Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes was one of the most influential writers of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. “As I Grew Older” is a symbolic point of view in a time when blacks and whites were unequal. He used imagery to contrast “light” and “dark” to portray views from blacks during the time to describe the inability to achieve their dreams due to racist opposition.

Seemingly, Hughes implies by the title of the poem that he would solely recollect on growing up from a child to an adult. Beyond this linear time scale, he uses the first two lines as a view from the present into the past, then in lines 4 through 19 the audience is brought into his past with a perspective of it being his present. Hughes can be seen as bringing the reader into the present

In lines 1 and 2, it is as if he has been discouraged from this dream so long that he has “almost forgotten” it (Line 2). Lines 3 through 6 bring to life his childhood innocence and periphery where his dreams were “bright like a sun” (Line 5), and bring forth a sense of elation and optimism in being able to achieve such accomplishments. Lines 7 through 19 examine a change in tone in which Hughes becomes deeply discouraged from the oppression of prejudice where it seems that he is about to lose all hope, but as the poem progresses, he seems to regain a hope that was almost seen as lost in the previous

“In front of me / Bright like a sun” (Lines 4 and 5) is the first simile in the poem with vivid imagery, displaying his view of a “bright” dream, that seems blinding and blocks sight of true reality due to him being a child. Line 7 is the first mention of the metaphoric wall that represents the blockade of injustice and discrimination, which is a constant theme throughout the whole poem. Lines 7 through 11 used repetition to slow down the rhythm in the poem and shows the image of a rising wall that is so vast that the reader sees the closing of the gap between the darkness of the wall and the brightness of the sun. As this wall touches the sky (Line 11), the dream is determined to be unattainable. The next lines “The wall / Shadow” puts the audience in a dark space, where a feeling of a despair sets in and Hughes follows with a double entendre in line 14 stating “I am black”, describing his skin color and the “shadow” from the metaphorical wall. He portrays the feeling of despair and helplessness as he “lies down” in the shadow of the wall, as another double meaning being he is lying down in the literal sense, and lying down and giving in to the overshadowing discrimination that he has experienced his whole