro, but in his first person commentary, he is speaking for all Negroes. However, he is not just speaking for any Negroes. Considering the allusions to “Mississippi” (9) and “Abe Lincoln” (9) are not only to Negroes but also to America, confirms that Hughes is talking for all African Americans. This poem is a proclamation on the whole of African American history as it has grown and flourished along the rivers which gave life to these people.

    Read More

  • The Poem Negro by Langston Hughes

    751 Words  | 2 Pages

    The poem “Negro” was written by Langston Hughes in 1958 where it was a time of African American development and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Langston Hughes, as a first person narrator tells a story of what he has been through as a Negro, and the life he is proud to have had. He expresses his emotional experiences and makes the reader think about what exactly it was like to live his life during this time. By using specific words, this allows the reader to envision the different situations he has been put through. Starting off the poem with the statement “I am a Negro:” lets people know who he is, Hughes continues by saying, “ Black as the night is black, /Black like the depths of my Africa.” He identifies Africa as being his and is proud to be as dark as night, and as black as the depths of the heart of his country. Being proud of him self, heritage and culture is clearly shown in this first stanza.

    Read More

  • Black Poetry

    2173 Words  | 5 Pages

    Over the course of the century chronicling the helm of slavery, the emancipation, and the push for civil, equal, and human rights, black literary scholars have pressed to have their voice heard in the midst a country that would dare classify a black as a second class citizen. Often, literary modes of communication were employed to accomplish just that. Black scholars used the often little education they received to produce a body of works that would seek to beckon the cause of freedom and help blacks tarry through the cruelties, inadequacies, and inconveniences of their oppressed condition. To capture the black experience in America was one of the sole aims of black literature. However, we as scholars of these bodies of works today are often unsure as to whether or not we can indeed coin the phrase “Black Literature” or, in this case, “Black poetry”. Is there such a thing? If so, how do we define the term, and what body of writing can we use to determine the validity of the definition. Such is the aim of this essay because we can indeed call a poem “Black”. We can define “Black poetry” as a body of writing written by an African-American in the United States that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of an experience or set of experiences inextricably linked to black people, characterizes a furious call or pursuit of freedom, and attempts to capture the black condition in a language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm. An examination of several works of poetry by various Black scholars should suffice to prove that the definition does hold and that “Black Poetry” is a term that we can use.

    Read More

More about The Cross By Tengston Hughes Summary

Open Document