1. In Carl Sandburg’s poem “Grass” and in Stephen Crane’s poem “A Man Said to the Universe,” an element of the natural world is speaking. Describe the speaker in each poem. How does Sandburg use the narrator in “Grass” to comment on war? What does the reply in “A Man Said to the Universe” suggest about Crane’s view of nature? Support your answers with details from the poems.
Answer:
The speaker in Sandburg’s poem is grass, and it talks in an almost sarcastic but serious tone. The poem is portrayed in nature’s point of view. It talks about bodies covering up the grass after a battle and causing the grass be unable to “work”. The grass is fed up with humans not learning and harming the environment. It speaks on war as not only affecting humans,
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The lesson that discusses Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” calls the poem “a brief history of the African American ‘soul.’” In Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool,” a small group of African Americans “sing” their song. Describe the narrator in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” the voice that speaks for all African Americans. Then describe the “Seven at the Golden Shovel” who speak in “We Real Cool.” Contrast these two voices: How does each voice speak, in terms of meter, rhyme, alliteration, and repetition?
Answer:
The narrator in The Negro Speaks of Rivers is talking in a slaves view point. As he know rivers because when slaves would be transported, waterways were the best ways of travel back then. He talks of structures that slaves built and how slaves have become one with rivers and how their roots are in rivers. The narrator in We Real Cool talking in 7 African Americans point of view. The speaker talks about how the 7 left school and become “thugs” and would die early as a result.
In The Negro Speaks of Rivers, the narrator speaks in repetition of what history slaves have with rivers. To me, the speaker doesn’t speak with any alliteration or rhyme schemes. But he does speak with a meter pattern in the poem. In We Real Cool, the narrator speak in repetition of what the 7 have done. He speaks in a rhythmic scheme and in a meter pattern. It also has alliteration in the
Allison Joseph asks many questions in this poem bring a black American and how someone of the black community is expected to speak. Some of these questions include, “Was [she] supposed to sound lazy, / dropping syllables here and there/ not finishing words but/ slurring their final letters/ so each sentence joined/ the next, sliding past the listener?”(34-39), and “Were certain words off limits, / too erudite for someone whose skin/ came with a natural tan?” (40-42).
Walter is talking to Mr. Lindner about him moving into the new neighborhood. However, Walter is not happy as he finds out he is not welcome in the new neighborhood. Walter goes on to say “[His] father almost beat a man to death,” the goes on to say “because he called him a bad name” (Hansberry-131). Walters role model is himself, and he refused to leave the neighborhood because of the color of his skin. The author Hansberry says that pride means to “be able to stand up for oneself.” In “A Negro Speaks of River”, the narrator is going down the Mississippi River and how “Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans” and how “[He’s] seen its muddy bosom / turn all gold in the sunset” (Hughes 8-10). The Narrator sums up how the Mississippi River is a symbolism of pride. To sum up, Walter and the narrator both have pride in
The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, explained the importance of the woman, light and darkness and strength in the African-American community. Hughes made a very clear and concise statement in focusing on women and the power they hold, light and darkness, and strength. Did his poems properly display the feelings of African-American’s in that time period? It is apparent that Hughes felt a sense of pride in his culture and what they had to endure. After all “Life ain’t been no crystal stair!”(Norton, Line 2, 2028)
In “Ask Me” by William Stafford, Stafford uses tone,idiom, and symbolism to explain why thought his life was like a river. William Stafford uses the river to help him be able to answer any questions people might have for him.
Every place that is mentioned in the poem is a well-known bloody fight in wars that claimed many lives. The opening stanza of the poem is a command from the grass to soldiers at war in Austerlitz and Waterloo to kill as many people as they can and shovel them under the grass so that it has enough history to pile under itself and wipe out all the marks of combat. Austerlitz is a village where on Dec. 2, 1805; Napoleon escorted an outnumbered French army to vic...
