The Creation James Weldon Johnson Analysis

Every culture and every religion has a story, a legend as to how things came to be. It is the base, the center of their origins, their roots, and it aids the feelings of integration in a community that shares the same legend(s). We all have heard the story of creation from the Hebrew Bible in our churches many times a year, we are reminded of the one common thing we have in common through a story of creation, life, and where history ultimately began. One version of the creation story that captures one’s imagination comes from the poem The Creation by James Weldon Johnson. This poem offers an image of a God who not only relates to humans but also looks like a human. Johnson gives God many humanistic qualities like the Southern dialect. He “stepped” with his feet, and He creates the world because of a feeling that many humans have, He is “lonely. To someone who is reading this and does not know the story of God, these human qualities are
We as readers are transported into a “world” of the southern black men and women through the use of imagery seen in line eight “Blacker than a hundred midnights/Down in a cypress swamp.” A cypress is a dense-like tree that grows in the southern part of the United States, this is also where most swamps are located. This is a reference to African Americans living in the South at the beginning of the century. In the early part of the century, most African Americans lived in the South, they were descendants of slave families. Some repetition which is the repeating of words at the beginning lines ten through thirteen “And the” can be seen. This to me, sort of mimics’ parts of the Biblical story, in which the words “And God said” is repeated many times throughout the Bible passage. This technique is often used in speeches and sermons: the use of repetition helps the audience reconnect with the