Poems About Memorable Assignments

There has always been times that a professor or teacher would assign a paper to write about or may even oppose a question that could be debatable to any person. For example, suppose you had to free write a paper, however was not sure what to write about because expressing your true feelings on paper maybe taken offensively to the professor. Expressing your thoughts and showing your feelings is a positive approach to thinking. In the same concept, if asked a question with no wrong or right answer, whichever way a person may feel about their opinion. However, a person with a different approach may feel that the opposing view is very pessimistic. When reading the poem by Langston Hughes, Theme for English B, the poet seems to have an optimistic approach to his thinking, whereas, in the poem by Linda Pastan, Ethics seems to have a pessimistic way of thinking throughout the poem. Both poems have different approaches to how one feels and thinks about a given topic.

Hughes' words in the poem were moving to me, it makes a reader think that the poem might have been the assignment to the free write paper that his professor had assigned him. If that was the case then he sure did let that page come out of him. Reading this poem, you can see where Hughes might feel a lack of acceptance in the situation he is placed in, being the only colored student in his class. He knows being colored and living in the era of that time, there was an obvious contrast within the blacks and whites; he had less freedom than the other students in the class. I felt as though Hughes not being able to have the freedom as the others is why he hesitates to write the paper because unlike the rest of the students, Hughes has to be careful on his view, thinking and what he writes because knowing that the professor is white; it may affect the relationship between them to. An example of Hughes words is:

I guess being colored doesn't make me not like

The same things other folks like who are other races.

So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white. (25-28)

This is one of the parts in the poem that shows Hughes debating with himself on how to write the paper.