In fact, it is clear to the reader that Huggins makes a concerted effort to bring light to both ethnicities’ perspectives. Huggins even argues that their culture is one and the same, “such a seamless web that it is impossible to calibrate the Negro within it or to ravel him from it” (Huggins, 309). Huggins argument is really brought to life through his use of historical evidence found in influential poetry from the time period. When analyzing why African Americans were having an identity crisis he looked to a common place that African American looked to. Africa was a common identifier among the black community for obvious reasons and was where Authors and Artists looked for inspiration. African American artists adopted the simple black silhouette and angular art found in original African pieces. Authors looked to Africa in their poetry. In The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes, the names of rivers in Africa such as the Euphrates, the Congo and the Nile were all used and then the scene switches to the Mississippi river found in America showing that blacks have “seen”, or experienced both. Huggins looks deeply into Countee Cullen’s Heritage discussing “what is Africa to me?” a common identifier that united black artistry in the Harlem Renaissance, “Africa? A book one thumbs listlessly, till slumber comes” (Countee). The black community craved to be a separate society from white Americans so they were forced to go back to the past to find their heritage, before America and white oppression. Huggins finds an amazing variety of evidence within literature of this time period, exposing the raw feelings and emotion behind this intellectual movement. The connections he makes within these pieces of poetry are accurate and strong, supporting his initial thesis
The poet shows that this simple, pleasant memory and how it re-in-acts his childhood. The way in which the windmills squeaks and groans to bring water from the ground whereas during the period of rain they work in harmony, as the rain comes down. The poem is gentle and nostalgic. It seeks not only to recreate the scene for the reader, but to have the reader feel the day to day struggle of living in the hash Australian outback, the struggle of agriculture during a drought.
Alternatively, this also refers the poem to a dialect, more specifically an African-American dialect. We Strike straight to the point. We” (5-6). The frequent use of alliteration has a percussive effect, similar to crashing ciphers or the boom of a dual bass, “Sing sin” (7), “Jazz June” (9).
...struggle for dignity as a black person in the early/mid twentieth century. “Democracy” is a slightly stern and direct request to take action and fight for civil rights. “Theme for English B” is a compassionate and low-key personal anecdote that reiterates the unpracticed concept that “all men are created equal”. Despite the difference in tone and subject, all four poems relate to the central theme that dignity is something that white men may take for granted, but Langston Hughes, as a black man and a writer, sees and feels dignity as fight and a struggle that he faced and that the black community as whole faces every day.
Lastly, Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Negro Speaks Of Rivers”, ends with “I’ve known rivers: / Ancient, dusky rivers. / My soul has grown deep like the rivers (8-10). The speaker voices out his last breath to which from an analytical standpoint, the theme of death arises. Langston Hughes follows T.S. Eliot’s suggestion as he cries out for the African-American race to alienate themselves by embracing their own artistic form, claiming that black is beautiful.
In his poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, Hughes tells a story of lineage and ancestry. Telling the tale of the movement of African Americans based upon what rivers they were near, this poem served as an interesting perspective on African American heritage. From the “Euphrates when dawns were young”, to “the Congo where it lulled me to sleep”, to looking “upon the Nile and the raised pyramids above it”, and finally the “Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans”, African Americans have traveled far and wide and experienced much (Hughes, 5-9). Hughes develops the idea that having such experiences running amid the roots of the African American population makes their souls “deep like the rivers”, stronger, wiser and more durable (Hughes, 13). The theme of roots stands out the most as Hughes reminds African Americans of where they came from.
Even if he grew up within nature, he didn’t really appreciate it until he became an adult. He is pantheistic; a belief that nature is divine, a God. Since he has religious aspect of nature, he believes that nature is everything and that it makes a person better. His tone in the poem is reproachful and intense. His poem purpose is to tell the readers and his loved ones that if he feels some kind of way about nature, then we should have the same feeling toward it as well.
Hughes emphasizes his message consistently throughout this poem, weaving in the most important line in the middle and end of the poem. He is representing his people. African Americans have waited and been abused by society, and this deepened and weathered their souls over time, just as a river would become deepened and weathered. Hughes’ soul, the collective soul of African Americans, has become “deep like the rivers” (5). This simile speaks that the rivers are part of the body, and contribute to this immortality that Hughes is so desperate to achieve for his people. Rivers are the earthly symbols of eternity: deep, constant, mystifying.
In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, the river stands as a symbol of endlessness, geographical awareness, and the epitome of the human soul. Hughes uses the literary elements of repetition and simile to paint the river as a symbol of timelessness. This is evident in the first two lines of the poem. Hughes introduces this timeless symbol, stating, “I've known rivers: I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins” (Hughes 1-2). These opening lines of the poem identifies that the rivers Hughes is speaking about are older than the existence of human life. This indicates the rivers’ qualities of knowledge, permanence, and the ability to endure all. Humans associate “age” with these traits and the longevity of a river makes it a force to be reckoned with. The use of a simile in the line of the poem is to prompt the audience that this is truly a contrast between that ancient wisdom, strength, and determination of the river and the same qualities that characterize a human being. The imagery portrayed in the poem of blood flowing through human veins like a river flows ...
speaker of the poem uses reason in the same manner as those that he claims