1. In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, the speaker joins himself to his ancestors, immovably setting them in essential historical, religious, and cultural locales everywhere throughout the world. The speaker starts by asserting a connection to the world's ancient rivers that originated before human creatures, and that has influenced his soul to develop profound like the rivers. This canny and eloquent portrayal shows the speaker's gigantic judgment, and enables him to make a complete connection between individuals of his race and whatever remains of human civilization. In the mid twentieth Century, white Americans regularly saw their darker-cleaned partners as not as much as human, and here, Hughes offers solid verification of historical equality. As compared to this poem, McKay’s Poem “On a …show more content…
By manipulating semantics, Cullen says a great deal more than the words themselves do, and creates deeper meaning inside the poem. In his poem "The Lynching," Claude McKay uses the event of a black man being lynched to feature the racism and gruesome demonstrations of violence committed against blacks in America amid the early twentieth century. The poem initially opens by describing the deep sense of being experienced by the victim. In the initial four lines of the poem, McKay describes the relationship between God and the victim. The victim ascends to heaven while being welcomed by his Father. Interestingly, it seems that God rejects those who lynched the man by calling their crime a dreadful sin that remained still unforgiving. There is no forgiveness, as per McKay, for those who participated in the lynching. Their crimes are excessively cruel for even God, making it impossible to forgive them, perhaps because they themselves have no remorse for their
Cullen uses auditory imagery to draw his readers in to hear what he hears. The meaning of this poem is to take the reader on a journey of what the negro felt about
Cullen’s poem is based off of God’s actions while McKay’s poem has no reference to God. Religious figures have been an important component of human lives for centuries and it was very important to African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. This was the case for Cullen’s poem, “I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,” (1). Right in the beginning of his poem, he mentions some of his many feelings towards God. He continues to refer to God several times throughout his poem. The way he includes God in his poem suggests that God is the focal point of his problems. McKay’s poem, however, focuses the causes of his problems on something much different than a god or religion. In his mind, the source of his problem doesn’t come from God, but from white Americans. I think it is very interesting how opposite Cullen’s and McKay’s views on religion are. On one side, Cullen is a typical African American living in the Harlem Renaissance, using faith as an escape and reason for his troubles. McKay also shares a common characteristic of African Americans at this time which is to put the blame for his issues on white Americans. Cullen’s and McKay’s views on religion differed
Dear Duy, I’m writing this to tell you more about racism and discrimination in which you told me you are interested. The racism has been happening as a big issue in human history. The reason I choose these two poems to show you how racism has been happening in America, and the victim being discriminated against are African American. That two poems are “I, too” by Langston Hughes and “The Negro’s friend” by Claude McKay. By analyzing these two poems and along with a speech on Ted talk by Bryan Stevenson, I hope to make it more clear and understandable for you to think about racism and discrimination in America from long time ago in history and still to now.
Both Langston Hughes and Claude McKay are iconic poets who helped motivate the civil rights movement. Hughes and McKay spoke about the hidden nightmare behind racism and everything it stood up for. Claude McKay in the poem “If We Must Die” and Langston Hughes in the poem “I Too, Sing America” both express a similar theme and meaning through their use of symbolism, tone ,and imagery.
Dr. King’s trial was one of the most unprofessional investigations in my opinion. The steps taken to obtain physical and forensic evidence were not normal procedure. The FBI and local police did not secure the forensic evidence and protect it like in our present time. Fingerprints are a form of forensic evidence to identify an individual in association with the findings. Francis Galton classified many fingerprint patterns before Dr. King’s assassination but they took it more serious on how they collected the evidence.
Hughes story, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain”, veers away from the conventions of Du Bois’s essay as rather than focusing on the value of black art as a key in social movements, it involves black artists who would rather neglect their blackness and rather took on the culture of whites. The speaker claims he enjoys being white more than being an African American, and Hughes describes this as “the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America-this urge within the race towards whiteness…”. Much like Du Bois, Hughes writes about the “beauty” of Negro art, and aims to uplift the appeal of negro language and culture as he examines African American artists who stayed true to their roots and culture whose works are amongst those that are still heavily praised even decades later.
