The poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” by Langston Hughes shows great significance in the Harlem Renaissance Movement and is still relevant in present day. Langston Hughes wrote this poem at the age of seventeen while riding a bus. Hughes was bothered by and subjected to racism, often during his life time, which caused him to write “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” This poem alludes to the history of slavery, importantly that slavery is a large part of our human nature and history, as a society, not just the slavery that occurred in America. When the poem came out, it shined a light on an issue that aeffected many people. However, our society still faces some of the issues presented in the poem, along with draws attention to the horrible slavery …show more content…
He uses stanzas and periods to convey the message in his own style of writing. He uses stanza to help the flow of his poem and periods to end his thoughts. The line “My soul has grown deep like the rivers,” is a main line in the poem, because Hughes isolates the line twice in his poem. Hughes also ends that line with a period to allow the reader to pause and think about the statement as whole, rather than continue on reading. Hughes use of colons after both, “I’ve known rivers:” which draws special attention to the next line for readers, as well as repeats the line various times, because he wants the reader to see the connect of the rivers to slavery and civilization. Both of the preceding lines are a focal point to Hughes overall theme about slavery running through human nature and describing the feeling behind slavery. Hughes wants this part to especially stick out in the poem, because those lines are isolated from the main stanza in the poem. Hughes also uses a comma in this poem, which is uncommon amongst many poets. He has a freeform rhyme scheme, which allows the poem to flow. Hughes also repeatedly uses the word I, or another form of I, throughout the entirety of the poem, this displays a personal connection to the theme of slavery presented in the poem. The word, I, also gives the reader a first-person point of view, which helped Hughes develop the tone in the poem. …show more content…
Rivers are often associated with the start of civilization because ancient people built their civilizations and lives around flowing water, which is why Hughes references the Euphrates River. The line “I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep,” Hughes is alluding to the fact that the Congo use to be peaceful before the slave trade came and took African Americans out of their homes. The rivers were calm before slavery started in societies. Then Langston Hughes talks about the pyramid rising up above the Nile River. He is trying to remind people that slavery happened before America was created. The slaves in Egypt built the pyramids, that slavery runs deep in the history of the world, not just one country. Even though slavery is generally associated with America only. The Mississippi River and New Orleans is another example of imagery and symbolism. He follows up by saying that the water in the Mississippi River is very muddy, meaning it is tainted, not pure, which refers to slavery. The river is muddy, because slavery tainted the river for Lincoln, since it runs through the slave states. The golden sunset that changes the river to a golden color is another image that he puts in the readers minds to symbolize the progress of ending slavery in the eyes of the law by Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln went down to New Orleans and witnessed the tainted
Langston Hughes was a large influence on the African-American population of America. Some of the ways he did this was how his poetry influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and the Harlem Renaissance. These caused the civil rights movement that resulted in African-Americans getting the rights that they deserved in the United States. Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was young and his grandmother raised him. She got him into literature and education; she was one of the most important influences on him. He moved around a lot when he was young, due to his parents divorce, but remained a good student and graduated high school. After this he traveled the world and worked in different places, all the things he saw in his travels influenced him. In 1924 he settled down in Harlem where he became one of the important figures in the Harlem Renaissance. He enjoyed listening to blues and jazz in clubs while he wrote his poetry. The music that he enjoyed greatly influenced the style and rhythm of his poetry. The poem “Dream Variations” by Hughes is about an average African-American who dreams of a world where African-Americans are not looked at or treated differently and they can rest peacefully. Yet in real life this was not so, black people and white people were not equal. And the world was not as forgiving and nice as in their dream. This poem is a good example of Hughes writing because it is typical of three things. The first is the common theme of the average life of an African-American and their struggles. Secondly, the style of his writing which is based on the rhythm of jazz and blues- he uses a lot of imagery and similes. Lastly, his influences which are his lonely childhood and growing up as an Afric...
The poem, “My Great-Grandfather’s Slaves” by Wendell Berry, illustrates the guilt felt for the sins of a man’s ancestors. The poem details the horror for the speaker’s ancestors involvement in slavery and transitions from sympathy for the slaves to feeling enslaved by his guilt. Berry uses anaphora, motif, and irony, to express the speaker’s guilt and provide a powerful atmosphere to the poem.
Langston Hughes wrote during a very critical time in American History, the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes wrote many poems, but most of his most captivating works centered around women and power that they hold. They also targeted light and darkness and strength. The Negro Speaks of Rivers and Mother to Son, both explain the importance of the woman, light and darkness and strength in the African-American community. They both go about it in different ways.
