The Weary Blues Mood

In 1925, Langston Hughes, an African-American writer, published a poem called The Weary Blues. The period in which the poem was written was during the Harlem Renaissance, which explains the title because it was a big era of jazz/blues music. The persona throughout this poem is a man who is listening to a pianist perform Blues music possibly at a bar on Lenox Avenue during the Harlem Renaissance. The setting of this poem is important because it gives us the mood of what should be expected as the poem is read. While writing, Hughes allows the natural patterns of speech to be used known as free verse, while using many rhyming couplets. This poem emphasized the Blues music once the poet introduces syncopated rhythm which is the same technique in

In this first big stanza of the poem (lines 1-11), Hughes creates a mood and setting of the poem through his format. The persona creates an atmosphere by using the terms, “mellow croon”, “drowsy”, “dull” and “lazy. “Mellow Croon” is when a person sings in a low voice that is hard to hear because it is soft. These terms create a soft, chill, dark mood that helps generate a setting. Next, he uses the line, “By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light” so we can picture a gloomy, dark street light. It sets the seen in an area downtown, probably near a bar, that takes place in the night because the dull light is shining. Also, a time period is created when Lenox Avenue is brought upon the poem because the street runs through the heart of Harlem, merely suggesting it took place near the time of the Harlem Renaissance. The term “Weary Blues” in the poem is used as a metaphor to generate the symbol of the African American life with a struggle. When the poem points out “ebony hands”

This part of them poem is not what the persona is seeing, but what he believes the pianist does when he is done playing his music. The pianist plays throughout the night until the stars do not shine anymore, and the sun is barely shining. He is passionate about what he does that he does not realize he played his music through the entire night. As soon as the musician is done, he goes straight to bed, making it seem that he only has a life of repetition. His life consists of him playing his music for the people listening, going straight home, and straight to bed like a robot with no purpose or meaning. When the musician goes to bed, he cannot help but her the Weary Blues in his head because the words he was singing were about something that happen to him and his reflection of his feelings. The music that was wrote was a coping mechanism, instead of turning to violence, he put his feeling into words and sang as loud as he could. Line 35, “He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead,” leaves us readers with multiple interpretations because it is unclear what the persona thinks. A popular statement is that he is sleeping heavy because he exhausted, but it could also mean he is at peace like a dead person. Rocks and dead people have no life, which could refer to the struggle the musician was facing because he did not have a purpose in life, so he continuously slept