Langston Hughes Landlord

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“Ballad of the Landlord” by Langston Hughes portrays a perfect example of racial discrimination during the Civil Rights Era. Throughout the poem, a white landlord intentionally ignores a black tenant’s request to fix the problems in his home. This obvious sign of neglect from the landlord has to do with the color of the tenant’s skin. Moreover, although times are different now, this sort of mistreatment was not uncommon back then. The poem shows that most African-American’s attempted to go about racial discrimination peacefully, until they had had enough. The tenant tries to go about the conflict civilly, but then he slowly realizes that he was not being heard. Therefore, the tenant turned to violent threats. This sudden change of emotion was …show more content…

The first form of irony noticed within the poem is situational. The landlord cries out to the police that the tenant is “trying to ruin the government” (Line 23). The end result of the absurd accusation was that the tenant ended up serving a three-month jail sentence. This is an example of situational irony because the reader is aware of something that the characters in the story are not. This furthermore exemplifies racial injustice because of the fact that the authorities believed the landlord because he was white. The second form of irony found within the poem is thematic irony. The speaker states, “JUDGE GIVES NEGRO 90 DAYS IN COUNTY JAIL.” (Line 33). This is an example of thematic irony because it is associated with the theme of racial injustice. This goes back to how the landlord went to the police and made a false claim, and an arrest was made almost instantly. The fact that the tenant received three months in jail based off of a false accusation from a white man is a direct link to the theme of racial injustice. The final form of irony is verbal irony. Verbal irony occurs when someone uses words to deter the actual meaning of a word or phrase. The title itself, “Ballad of the Landlord” (line 0) is a perfect example because based off of the title, one would assume that the speaker of the poem is the landlord. Once again, the black man is seen as inferior even though the white man is in the wrong, and Hughes shows the black man’s inferiority through the use of the title. Along with the various forms of irony used throughout the poem, Hughes finally uses different moods to prove the theme of racial

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