Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was a poet during the 1930s and is known for being one of the founders of the Harlem Renaissance. He attended college at Columbia University, but only for a year before he decided to drop out and explore the world via traveling. He then began to write poems and published his first in 1921, which later led to the publishing of his first book in 1926. Eventually, Hughes ended up dying on May 22, 1967 from prostate cancer.
Langston Hughes uses his understanding and experiences to make evident the themes and styles of his works. Hughes’ themes and styles include racism, cosmopolitanism, nature, blues/jazz poetry, passing, American Lynching, inequality, dreams, prostitution, topophilia, topophobia, negotiating censorship, prejudice, exploitation, and . He also used many literary techniques like repetition, symbolism, assonance, and alliteration. Many of his works serve to bring awareness to inequality and treatment of African Americans during the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes also uses events that were occurring at the time, such as American Lynching and the abuse of African American women by European sailors, to address the struggles and fear of blacks during this time period.
Racism was a large epidemic during the 1930s. Hughes wanted to spread awareness of this, so he spread it throughout his works (M’Baye 1). A couple of his works that portray this theme are: “Bodies in the Moonlight” and “African Morning” (1). In these works, Hughes weighs in on Africans being taken advantage of and abused economically and sexually by the Europeans (1).
Cosmopolitanism is a theme used by Hughes to in reference to the political, social, cultural, and economic experiences that allowed Africans from both Africa and the diaspora to resist all conditions influenced by colonialism (M’Baye 1) An example of this theme is portrayed in one of Hughes’ works called “The Big Sea”.
“Edward had lived inside that compound, too, for a while with his mother, the house servant. But his father had retired and gone back to England. And now Edward and his mother lived outside the compound. His father had left a small allowance for them and occasionally he wrote them a letter from London. But he would not permit the boy or his mother to come to England” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 3).
This quote describes the impact of colonial racism and economic exploitation on Africans living in a Nigerian town called Port Harcourt.
Hughes liked to use techniques in some of his works to engage the reader in different ways. One of these are repetition which he got from the blues origin as an oral tradition. An example of this can be found in Hughes’ poem “The Weary Blues”. “I got the weary blues/And I can’t be satisfied./Got the Weary blues/And I can’t be satisfied–/I ain’t happy no mo’/And I wish that I had died” (CollectedPoems 50). In this poem, Hughes uses the more common AAB pattern in which the last line changes.
Blues/Jazz poetry is a style that Hughes used throughout many of his poems. In the book, “Selected Poems of Langston Hughes”, he reveals his personal choice of writing which was the blues/Jazz poetry (Davidas 1). This type of poetry contains lively and active repetitions while keeping a slow tempo and rhythm (1). This writing style shows how Hughes used the same rhythm of blues and jazz music. Blues/Jazz poetry makes the reader feel like they are a part of a concert (1). In Hughes’ poem “Dream Boogie”, the both the boogie-woogie and bebop are evoked (Davidas 5). The poem has a deceptively quiet tone with subtle irony and restraint which gives you the most felicitous offspring of jazz-poetry when combined (5).
Hughes made use of an unusual theme called passing. Passing is a social problem in which black person is denoted for attempting to act white (Jason 10). An example of this appears in Hughes’ work “Fooling our White Folks”,
“For those who are able to do it, passing for white is, of course, the most common means of escaping color handicaps. . . . The consensus of opinion among Negroes seems to be approval of those who can get by with it. Almost all of us know Negroes of light complexion who, during the war, were hustled through their draft boards so fast they were unwittingly put into white units and did their service entirely without the humiliations of the military color bar.” (Hughes qtd. in CW 9:314)
In this quote, he clearly states in the first sentence that the most common escape for colored people is trying to act is if they were white and once they joined the military through the draft, the colored people were able to live in unison with the whites.
American Lynching struck fear into many black during the 1930s especially when talking about rivers, which is where most of these lynchings would occur. He referenced these events through this career as a poet throughout his poems (Jason 7). Hughes used the Mississippi River in his work “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, because it is seen as intimidating area as he travels toward Texas by train in the Red Summer of 1919 (Jason 8). Texas was one of the “many theaters in which brutalized black male bodies—sometimes nude, often bullet-ridden—were put on display, then reported in the black press with vividness and outrage” (Gussow qtd. in Jason 8). In this quote, Texas is described as one of the most publicized areas for the killing of blacks.
