Preview

We Real Cool Langston Hughes Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
733 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
We Real Cool Langston Hughes Analysis
Over time everything changes. Some people may believe that change is a bad thing but in some cases change can be an amazing thing. A change can be something small like a minor change in your daily routine or a huge change can be an impact may impact the world. America has changed a lot throughout the years. In the past African American people weren’t treated with the same respect they are treated now. People used to have very negative views about colored people, therefore the discrimination towards African American began. In the poems “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks and “Harlem” by Langston Hughes the two authors wrote about the racism that people of color had to experience. These two poems were written by authors that were part of the …show more content…
They weren’t treated like a human being, they were treated like an object; a thing without any value. They were looked down on. The past was a cruel world for every African American now the world is a lot better. Now every person is encouraged to pursue your wildest dream no matter what race you’re a part of. This wasn’t the case in the past for Africans Americans. The poem titled “Harmed” by Langston Hughes he talks about the dreams of black people. They were allowed to limit all of their dreams. They weren’t allowed to have individual drams or goals in their own life’s because they all shared the same dream, the hope for equality. Hughes starts the poem by questioning what happens to a “deferred dream?” (1) “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” (2-3) the author compares a dream that has been put on hold to a dried-up raisin because the raisin symbolizes what happens when you put something on pause it changes and you cannot change it back to the way it used to be in other words time is precious. The author continues his poem by helping us see these people’s dreams vanishing away by engaging our senses into the images he describes. “Does it stink like rotten meat?” (6) when food is left out for a long amount of time it will began to smell bad and attract flies and maggots. The author draws a pretty nasty picture of what African Americans had to deal with when it came to dreaming “big” they were limited in …show more content…
This poem was written about seven young men the author had seen near a pool area during school hours. The stereotypes Brooks choose to write about were all bad ones, a suggestion of failure and misguidance. The author talks about how they choose poor choices in life and she also makes a prediction of the consequences that will occur to these young men. “We Real Cool.” “We Left School.” “We Lurk Late.” (1-3) The author starts this poem by showing the reader that the characters in the poem are really careless and irresponsible. The reader gets an immediate feeling of recklessness. The author continues to write “We Sing sin.” We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon” (5-8) the poem ends with the prediction of what will happen to these young men. She says they will die soon because she believes since they are in bad steps they will lead a life to an early death. Since African Americans didn’t have many privileges they rather ditch school then go to a place where they were segregated from the rest of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    African Americans had been going through a rough time with racism, discrimination, and segregation. After the great depression hit the United States the African American community was hit pretty hard taking in consideration that even before the great depression hit they struggled. Roosevelt’s new deal set out to help the African American community by giving them 10% of welfare assisted payments, he also started giving higher rank and higher paying jobs to African Americans such as his so called “Black cabinet”. Even though these benefits were given to the African Americans they were small…

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1902 and died in New York City, New York on May 22, 1967. His father’s name was James Nathaniel and his mother’s name was Carrie Mercer Langston Hughes. His parents separated not to long after he was born. His father later moved to Cuba and later permanently lived in Mexico, where he lived the rest of his life working as an attorney and landowner. He eventually traveled to Mexico to visit his father who moved when his parents separated from each but luckily for Langston, within a few years of his visit to Mexico, he would find himself at the center of a cultural flowering in New York City's historically black neighborhood that is famously known as Harlem. Hughes's poetry…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    American Idealism Analysis

    • 2001 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Privileged whites in America were still looking down at the blacks and young black poets writing reflects this. Langston Hughes “Let America Be America again”, tells us of the way the blacks wanted to be treated and how each were promised their America when the civil war ended along with slavery. In the poem the lines 31-35 speak of how black were still being treated, “I am the farmer, the bondsman to the soil, I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-Hungry yet today despite the dream”. (Hughes) This speaks of how the black person felt everybody was still being treated and how each one were continually being treated specially during the Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s. Unfortunately, today blacks are not treated much better and still have to face prejudice. There is a parallel how the blacks were viewed as subservient, much as the soldiers were in Catch-22. Blacks and the soldiers were both told what to do and did not have the freedom to go wherever without fear of punishment. During slavery, plantation owners’ viewed the slaves as property. The slaves that ran away and were caught were whipped. The soldiers who went AWOL were court marshaled. The treatment of blacks still needs to improve and this will not be an…

    • 2001 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Jim Crow

    • 2047 Words
    • 9 Pages

    First of all going back to the late 1800’s with slavery in the United States. This time period really set the tone for discrimination in the future of our country. At this point in time African American’s were much like Peasants back in pre-colonial times. This led to slaves literally walking off their plantations and causing chaos among plantation owners. This not only caused problems for plantation owners, but it also caused problems for the economy in the United States. After this was done black codes were created due to the African Americans unwillingness to work. Ultimately these codes were reversed due to several pieces of civil rights legislation that started the Reconstruction Era. During…

    • 2047 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Racial Preference

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Discrimination has existed for decades but I believe that African-Americans got the bitter end of the stick. In the 1960’s, black people got treated like they weren’t even human beings. “A full time black male worker in 2003 makes less in real dollar terms than similar white men were earning in 1967.” (Wise, 2003) Obviously, the racial preference has not faded so much as society would like to believe. African-Americans struggled when it came to trying to take care of their family and becoming a citizen. The inequality seemed as if it was becoming norm in the 60’s. Blacks weren’t even given the chance to prove themselves, simply because their complexion was a little darker than whites.…

