...Harlem Renaissance: 2. Which selection from the Harlem Renaissance offers the most hopeful message? Why? What is the selection’s message and how does the writer convey its message so effectively? What devices does he/she utilize? Theme for English B by Langston Hughes has the most hopeful message in my opinion, because he wasn’t negative about who he was. He explains a bit about himself, like where he is from and what he likes. He realizes that is he not so different from everyone else in the class and how he has the same value as any white person. I believe that Langston Hughes’ message is that no matter what skin color we are, we all learn from each other and we are all apart of each other, which makes us American. Hughes’ conveys this...
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...Prejudice in Langston Hughes’s, “On the Road” Slavery, in the United States, was formally abandoned in 1865 with the establishment of the Thirteenth Amendment. Still, racial discrimination of African-Americans proved to be prevalent throughout the country, and even in today’s society, continues to be a considerable issue. Langston Hughes’s short story “On the Road” is set in during the Great Depression, an economic meltdown in the United States. Many citizens lives turned into homelessness, starvation and pleading as they were left depending on shelters and the softheartedness of others in order for their survival. The central focus of Hughes’s story is the overwhelming emotional experiences faced by main character, Sargeant regarding racism, especially during the cruel economic circumstances he and thousands of others encountered. The story echoes a message of prejudice like that regularly faced by the African-American’s of Hughes’s generation. In the middle of a winter storm, Sargeant travels shelter to shelter simply to find a warm place to rest for the night only to be sent away repeatedly. He reaches the door of Reverend Dorset’s parsonage and he is no more hopeful that he will be taken in. Hughes captures the struggle of the African-American man in the initial thoughts of the Reverend during this scene in the story, “. . . standing there before him a big black man with snow on his face, a human piece of night with snow on his face — obviously unemployed” (446.) In...
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...Salvation", Langston Hughes Langston Hughes paints a picture of himself as a little boy whose decisions at a church revival directly reflect mans own instinctive behavioral tendencies for obedience. A young Langston whose congregation wants him to go up and get saved, gives into obedience and ventures to the altar as if he has seen the light of the Holy Spirit. Hughes goes on to say: " So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I'd rather lie, too, and say that Jesus had come ,and get up and be saved ." In saying this, Langston has obviously overlooked his personal belief to meet the level of obedience laid out by the congregation. It leads us to fact that people may believe strongly in an idea or thought but will overlook that belief to be obedient. One can make a justified assumption that everyone in society has at one time or another overlooked his or her personal feelings to conform this occurrence whether it is instinctive or judgmental is one that each individual deals with a personal level. He was a young boy who wanted to see Jesus, who wanted to earn salvation, but when he couldn't see Jesus, when everyone else saw,he found himself in the terrible position of disappointing not only himself but everyone in his community.He finally "saved" himself by pretending to see Jesus . He was saved not by love of Jesus as a congregation or preacher intended but by pretending to be other that who he was. One wanders what would have happened if he didn't stepped forward...
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...The Evolution of Langston Hughes In the 1900s America was constantly evolving. Langston Hughes, an African American poet, wrote poems about civil rights, hope, and the American dream that inspired other African Americans to fight for equality in the 1900s. Hughes wrote during a time period that African Americans were not treated equally. In 1964 the Civil Rights Act was signed creating equality and ending segregation for African Americans. As America changed, Hughes perspective on America and equality evolved affecting his writing. In the beginning of Hughes’s writing career he was critical of America, but was inspiring to the lower class. For example, In “Let America Be America Again”, by Langston Hughes, he states, “There’s never been equality...
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...Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University, but left after one year to travel. His poetry was later promoted by Vachel Lindsay, and Hughes published his first book in 1926. He went on to write countless works of poetry, prose and plays, as well as a popular column for the Chicago Defender. He died on May 22, 1967. CONTENTS Synopsis Early Life Growing Success A Continuing Life of Letters Death and Legacy QUOTES "An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose." – Langston Hughes « prev1 / 14next » Early Life James Mercer Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, separated soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. While Hughes’s mother moved around during his youth, Hughes was raised primarily by his maternal grandmother, Mary, until she died in his early teens. From that point, he went to live with his mother, and they moved to several cities before eventually settling in Cleveland, Ohio. It was during this time that Hughes first began to write poetry, and that one of his teachers first introduced him to the poetry of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman, both whom Hughes would later cite as primary influences. Hughes was also a regular contributor to his school's literary magazine, and frequently submitted to other poetry...