Intimidation is another one of the themes that Hughes liked to focus on in many of his works. He wanted to show how blacks felt at the time while whites controlled all the power. “Motorcycle cops/white/will speed it/out of sight/if they can/solid black/can’t be right/Marching-marching/marching (Selected 1974: 222). Hughes poetry uncovers the brutal actions not only by the police but the white American movie industry in Hollywood as well. The white American movie industry would display racist images about black history and culture which completely ignored all signs of black humanity.
Hughes uses the theme of inequality when comparing the white treatment of their own to white treatment of blacks. White women in port-towns and in colonial ships were treated humanely by the sailors, but the black women were regarded as means of sexual pleasure (M’Baye 5). “There were French girls, who traveled a circuit like theatrical troupers, seventeen days in each port, but they were expensive and catered only to officers and traders” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 5). In this quote it is clear that French girls were seen as royalty almost and treated with respect.
Hughes referenced Dreams in 74 of his 879 poems. Dreams were a way that Hughes could show the hopes and aspirations of blacks and encourage them. When he speaks of dreams, he does not mean the dreaming we do in our sleep, so not literally dreaming. An example of the dreaming idea is shown in Hughes’ work “Deferred”. People are allowed to listen in on speakers who dream of earning a high school diploma, owning a white enamel stove, studying French, and buying two suits at once, among other things (Hughes 413). In this piece of “Deferred”, Hughes is telling us what people dreamed of at the time or things they hoped that they could achieve. His poetry celebrates the capacity of dream-power to overturn established structures of race and class oppression. In Hughes poetic vision, dreams can be deferred, but they can’t be stopped. Dreams represent the irrepressible human desire to build a world based upon an ideal of social justice. Hughes liked to use different types of dreams which can be seen in his “The Dream Keeper”. “Bring me all of your dreams, / You dreamers”(Hughes 45). This piece of the poem demonstrates that there are differences between the dreams brought to (or borrowed by) a dream-keeper like Hughes, and the dreams brought to a bookkeeper like the one that the wife visits to place her bet. One of the different types of dreams were night dreams. “Although most of his poems focus on the daytime aspirations of black folk, several of his poems such as “Dream,” “Beale Street,” and “Nightmare Boogie” take night dreams for their subject matter (Hughes 173, 418).
Hughes recalls a time when he was walking through the ports and witnessed a woman forced to sell her body for money (M’Baye 5). African women had to rely on prostitution for money since they were poor and had no means of survival (M’Baye 4). These women would sell their bodies to the Western sailors at the port (M’Baye 5). Hughes vividly remembers the scene of a naked African girl on her knees begging for help (5). “‘Mon-nee! Mon-nee!’ But nobody had any money … nobody had a cent, yet they wouldn’t let her get up” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 5).
Hughes uses topophilia to capture the affection of a person and how they connect to a place, which varies in degrees (Jason 9). It includes the high expectations of enjoyment that accompanies traveling, engaging with the environment that incites wonder or knowledge for the participant, and the nostalgic images that give us a reminder of the pleasure one had experienced at a certain site (9). This occurs throughout “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” when Hughes goes beyond the limits of time and culture by seeking the enjoyment of riverscapes as others enjoyed them (9). On the other hand, Hughes also used topophobia in his works to sum up the various fears we associate with places (9). In “The Negro”, Hughes shows the lynching events taking place in Mississippi as opposed to his earlier works that mention Texas (9). The name change in the state shows that it was not just once place but several places and by doing this it instills images of these lynchings into the readers’ mind (9). Another example occurs in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” when Hughes wants to seek the enjoyment of riverscapes, he is afraid of the violence that occurs at them (9).
Hughes retold history in one of his works about American Lynching through the strategy of negotiating censorship (Jason 12). This strategy was seen most effective in Hughes work “The Negro” (12). He invoked the “quasi-(in)visible dissent” practiced in the “rewriting” of “specific historical or cultural events” (Roman qtd. in Jason 13). The poem uses eighteen of its nineteen lines to reference history that happened in the past and only one line commenting on the subject of lynching (Jason 13).
Hughes’s poems appeared with more illustrations than any poems of any other poet in the twentieth century (Axelrod, Roman, and Travisano qtd. in Jason 14). The illustrations of Hughes’ poetry serve as key contexts for interpretation (Jason 14). “Hughes’s topophobic anticipations of Texas are sharpened as a result of viewing the photographs of Jesse Washington’s lynching in a 1916 edition of Crisis. Six photos in this article capture the horrific burning and dismemberment of Washington’s body during a lynching that lasted no fewer than five hours” (14). Photography along with the poem itself combine to provide an easier way to learn about a situation or event.