    • 363 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Essay on Langston Hughes

    • 2258 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Many leaders in today’s society possess characteristics that determine how they are either chosen or self-made. These characteristics could range from being a charismatic, transformational, motivational, or influential leader. Each has its own meaning, but it is possible for leaders to possess more than one characteristic. Being a charismatic leader consists of having a charming and colorful personality. As the text reads, “In the study of leadership, charisma is a special quality of leaders whose purposes, powers, and extraordinary determination differentiate them from others."…

    • 2258 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Since the beginning of time African Americans have been viewed negatively. We have always been viewed as a threat to society and frowned upon by many races. There are many clichés displayed in the media of what African Americans are supposed to act like. These conclusions cause almost immediate negative feelings from other races and sometimes by our own race.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In his The Way of White Folks, Hughes illustrates the blacks’ feeling of frustration and resistance towards the white-Americans that they live within the society they are in. When on analyzes his short stories, one can see the techniques Hughes used, to illustrate how the whites treats the blacks. Although Hughes blurs the racial line which separates the North America from the South, he effectively illustrates that the how the upper class treats the black with less violence, but still with belittling condescension. In addition, through the medium of music, Hughes demonstrates the envy of many American whites because many of the blacks are artistically talented. With the use of the strategies, Hughes…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The make-believe town of Shermer where many of Hughes’s stories take place symbolizes the era of post-world war II America. Hughes’s forged town of Shermer mimicked the town he grew up in, Northbrook, Illinois. Like Northbrooke, Shermer is similarly located in the suburbs of Chicago. Shermer encompassed different socioeconomic classes, which in turn produced different types of kids. Hughes wanted to create this imaginary place to demonstrate the dichotomy of people and their situations after the World War II era. Thus, Hughes’s Shermerville was an essential part of his films because it created a scenario where kids from all different backgrounds had the opportunity to come together and realize that they weren’t so different after all.…

    • 116 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As depicted by Langston Hughes in “The Weary Blues,” double consciousness in African-American culture poses a difficult question: is it necessary to assimilate to the Euro-American culture in order to blend into the melting pot of America, or is the celebration of African-American culture necessary to retain and preserve the African heritage as it exists in a predominantly ‘Euro-America?’ While Hughes’ poetry and short stories often include themes of double consciousness, this same theme was an occasional dilemma in his own life. Through these experiences, Hughes was able to explore and write about double consciousness from a first-hand point of view, creating the stories, the essays, the speeches,…

    • 642 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Have you ever felt out of place from those around you? In “Theme for English B”, Langston Hughes discusses how the speaker goes about this paper assignment. He questions the definition of simple. He wonders if the truth is the same between him, his classmates and his professor. Will the papers be the same between himself and all the other white students in class? This paper assignment has the speaker realize that there is more in common between himself and the other students than just race.…

    • 1255 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes was considered one of the principal and prominent voices of Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and 1930s. His poetry encompasses heterogeneity of subject matters and motifs concerning working African-Americans who were excluded and deprived of power. His choice of theme was accentuated and manifested through the convergence of African-American vernacular and blues forms. My attempt is to analyze the implications of the most significant poems by first introducing the author, examining the relevance of the poems and then, contrast them with Richard Wright’s antagonistic perspective.…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the early 1900s America was torn apart in a battle known as segregation. The African American race was treated unjustly and faced a tough journey. They were shoved aside and torn apart from the Caucasian Americans. There was separate railroad cars, schools, and even to such small insignificant things as separate water fountains. The white children were being taught to treat African Americans as dirty people who deserved to be separate. It created a prejudice that would take years to overcome, to completely be unselfish again. Caucasian Americans were very wrong in their thinking and they never thought about how it made African Americans feel. The African Americans of this time period were struggling to overcome this new time where they were treated as outsiders, as if they were not a part of the American people. Every single human being is uniquely different and segregation was a constant battle our fellow Americans fought to overcome, all for the sole purpose of gaining equality.…

    • 1189 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Racism, it’s a problem that has baffled this nation, and the whole world actually, for centuries. Not just blacks, but any minority in any country is often faced with prejudice because of something they simply can’t control. Really, it’s just like bullying in many schools, but one hundred times worse. In “The New Negro”, Alain Locke has many important ideas and thoughts about society and the treatment of African Americans. He shows you what every life of a black American was like in the 1920’s. Many of the ideas that he writes are shown in Richard Wright’s Black Boy. “So for generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being-a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be “kept down”, or “in his place”, or “helped up,” to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden” (Locke 1). Alain Locke is describing how the black Americans were never really considered people at all to the country that hosted them. They were talked about as possessions and they never had a say in what happened to them (up until the civil rights movements of course). They were sort of a blank, dark slate in the eyes of a white nation. A nation that didn’t know what to do and was still trying to figure things out along the road. For a long time, white men treated black Americans as if they were fresh of the ships from Africa.…

    • 1063 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dreams change whether we want them to or not, but how might dreams change if they are ignored? Langston Hughes describes a dream deferred in his poem, "Harlem: A Dream Deferred", "What happens to a dream deferred?”; “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" He compares a dream deferred to various concepts. In connection to the play, written by Lorraine Hansberry, "A Raisin in the Sun" the Younger family, an impecunious African-American family, struggle in achieving their dreams, having to postpone them. Although the Younger family each face the same challenge, character Walter Younger is unalike the rest as his dreams deferred impact his personality and his actions. I argue that Walter Younger best illustrates the central theme of Hughes’…

    • 134 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays