Langster hughes

Bryan Gardner

Rebecca Schwarz

603-103-MQ Literary Themes

February 1st, 2018

Free but Not Equal

      What is the difference between white, black and yellow races, women and men? No one should be able to answer this question and this is what African American writers want to show. Black are now free, but this is only a step forward. They wanted to be treated equally. During the Harlem Renaissance, authors challenged every stereotype against the black population. Langston Hughes is one of them, he is a fighter for African American values. He provides the spirit of Harlem Renaissance in his works. Thus, he tried to improve the lifestyle of African American who lived in the United States. Almost everything he wrote was to defend the rights of this group of people. He is one of the most influential black authors in literature. Hughes’s poetry focuses on discrimination and racism concerning African Americans. Also, he defends his opinions and his passion towards African American discrimination. Furthermore, Langston Hughes is a huge defender of the African nation and he shows that they need to be consider differently than slave.

      First of all, Hughes was an influent writer for African American. His poetry was a great way to express all the discrimination and the racism concerning African American. The poetry of Hughes is a strategy to express the discontent of every African American with an artistic touch. The poem Mulatto is a perfect demonstration of Hughes’s goal. Fighting and defending the reputation of every black American African was the heart of this poem. In Mulatto, Hughes mentions, “what’s a body but a toy” (Hughes, p.74). The white man is completely disrespectful and he compares black as a toy. It is a stereotype that black peoples are refer to toy and it was frequently use by white people. In the poem, the white man represents the society and the discrimination of them. Hughes represent roughly the situation in United States to defends human right of African American. Therefore, he is a fighter of the Harlem Renaissance spirit.

      Secondly, Hughes passion for defending African American is strong and provided good results. His poetry celebrated survival and endurance, those central ingredients of our experience; and he caught them in humor and irony, a frequently subtle but abiding passion, and finally, a certain sad awareness regarding the impossibility of being Hughes, the Black man, and Hughes, the American. For him, poetry was the way to express his idea and it’s a kind of a free speech. In the story “Song for a Dark Girl”, Hughes said, “I asked the white Lord Jesus what was the use of prayer”. (Hughes, p.75). This expression represents the discrimination of American African. It just emphasizes the fact that Jesus is white and also, why a black girl prays, for a black man, to a white God? She believes in Jesus even if he is white. Hughes wants to show that if black could believe in white, white should also believe in black. Therefore, His poetry is a way express is passion in black debate for equality. His passion toward African American led him through the Harlem Renaissance spirit fight for equality.

      Thirdly, after the civil war, African American were now free, but they were still see as slave that have nothing to bring to the society. In “the Negro speaks of the river”, Hughes said, “I look upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.”.  He is proving that African American are competent and they have as skills as white American. He wants to show that African American need to be consider more than slave because they have accomplished a lot of important and historical things. In the poem, he reveals many steps that African have accomplished, but he is also demonstrating that African are as old as the world and that they deserved their place on this world when he said, “I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins”. Thus, Hughes proclaim that African American can support the white population in the development of the society and that they are not a blight in the society.

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