One of his earliest poems, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, was written in 1921, long before Hughes would actually travel the world. However, without knowing the authors background and history, one might think it was written by a wise man of old age. Having only lived in various places in the United States, Hughes wrote this poem of an African American man who has seen the world, full with things many people never get to see, that nourished his soul and formed bonds with humans' deepest roots. The four rivers the narrator is mentioning, the Euphrates, the Congo river, the Nile and the Mississippi river, are all of great importance not only in the lives of all human beings, but slaves in particular.
McKay pointedly discusses and examines the radian inequality experienced by some American citizens during the twenties. Throughout the poem, McKay teeters back and forth between his intense positive and negative feelings of both America and the American way of life during this period, for example, his unexplainable love for the country versus the people’s racism which he personally encounters like when he says “l will confess/I love this cultured hell that tests my youth”(America,3,4). This was a very exciting time for many Americans as the roaring twenties were coming into full swing and society was celebrating the decade of carefree decadence, but there was a seedy dark side to America as well. For example, blacks in the South, where McKay
The poem ?The Negro Speaks of Rivers? by Langston Hughes contains many symbolic meanings about the identity of African Americans. Throughout the poem Hughes uses metaphorical statements to suggest to the reader what the soul of the African American has been through. The symbols of the old rivers from which the African American ideal has risen can be interpreted in many different ways. They represent the birth and growth of the African American culture, and some of the most significant moments of their past. The words written in this poem represent the pride and knowledge of a group of outstanding people.
The first quatrain explains what happens to the victim after the lynching. McKay uses the words "spirit," "heaven," and "father” to describe the religious experience of the victim after his death (lines 1-2). The author portrays the lynched man as a Christ like figure who “ascended to high heaven” and is welcomed by God, his father. And at the same time God rejects the white men, women, and children who were lynchers because “their awful sin remained still
It’s through McKay’s careful use of religious allusion it’s clear to see that “The Lynching” is more than just the lynching of black lives, it’s the lynching of faith in both God and humanity. The speaker primarily
Ernest Hemingway’s novel, The Sun Also Rises, is almost an auto-bibliography. It offers readers a deeper understanding of the author’s value of self-awareness as well as the strong influence of his life on his writing. The story centers around the narrator Jake and his expatriate friends, who represent the Lost Generation after World War I. The events correlate with experiences in Hemingway’s own life, and the themes he derives from these events reflect his responses. Through the novel, Hemingway reveals himself.
As time has passed humanity still tends to separate each other based on our racial being rather than seeing each other as one human race. Langston Hughes’s, “A New Song,” published in 1938 introduces the idea of a new vision of social relations in American society. Hughes’s original version of this poem written in 1933, does not encompass his growing anger on this subject that is dwelled upon in his published version. However, with Hughes’s powerful tone and word choice throughout his 1938 rendition, his reader is able to understand his urge to transform America into an interracial culture. (Central Idea) His poem voices the importance of transforming society into a multiethnic unity and working-class established through cultural ties between whites and blacks. (Thesis) Hughes voices this crucial need to change through his emphasis on African American’s past struggles as opposed to the new dream, his militant tone, and through expressing the role that the establishment of cultural ties plays in society.
Claude McKay shows how differently death was symbolized in the poems. In the poem “The Lynching” shows that man did not have a chance to speak for themselves and was randomly taken from their family and hangs to death. A black man was lynched while other people watch the cruel act of the white men. The last two sentence from the poem “And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee” shows racism and a continuation of lynching. The little lads represent the future generation of lynchers. Therefore, we can say that black man will still be a target for the white men in the future. In contrast, the poem “If We Must Die”, the African men wishes to choice their own death; be it an honourable death than
Langston Hughes was the leading voice of African American people in his time, speaking through his poetry to represent blacks. His Influence through his poems are seen widely not just by blacks but by those who enjoy poetry in other races and social classes. Hughes poems, Harlem, The Negro speaks of rivers, Theme for English B, and Negro are great examples of his output for the racial inequality between the blacks and whites. The relationship between whites and blacks are rooted in America's history for the good and the bad. Hughes poems bring the history at large and present them in a proud manner. The injustice that blacks face because of their history of once being in bondage is something they are constantly reminded and ridiculed for but must overcome and bring to light that the thoughts of slavery and inequality will be a lesson and something to remember for a different future where that kind of prejudice is not found so widely.