Due to the fact that the words being used are rather aggressive, violent, fearful and offensive, the author illustrates the cruel character of slavery and is creating a fearful atmosphere. Added to that, nowadays the words used can be seen as quite archaic. It goes without saying that the poem is written in the past tense, because the author tries to create a background story, why slavery exists and so she reports something from the past.
...slavery can no longer be hidden from the rest of the world, because political ideas possess no boundaries. Douglass concludes with a poem entitled "The Triumph of Freedom," to stress that freedom is unavoidable. By showing the detrimental effects of slaveholding on Thomas and Sophia Auld, Mr. Covey, and others, as well as proving that slavery is a practice that degrades the founding qualities of America, Douglass proves that slavery is unnatural and evil, and should be outlawed not only for the greater good of all society, but because it the great sin and shame of America .
Douglass utilizes imagery to identify the nature of desolation of the slave; the slave owner’s absolute dominance over the slaves manipulates the slaves understanding of sorrow, revealing the loss of self reflection as the nature of enslavement.
In the poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, written by Langston Hughes, and the poem, For My Children, written by Colleen McElroy both mention the rivers that their people have lived next to in Africa and in America. Langston Hughes mentions the rivers in Africa as a reminder of where his people used to live, and how their past still lives with in the deep waters of the African rivers. Yet, he mentions the rivers he lived by in America, and how those rivers are also where his people’s past lives. His idea in the poem was to address how all of...
Hughes, a.k.a. Langston, a.k.a. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed.
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.
The poem “Negro” was written by Langston Hughes in 1958, where it was a time of African American development and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. Langston Hughes, as a first person narrator, tells a story of what he has been through as a Negro, and the life he is proud to have had. He expresses his emotional experiences and makes the reader think about what exactly it was like to live his life during this time. By using specific words, this allows the reader to envision the different situations he has been put through. Starting off the poem with the statement “I am a Negro:” lets people know who he is, Hughes continues by saying, “Black as the night is black, Black like the depths of my Africa.”
Langston Hughes is one of the most famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance. He was born in Mississippi in 1902 and later moved to Ohio where he attended Central High School. When Hughes graduated high school he went to Mexico to visit his father and while crossing the Mississippi River he was inspired to write “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which was his first published poem when he was eighteen years old. When Hughes returned to the United States in 1924 the Harlem Renaissance was in “full swing”. In 1925 at the age of twenty-three Hughes received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues”, Hughes was famous for incorporating blues and jazz rhymes into his poetry, which is what he did in his poem “The Weary Blues”. Hughes was at a banquet where he received an award for his poem “The Weary Blues” and was asked by a man named Carl Van Vechten if he had enough poems to make a book. Hughes said yes and Van Vechten promised that he would find Hughes ...
The rivers are named in a specific order: in the order of their association with black history. By using many allusions, the context of which Hughes wants to draw attention to is evident. He begins “when dawns were young” (6), which refers to a time when blacks were used as slaves along the Euphrates in Western Asia, and ends with the Emancipation Proclamation of “Abe Lincoln” (9) when slaves were finally freed men.
Symbolism embodies Hughes’ literary poem through his use of the river as a timeless symbol. A river can be portrayed by many as an everlasting symbol of perpetual and continual change and of the constancy of time and of life itself. People have equated rivers to the aspects of life - time, love, death, and every other indescribable quality which evokes human life. This analogy is because a river exemplifies characteristics that can be ultimately damaging or explicitly peaceable. In the poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Langston Hughes cites all of these qualities.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the poem “A Curse for a Nation” which is a reference to slavery in America. The poem begins with an angel telling the speaker to write a curse for America, while the speaker disagrees, eventually the angel convinces her to write this curse. This poem has a strong anti-slavery sentiment which Browning establishes through the use of tone, imagery, and a break in the passage. There is a clear break in the passage between where the angel and the speaker are having a conversation, to the curse that the speaker writes. The meaning of the passage also shifts along with the context.
This image is explored within the poems to depict the theme of slavery. On Liberty and Slavery ---------------------- On Liberty and Slavery is an example of a metaphysical poem; it deals with the concept of freedom using direct, personal language and contemporary allusions. The rhythm used in the poem is taken from the rhythm of Wesley's hymns; Charles Wesley was the brother of John Wesley (founder of the Methodists) and hymn wri... ... middle of paper ... ...