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...to the mid 1930s, talent began to overflow within this newfound culture of the black community in Harlem, as prominent figures—Langston Hughes ( The most prolific writer of the Harlem Renaissance. He casted off the influences of white poets and wrote with the rhythmic meter of blues and jazz), Claude McKay (urged African Americans to stand up for their rights in his powerful verses),Billie Holiday (Billie Holiday was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time. She had a thriving career for many years before she lost her battle with addiction), and Jean Toomer wrote plays and short stories, as well as poems, to capture the spirit of his times), to name a few—pushed art to its limit as a form of expression and representation. These are some of the famous African Americans who shaped the influential movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. In November 1924, Langston Hughes returned to the United States and worked various jobs. In 1925, he was working as a busboy in a Washington, D.C. hotel restaurant when he met American poet Vachel Lindsay. Hughes showed some of his poems to Lindsay, who was impressed enough to use his connections to promote Hughes’s poetry and ultimately bring it to a wider audience. In 1925, Hughes’s poem “The Weary Blues” won first prize in the Opportunity magazine literary competition, and Hughes also received a scholarship...
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...I will focus this discussion board posting on Langston Hughes. He was born in Joplin, Missouri. Hughes is known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City. He traveled to New York in 1921 to attend Columbia University. In 1922, Langston became a seaman and a cook’s helper on a tramp steamer to Africa and Europe. Later on, he returned to the United States and went to Washington, D.C to work as a busboy. In 1925, a poet by the name of Vachel Lindsay “discovered” Langston Hughes. Moreover, Vachel admired Hughes’s poems, and he told Hughes to dedicate himself to literature and writing. However, Hughes started writing before in grammar school. He also published two poems in high school in magazines. The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes...
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...Langston Hughes is an american dream poet. Moreover he wrote realistic poetry about important themes in his culture. It affected society. Langston Hughes was born in February 1, 1902 at Joplin, Missouri and died in May 22, 1967 at New York. His parents, James Hughes and Carrie Langston, divorced as soon after his birth, and his father moved to Mexico. Langston Hughes first built to write poetry when his high school teacher showed him a poet named “Carl Sandburg” and “Walt Whitman”. Them both influenced him in poetry. He graduated in 1920 from high school. Langston Hughes was first known as an important poet during the 1920’s, a period known as the “Harlem Renaissance”. Specially Hughes had a lot of famous works. For instance “I Too” is also known as “I, Too, Sing America, it was titled “Epilogue” it appeared in 1926. It’s written in 5 stanzas. The poem symbolises “Racism”. The poem had a lot to do with Imagery, 1st person point of view, Attitude, also Theme. Hughes wrote “I Too” because of African Americans men slaves during...
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...The Harlem Renaissance, also known as the New Negro Movement started at the end of World War I, but only began to get recognized around 1924. The Harlem Renaissance was made up of chiefly writers and was considered a phenomenon. This movement started at a time when racism was still at large. African Americans had to deal with the KKK and other racial prejudices in society. The Harlem Renaissance was significant because it was the first time African Americans expressed their views on racism and their self-love for one another, using lyrical styles that was never seen before in African American writing. Two of the most prominent poets of the time were Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance happened fifty seven years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Previously, African Americans didn’t have much education or a chance to make their mark in the literary world. They didn’t have much of a chance because they were still looked upon as inferior. They were also thought not to have a distinct cultural heritage. The United States got involved in World War I in the year 1917. At that time, race riots were happening and lynchings were frequent. After World War I ended in 1918, African Americans started coming to the North hoping to escape the racist treatment in the South. Unfortunately, life in the North wasn’t that much greater. In the South, more and more race riots occurred and many black people were beaten and killed-- this was known as “Red Summer” (Anderson...
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...“I want to be a poet—not a Negro poet” (Hughes 348). In his essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain,” Langston Hughes covers many important points but his hook is one to mention. This hook focuses a lot on the main issue of the essay itself. The issue is that the negro poets want to write like the white poets implying that colored artists want to be white. This then leads to the fact that the white audiences turned to the artists of color and saw them as stereotypical entertainment mainly because these black artists were afraid of being themselves. Langston Hughes’s poem, “The Weary Blues” engages with themes of the Harlem Renaissance and the content of the poem expresses various issues Hughes discussed in “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.” The poem, “The Weary Blues” is a powerful poem because it highlights the cultural traditions of the African American descent during a time of the Harlem Renaissance. The audience is able to...
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...poets Langston Hughes or Claude McKay. Some famous people that were Musicians and Artists like Louis Armstrong and Lois Mailou Jones. Jazz was an important part of the Harlem Renaissance because it tells/teaches us that piano can be played by every person. It made black music attractive to white people. ( Ford who were the...
