Preview

Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
673 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks Of Rivers
Langston Hughes was an American poet, born in 1902 and died in 1967, mostly know for his jazz poetry.

Hughes “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” has man different view of reading it. Really the allegory of this poem details black history and experience. Every time I is mentioned it really means blacks people instead of himself and the rivers in this poem represent life. The rivers all over the world, starting in Africa, the mother land where everything began. “Rivers as ancient as the world” Europhates the river flowing near the first civilization, Congo the second biggest river with jagged edges, and Nile the longest and most dangerous river in Africa. According to Library Media Connection, “Hughes captured the essence of his race and their
…show more content…
Imagery is very vivid with the deep and long rivers that flow. The muddy river turns golden just by the sun, and ancient dusky river that will soon get brighter.

This poem has a neutral diction of words but doesn’t rhyme at all. Even though it doesn’t rhyme it has a big overall impact. This early Harlem renascence poetry, an example of jazz poetry, shows that jazz poetry doesn’t have to rhyme but meant to express important history.

Hughes the renascence King of Techniques used many Figures of speech such as Metaphors. “I” was black life to a river, Smile are used in the poem such as” As ancients the world” and “Like the river” which shows the authors connection between two things. The allusion of Negro is used in this poem because the title states of “Negro” but the poem never include the word but the history of Negros as rivers.

This poem has a unique form with 12 lines. An average line structure of poem is 20 lines, but some are shorter than others. What really stands out is “My soul grows deeper than river” which this phrases has two lines where it stands alone and this puts big empathies on this one phrase. From the first time this phrase is shown to the last, this has history in-between, which shows how souls have grown through racism and
…show more content…
Reading this for the first time it seems like a wise old man is talking to his grandchildren but this poem was really written by a young 18-year-old Hughes writing with a wise train of thought.

In Langston Hughes poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” he uses “I” repetitively and in almost ever line. He also uses that in he’s other work “I, Too”. But I in both pieces of poetry never real mean himself. “I” is a collective noun for black people as a whole. Hughes also used geographical locations in black history in his poems. “Negro” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, detail fine imagery such as Africa, Pyramids, slavery and Mississippi.
In "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "Negro" Langston Hughes uses connection between US and other foreign countries as a means of exploring history, heritage, and identity (Jones 74).
This poem indicated many things such as Normal human behavior “bathing, building a hut and sleep” but that is soon interrupted by slavery. “ I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. ‘ which the first sign of slavery, by the Egyptians. Then Mississippi Muddy River of slavery in the United states and is t soon cleared by sun, the civil war and turns golden the sunset of the idea

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    How does the poetry of Langston Hughes, “I, Too,” “Harlem,” and “A Song to a Negro…

    • 684 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Starting from the late 1700’s until the mid 1900’s was a difficult time for the African American community. People were dying for no specific reason, there were no jobs’ and the life conditions were very harsh. The Analyzing of two different poems A Black Man Talks of Reaping by Arna Bontemps and A Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes helps us better understand the difficulties in Harlem during the 19th century. The comparison of the similarities and differences between both creates a solid and experienced idea for the reader to understand. The fact that in one poem the author ‘speaks’ and the other one the author ‘talks’ can prove different experiences that these authors have lived trough. Both poems use specific examples and comparisons to give a global image of Harlem in the 1900’s.…

    • 600 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes was considered one of the principal and prominent voices of Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s and 1930s. His poetry encompasses heterogeneity of subject matters and motifs concerning working African-Americans who were excluded and deprived of power. His choice of theme was accentuated and manifested through the convergence of African-American vernacular and blues forms. My attempt is to analyze the implications of the most significant poems by first introducing the author, examining the relevance of the poems and then, contrast them with Richard Wright’s antagonistic perspective.…

    • 524 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes was a poet whose poems helped many African Americans. Hughes had achieved fame, was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, has written over 50 poems, and had a tragic death. He had a long life and wanted to help his fellow African Americans with their life struggles.…

    • 348 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Langston Hughes is considered by many readers to be the most significant black poet of the twentieth century. Except for a few examples, all his poems are about social injustice in America. The somber tone of his writing often reflected his mood. Race relations were present in almost his whole career, following him from his first poem to his last.…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Jamell Grimes 1

    • 1858 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, and novelist who also was the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He was well-known for his poetry in the early 20th century, in which most of his work reflected the oppression experienced by blacks in the south. Such as poems “crossed” and “song from a dark girl”, in which the two poems are similar in tone, language, and symbolism. The tone in both poems are of distress and confusion which derived from the discrimination towards blacks in the early 1900’s. Both poems expresses a great amount of sorrow due unjust racial discrimination imposed on blacks at the time. Lines such as “they hung my black lover” and “I wonder where I’m gone die, being neither white or black” exemplifies the distressfulness in the tone of both poems. In the poem “a song for a black girl” a African American girl expresses her sorrow over her dead black lover, who was hung, which we can assume was done by whites; because of the racial discrimination and segregation between blacks and whites in the south. Similar to the distress the author of the poem “cross” is experiencing, in which the writer is “mixed” with a white father and black mother. The author is angry and confused about his racial identity because of the heavy racial basis and segregation in the south, placing him in a purgatory area, not knowing if he’ll die as a white man or black man.…

