Analysis of Langdton Huges Poems
Analysis of Langston Hughes Poems
Lori Grieco
South University Online
There were two poems by Langston Hughes that stood out in the 1920’s, that caught my eye, one is “I, Too, Sing America” and the other is “My People”. The poems that are written about here will be analyzed in the “Historical Critical Perspective”. Evaluating the poems with such a perspective, one must understand the era in which the poet lived and wrote. Any literature, especially poetry, has to do with life. A writer must express what is happening around them. The year is 1920 and the segregation between the black man and the white man was strong; the black people had their own bathrooms and drinking fountains. The black people had their own seats on a bus and they went to their own schools as well. They also had their own types of music and poems, the music was called jazz and the poems can be called the blues. Everyone remembers the 1920s by the nick name “The Roaring Twenties”. All the poems that were written by Langston Hughes are read by the blacks and an insufficient amount of whites, at that time, blacks would take what he wrote to heart. It is believed that people from all walks of life have read Hughes’s poems and will continue to read them. Everyone has enjoyed and learned from Hughes poems and will continue to enjoy and learn from them well into the future. The reason they would read them is for an understanding of the past and how the black man was treated. These poems tells us that in the time Hughes wrote these poems, the white people did not look at the black people as people, but as objects, though beauty has no eye for color. Both of these poems have the common theme of beauty throughout them. Hughes exemplifies beauty in the poem “I, Too, Sing America, “They’ll see how beautiful I am” (Hughes 2011, I, Too, Sing America, line 16). Black people were not considered people, much less beautiful during the twenties. Blacks were
Lori Grieco
South University Online
There were two poems by Langston Hughes that stood out in the 1920’s, that caught my eye, one is “I, Too, Sing America” and the other is “My People”. The poems that are written about here will be analyzed in the “Historical Critical Perspective”. Evaluating the poems with such a perspective, one must understand the era in which the poet lived and wrote. Any literature, especially poetry, has to do with life. A writer must express what is happening around them. The year is 1920 and the segregation between the black man and the white man was strong; the black people had their own bathrooms and drinking fountains. The black people had their own seats on a bus and they went to their own schools as well. They also had their own types of music and poems, the music was called jazz and the poems can be called the blues. Everyone remembers the 1920s by the nick name “The Roaring Twenties”. All the poems that were written by Langston Hughes are read by the blacks and an insufficient amount of whites, at that time, blacks would take what he wrote to heart. It is believed that people from all walks of life have read Hughes’s poems and will continue to read them. Everyone has enjoyed and learned from Hughes poems and will continue to enjoy and learn from them well into the future. The reason they would read them is for an understanding of the past and how the black man was treated. These poems tells us that in the time Hughes wrote these poems, the white people did not look at the black people as people, but as objects, though beauty has no eye for color. Both of these poems have the common theme of beauty throughout them. Hughes exemplifies beauty in the poem “I, Too, Sing America, “They’ll see how beautiful I am” (Hughes 2011, I, Too, Sing America, line 16). Black people were not considered people, much less beautiful during the twenties. Blacks were
References: Poetry Series: Langston Hughes. Retrieved from Hughes, L. (2004). I, too.Classic http://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/langston_hughes_2004_9.pdf on March 102012