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...Phillip Woods Sandra Simonds ENG102 April 26 2016 Langston Hughes and The Weary Blues Langston Hughes was recognized as a significant literary figure during the 1920s, a period known as the "Harlem Renaissance" because of the number of emerging black writers. After graduating from high school, Hughes went to Mexico to visit his father, in hopes to convince his father that he should pay for his college education at Columbia University in New York City. On his way to Mexico on the train, while thinking about his past and his future, Hughes wrote the famous poem, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers." After arriving in Mexico, the tension between Hughes and his father was strong. Hughes wanted to be a writer; his father wanted him to be an engineer. After Hughes sent some of his poetry to what was known as the “Brownies” Book and “Crisis” magazines, it was accepted. his father was impressed enough to agree to pay for a year at Columbia University. It was there at Columbia University were he begin releasing more poems that he had written. Hughes embraced crafting blues music into his poetry because it expressed the worries of the common man in a simple and direct manner. Blues songs feature heavy repetition, and singers often seem to be laughing and crying at the same time. One of his best works was the poem “The Weary Blues” which came in first place in a section of a literary contest in an Opportunity magazine published in 1925...
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...the birth place of jazz but also we heard voices of the African American Authors who were taken serious by their white connects for the first time in history. It focused on portraying black culture and life in the ghetto. And it gave the African American Culture uniqueness within literature and art. Harlem Renaissance was an evident racial pride that symbolized the melodic theme of the New Negro. New Negro challenged the penetrating racial discrimination to encourage socialistic help of art and literature. As to be significant in the Harlem Renaissance the writers used poetry to present the African American experiences. Grabbing the attention between both black and white readers around the world. One Poet that set that bar really was Langston Hughes he was one of the most popular black poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes was great at his job with more diversity in his choice of writings. He had written Plays, Novels, Poems, and Short Stories, Most of his writings were the real situations that really happened in black cultures. Movies were highly looked up upon in the Harlem Renaissance. D.W. Griffith directed “The Birth of a Nation” the film was over African Americans directors who countered negative stereotypes promoted in majority of the mainstream movies. Then released films in The Harlem Renaissance showcased the struggle of the African Americans in the U.S. alone. Musicians during the Harlem Renaissance developed a style and movement that simply took Americans by...
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...Langston Hughes’s early life was influenced by disruption and restlessness. According to Contemporary Black Biography Volume 4, Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri; to a prominent black family that extremely conscious of its responsibilities to “The Race”. His father, James Hughes, who studied as a lawyer, had to leave his family because of racial discrimination of an all-white examining board to settle eventually in Mexico, where he became a wealthy businessman. His mother Carrie traveled from city to city in search of better paying jobs. His parents soon divorced thereafter. As a result, Hughes then was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Langston in Lawrence, Kansas. After two years after his grandmother’s death in 1912, he lived with a family named the Reeds in Lawrence. Later, in 1914 Hughes follow his mother and stepfather to Lincoln, Illinois then to Cleveland, Ohio. While he attended grammar school in Lincoln, he was elected as class poet. He later began to write his first poems in Cleveland. Besides three poems above, “Harlem” is also a very famous poem by Langston Hughes. It expresses the dream of having equality of black people, from eating in the same table, using the same restroom, to living in the same area with whites. The poem also demonstrates the frustration of blacks when they got racism. [quotes]. Overall, it gives out the hope and future for blacks. The poem ends by asking a question, “Or does it explode?” as to answer for the world...
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...Renaissance Poets XXX XXXX Strayer University HUM 112 August 17, 2014 XXX XXXX The Harlem Renaissance Poets The Harlem Renaissance, notably deemed as the “New Negro Movement” by Alain Locke, aggrandized the creativity in literature and music from the African American culture. Much of the art from this era mostly portrayed their experiences of inequality and their search for better quality of life in the North and Midwest, henceforth the Great Migration. Some of the most prominent names during this time was African American poets Langston Hughes and Claude McKay, both playing an essential role to the literary movement. As stated by McKay, “their poems are full of hushes, whispers, sighs, songs, tongues, throats, wails, moans, voices, speech, music, hymns, blues, sobs, cries, lashes, yowls, jazz, scatting, drums, thunder, drones, shouts, trumpets, trains, whistles, choirs, horns, and all sorts of other raucous sound” (1926). Langston Hughes was notably known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance and also deemed as the “Father of Harlem Renaissance poetry”. Hughes solidified his legacy in the Harlem Renaissance subsequently after the publishing of his first poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, which is one of his most notable poems. The Negro Speaks of Rivers, which was influenced from his time passing the Mississippi River to visit his family, was later published in 1926 in his first book of poetry, The Weary Blues. In regards to the poem, Phillipson describes it...
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