    • 1858 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    This short poem is one of Hughes’s most famous works; it is likely the most common Langston Hughes poem taught in American schools. Hughes wrote "Harlem" in 1951, and it addresses one of his most common themes like the limitations of the American Dream for African Americans. The poem has eleven short lines in four stanzas, and all but one line are questions.In the early 1950s, America was still racially segregated. African Americans were saddled with the legacy of slavery, which essentially rendered them second-class citizens in the eyes of the law, particularly in the South.Hughes was intimately aware of the challenges he faced as a black man in America, and the tone of his work reflects his complicated experience. He can come across as sympathetic, enraged, and hopeful. Hughes titled this poem “Harlem” after the New York neighborhood that became the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major creative explosion in music, literature, and art that occurred during the 1910s and 1920s. Many African American families saw Harlem as a sanctuary from the frequent discrimination they faced in other parts of the country. Unfortunately, Harlem’s glamour faded at the beginning of the 1930s when the Great Depression set in that left many of the African American families who had flourished in Harlem…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “ We negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us beings at the color line.” - Langston Hughes (Brainyquote). Langston Hughes, born in Missouri, was an important literary figure in the Harlem Renaissance (1920s - 1930s). Hughes is known to be a poet, social activist, novelist, playwrighter, and a columnist. He used his poetry to obtain a voice for the African - American culture. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, launched his literary career when first enrolled in Columbia University. Langston Hughes, born in Missouri, was one of the most important literary figures during the Harlem Renaissance…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    First published in The Crisis in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" became Hughes 's signature poem which was collected in his first book of poetry The Weary Blues in 1926. Hughes 's first and last published poems appeared in The Crisis; more of his poems were published in The Crisis than in any other journal. Hughes’s life and work were enormously influential during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, alongside those of his contemporaries, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Aaron Douglas. Except…

    • 1500 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Awertf

    • 1086 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Langston Hughes, a well known American poet, was born and raised in mild poverty and faced many struggles during his childhood and early adulthood. Due to the circumstances surrounding his life, Hughes developed a strong emotional connection to anyone facing struggles, particularly youth growing up in poor areas of American cities, such as New York City's Harlem area. After realizing these connections, Hughes was able to successfully address the difficulties of life and the struggles of the people, through the piece "Harlem”. The use of a distinct voice, beginning with such a strong title, compels the audience to continue through the poem, where we are exposed to strong use of voice, tone, symbolism, word choice, and poetic structure.…

    • 1086 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The shadow of slavery limited black culture’s opportunity for expression. The form of the poem is traditional, with multiple distinct stanza separating his ideas; however, the syntax and form of each individual stanza is innovative. Hughes breaks up sentences across lines, and excludes a classical rhyme scheme. Furthermore, the diction of “I Too” is composed of colloquialisms. This conjoining of traditional and contemporary forms establishes the basis for Hughes’s sophisticated integration of modern expression into classical art.…

    • 1660 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Based on Hughes’ experience, it mirrored his phenomenal energy about darkness. The pride he felt in praising dark ladies and the excellence of dark individuals as a rule can be attached to his finding the inceptions of dark Americans in Africa and additionally to his later goes to Africa. Hughes observed dark to be delightful much sooner than the 1960s. Hughes additionally stated, rather intensely for his time, that dark individuals had assumed huge parts in history and that that importance was attached to their beginnings in Africa. Maybe his best-known verbalization of this feeling is caught in his ballad, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," which at first showed up in the June 1921 issue of the NAACP's magazine Crisis—when Hughes was the age eighteen. Hughes had not set out to Africa before he composed the writing, however his solid statement that dark Americans had a place in the historical backdrop of the world was striking. As opposed to the conviction that blacks had contributed little to human progress, Hughes keeps up that blacks were available at the beginning of development. He envisions a collectivity of obscurity, one that represents the nearness of blacks at the support of human advancement, in the Fertile Crescent. Guaranteeing the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Congo as his own, as spots close where his kin lived, Hughes takes a position that is far from that of the individuals who state that blacks are without culture and without complete recorded roots. In any case, Hughes' conclusion in the ballad still resembles the sentimental. He envisions blacks building hovels and pyramids and being at one with nature. Despite the fact that the lyric might not have great improvement, what it imperative here is the acknowledgment by a youthful African American author of his positive binds to Africa. Hughes was by his self when…

    • 1303 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Langston Hughes

    • 2107 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Langston Hughes began writing in high school, and even at this early age was developing the voice that made him famous. High school teacher and classmates recognized Hughes writing talent, and Hughes had his first pieces of verse published in the…

    • 2107 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes’s poem I, Too, Sing America, is a poetic criticism of racial discrimination in American society during the post- slavery era. When Langston Hughes wrote the poem "I, Too", African Americans were not accepted. Blacks were discriminated against, killed violently, separated from using the same facilities and being in the same place as whites, just to name a few. The division between whites and blacks was clearly prevalent, with whites faring on the better side of the spectrum. Essentially, the United States of America was a racially discriminatory society reinforced by its racist laws.…

    • 560 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Langston Hughes

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Harlem Renaissance was a huge cultural movement for the culture of African Americans. Embracing the various aspects of art, many sought to envision what linked black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. Langston Hughes was one of the many founders of such a cultural movement. Hughes was very unique when it came to his use of jazz rhythms and dialect in portraying the life of urban blacks through his poetry, stories, and plays. By examining 2 poems by Langston Hughes, this essay will demonstrate how he criticized racism in Harlem, New York.…

    • 1048 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays