Tuesday 18 February 2020

HW for March 2

Take the time of Carnaval break to read Langston Hughes's poems in the anthology and Toni Morison's "Recitatif". Answer at least to one of the following:

1. Choose your favorite poem by Langston Hughes and analyze it with close reading skills.

2. Comment on points of contact or contrast between any poem and Toni Morrison's short story.

Langston Hughes (1902-1967)

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
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1 comment:

  1. Unknown1 March 2020 at 19:24

    Langston Hughes’s “I, too” opens with the line “I, too, sing America.” This “I” is identified in the following sentence as being “the darker brother”, referring to skin color. So here the “I” may be denoting not a singular person but a collective speaker, speaking for all “the darker brother[s]”, the African-American citizens. This “I” contrasts with the “they” of the following line (“They send me to eat in the kitchen”), emphasizing the distance between African-Americans and white Americans, alluding to a nation where black segregation and oppression is, at the time of the poem, still a problem, even after the abolition of slavery.

    The “But” in the fifth line marks the change of tone of the poem, where the speaker turns what initially may have sounded like a lamentation into the opposite – a proclamation of worth. This “turn” is further enhanced by the change from present to future tense from the second to the third stanza: “Tomorrow, / I’ll be at the table / When company comes.” Here to “be at the table” functions as a metaphor for freedom, one of the poem’s main themes, as freedom would mean being able to sit at the same table, as equals, with any other white person. Thus the speaker gradually moves towards his goal, that is, to reclaim the freedom and equality that America had promised all its citizens.

    The poem closes with the line “I, too, am America”, which differs from the first line only in the replacement of “sing” with “am”. So, in the end, the speaker declares that he is not only “singing”, talking about, America, but he actually “is” America, and this progression reflects the extended metaphor of the poem, “being America”, that is, being a part of America, emphasizing the worth of African-American citizens, who are just as much an important part of their country’s existence as any white American.

    -Carolina Silva, nº 153616

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