Hughes realized that main-stream daily newspapers offered inadequate representations of lynchings (Jason 13). Hughes then started to create counternarratives and offer them to newspapers (13). He did this through the writing of his poems, plays, and short stories telling what really happens (13). “His works “Father and Son” (1934), play Don’t You Want to Be Free? (1943), and poem “Mississippi” (1955) serve as artistic correctives to the incomplete accounts told by the press” (13). “With “Father and Son,” Hughes subverted newsprint sources by contrasting his narrative with a newspaper account of a lynching he included in the final paragraph of the story” (13).
Symbolism is a technique that Hughes used when he wanted to allude from one idea to another. In “Spirituals”, he uses the phrase “From the dead weight of the sea,” which is symbolic of the effect of the oppression that Whites inflict upon Blacks (Davidas 4). “The final line of the poem, “Song is such a strong thing” relates to the idea of black strength and resilience while also making note of the strength of song – in this case, the power of jazz and blues combined with spirituals, which helps African-Americans to survive and overcome adversity” (4).
Assonance and alliteration are two techniques used in some of Hughes’ poems. He used alliteration and assonance together to keep a smooth, slow conversational tone, as well as a cool, peaceful, and slow tone for his poems (Davidas 3). In “Feet O’ Jesus”, the sibilant “S” Sound (“sorrow,” “sea,” l.2) and the liquid “L” (“lordy,” “let,” l.3) are prevalent alliterations (3). The alliteration combined with the assonances created by the [i:] and [i] sounds (“feet,” “Jesus,” “drifting,” “little” help provide those tones (3). Another example of the assonance that Hughes used is seen in “Fantasy in Purple” (3). The poem begins with “Beat the drums . . .” and the whole structure of the piece does produce the effect of beating drums because of the “b” and “d” sounds being used, which contributes to the effect of beating drums (3).
Black people during the 1930s had a biased opinion towards each other of who they thought saw themselves as better than the rest which Hughes describes through the term prejudice (M’Baye 8). In “African Morning”, Hughes describes how Maurai is subjugated by other Africans who watched him as a dozen black dock boys beat him (8). The dock boys “began to strike and kick at Maurai, and even the black women squatting on the wharf selling fruits and sweetmeats got up and joined the boys in their attack” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 8-9).
The African Americans were exploited at the ports which white Europeans would dock their ships. Men would do work and women were sexually harassed. “In “African Morning”, Hughes shows an image of half-naked black men loading cocoa and palm oil into the dark holes of colonial schooners” (M’Baye 13). Hughes described it as an “Ebony-black men, naked to the waist, the sweat pouring off them, loaded the rope hampers before they swung up and over and down into the dark hole of the big ship” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 13). “In “Bodies in the Moonlight”, describes white shipmen who treat black village women they meet in African colonial port-towns as beasts and sexual objects. Early in the text, a white boatman yells at a naked black woman running down the deck, telling her, “Get the hell off here! … I should think the men would see enough o’ you women on shore without bringing you on the damn ship. Don’t lemme catch you here again” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 11-12). These events of the white colonial men instilled fear in the African women (M’Baye 12). Another example of the abuse and cruel treatment of African women is seen in “The Big Sea”, when Hughes describes a brutal scene in which thirty penniless sailors, many of whom were Europeans, surrounded two African girls who had come to their ship at night (M’Baye 4). “The bo’sun, boss-like, grabbed one of the girls and took her off privately to his cabin. Someone threw the other girl down on the floor on a blanket in the middle of the sailors’ quarters and stripped her of her flowered cloth” (Hughes qtd. in M’Baye 4-5).
Works Cited
Source 1
Miller, W.Jason. Langston Hughes and American Lynching Culture. University Press of Florida, 2011.
Source 2
Lionel, Davidas. “‘I, Too, Sing America’: Jazz and Blues Techniques and Effects in Some of Langston Hughesʼs Selected Poems.” Dialectical Anthropology, no. 34, 2001, p. 267
Source 3
M’Baye, Babacar. “Cosmopolitan Critiques of Colonial Abuse in Langston Hughes’s African Travel Writings.” South Atlantic Review, no. 1, 2018, p. 5.
Source 4
Taylor, Douglas. “Dream Politics in the Poetry of Langston Hughes.” Forum for World Literature Studies, no. 1, 2009, p. 8.
Source 5
Rabas, Kevin. “Langston Hughes’s Blues: Key African-American Musical Movements and Styles.” West Virginia University Philological Papers, 2011, p. 56.
Source 6
Gohar, Saddik Mohamed. “Dismantling the History of Slavery and Colonization in the Poetry of Mohamed Al-Fayturi and Langston Hughes.” Journal of Pan African Studies, no. 9, 2007, p. 151.
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