An Analysis of Poetry by Langston Hughes

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An Analysis of Poetry by Langston Hughes

Theme for English B begins by Hughes describing the specific instructions for an assignment given to him by an instructor. I feel the understanding of that assignment to be one of the major clues to the meaning of this piece of poetry.

"Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you-

Then, it will be true."

At my first glance of this poem I felt I had the idea Hughes was expressing down, but these instructions caught my eye. It grabbed my attention because I did not feel that the statement given by the instructor was necessarily true in itself. Since the instructor did not say "be true to you" at the end of this phrase, he was actually saying that whatever comes out of a person is true. Now in my lifetime I have found, early on as a matter of fact, that many thoughts that come from people are actually no true at all. This being my reasoning I was having a rather hard time moving on to the meat of the poem.

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