Langston Hughes - Poetry - The Negro Speaks of Rivers - The Weary Blues - Harlem

                I enjoyed reading all the poems by Langston Hughes.  I am going to discuss three of the poems that I liked best.  The first poem that I enjoyed was “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.”  This poem is the most reflective about culture and strength.  This poem was written when Hughes was only 17 years old.  The poem is a loud suggestion of great principles as ancient as it appears timeless, preceding human existence, longer than human memory.  The rivers are part of God’s body that participates in his immortality.  There are earthly correspondents of eternity such as deep, endless, and mysterious.  All of which are named in the order of their association with black history.  The black man has drunk of their life-giving substances and therefore he has borrowed their immortality.  He and the rivers have become one.  The mysterious change of the Mississippi River from mud to gold by the sun’s brightness is reflected in the change of slaves into free men by Lincoln’s Proclamation.   As the rivers deepen with time, so does the black man’s soul.  As the waters in the river constantly flow, so will the black soul endure.  The black man in the poem has seen the rise and fall of civilizations from the earliest times.  He has seen the beauty and death-changes of the world over the thousands of years and he will survive even this America.  This poem is a magnificent reminder of the strength and fullness of history in a time and place where black life is held cheap and the days of black men appear to be numbered.  The next poem that I enjoyed was “The Weary Blues.”  It seems as though all the singer has in this poem is his moaning blues, the disclosure of “a black man’s soul,” and those blues are what helps to keep him alive.  The blues obviously helps him keep his identity.  Even though he sings of the blues, he is singing about his life and about the way that he and other blacks have to deal with the white society.  The accepted Western sound of the piano and the form of Western music are changed as his black hands touch the white keys of the piano.  The piano comes to life as an addition of the singer, and moans, changed by the black tradition to a mirror of black sorrow that also reflects the changing of power and beauty of the black tradition.  This is the tradition that helps keeps the singer alive and gives him his identity.  When he is done singing the blues, he goes to bed and sleeps like a deceased object.  The blues are echoing beyond his playing, beyond his daily cycles, and through both his conscious and unconscious states.  The last poem that I liked was “Harlem.”  This poem is asking questions throughout of what happens to people and society when millions of individuals’ dreams get deferred, or put off indefinitely.  This poem explores the risks and consequences of African Americans losing sight of dreams and hope.  The language in this poem is very truthful and down-to earth.  The narrator is asking if a dream becomes a dried-up fruit, a running sore, rotten meat, or a sweet that crusts and sugars over.  He also asks if a dream sags or explodes.  All of these questions enable the reader to see and smell the frustration of American blacks.  The theme of this poem is frustration.  Frustration characterized the mood of American blacks.  Even though, the Civil War in the previous century had freed them from slavery and federal laws had granted them the right to vote, the right to own property, and so on.  There were continuing prejudice against blacks as well as laws had been passed since the Civil War that relegated them to second-class citizenship.  Therefore, blacks had to attend poorly furnished segregated schools and settle for tedious jobs such as janitors, ditch-diggers, servants, shoeshine boys, and so on.  In several states, the blacks couldn’t use the same public facilities as whites, including restrooms, restaurants, theaters, and parks.  Access to other facilities such as taking the buses, the blacks was required to take a back seat, literally, to the white people.  By the mid-Twentieth Century, their frustration with substandard status became a powder keg, and the fuse was burning.  Hughes understood completely what the future held, as he indicated in the last line of the poem – “Or does it explode?”

Cummings, Michael J. "Harlem: Analysis of the Langston Hughes Poem." Free Study Guides for Shakespeare and Other Authors. 2007. Web. 23 Mar. 2011.

Cummings, Michael J. "The Negro Speaks of Rivers: a Study Guide." Free Study Guides for Shakespeare and Other Authors. 2010. Web. 23 Mar. 2011.

"On "The Weary Blues"" Welcome to English « Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois. Web. 23 Mar. 2011.

Langston Hughes - Introduction and Biography

                James Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri.  He was a member of an abolitionist family.  He was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston, who was the first Black American to be elected to public office in 1855.  He lived with his grandmother all of his life. Hughes felt hurt by both his mother and his father, and was unable to understand why he was not allowed to live with either of them. These feelings of rejection caused him to grow up very insecure and unsure of himself.  Hughes attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio.  In the 8^th grade he began writing poetry and he was elected as Class Poet.  Hughes’ father didn’t think he would be able to make a living at writing so he encouraged him to pursue a more practical career.  His father paid for his tuition at Columbia University on the grounds that he would study engineering.  Hughes dropped out of the program after a short period of time with a B+ average.  The entire time that he was at the University he continued to write poetry.  The first poem that he published was “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” which appeared in Brownie’s Book.  His poems, short plays, essays and short stories later appeared in the NAACP publication Crisis Magazine and in Opportunity Magazine.  One of his favorite pastimes was sitting in the clubs listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry.  In 1924 he returned to Harlem, the period known as the Harlem Renaissance.  His work was repeatedly published and his writing prospered during this period.  Later, Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. degree in 1929.  He was a productive writer.  He devoted his life to writing and lecturing.  Langston wrote sixteen books of poems, two novels, three collections of short stories, four volumes of “editorial” and “documentary” fiction, twenty plays, children’s poetry, musicals and operas, three autobiographies, a dozen radio and television scripts and dozens of magazine articles.  He also edited seven anthologies.  Money was an issue throughout his life.  He did manage to support himself as a writer which was by no means a small task.  He was never financially secure.  Langston Hughes died on May 22, 1967 from cancer after having abdominal surgery.  His residence at 20 East 127^th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status by the New York Preservation Commission.  The entire block of 127^th Street was renamed “Langston Hughes Place.”                              

              

"Langston Hughes Biography: African-American History: Crossing Boundaries: Kansas Humanities Council." Kansas Heritage Group | Established 1993 | Kansas (KS) History, Old West KS, Cities, Museums, Art, Racing, Cowboy Cooking, Laughead Web. 22 Mar. 2011.

William Faulkner - Barn Burning

          The short story “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner is a simple look at the struggle of a boy trying to do what is right, or do what is best for his family during the post-Civil War era.  Sartoris Snopes, the main character, is a poor son of a traveling renter farmer.  At the beginning of the story he is questioned about the burning of a farmers barn by his father, Abner Snopes.  The young boy is torn between saying what is right, telling the truth, or lying to protect his father.  The boy was never forced to tell the judge about his father burning the barn, but is certain that he would have told if he was asked.  Abner Snopes, the father, is a soldier from the Civil War.  He was a skill for burning down the barns of those who crossed his path.  Faulkner uses the symbol of blood to explain the theme of loyalty to the family.  The theme of blood is illustrated when the young boy is to testify and is being pressured by his father to lie.   When the boy is put on the stand in the improvised courtroom he is pressured because he knows that his father will do something foolish if he tells the truth.  The young boy was also told that some things are more important than the truth and family is the most important thing.  Abner states “You would have told them” to his young son.  I believe that this statement shows how the boy feels toward his blood father and how even though it would have been a lie he should have testified in his father’s favor.  This also shows how the father feels about family.  The blood in a plain sense appears as well, highlighting the passion of the ties among family.  An example of this is when the Snopes’ left the temporary courthouse at the beginning of the story and a local boy accuses Snopes of being a barn burner and then Sartoris spins around to confront him, then the boy hits Sartoris and bloodies his face.  The blood that is dried and caked on his face during the ride out of town is a mark of pride:  Sartoris defended his family name.  Abner once again plans to burn a barn.  Sartoris understands that family loyalty comes with a great cost and a heavy burden.  Sartoris rejects family royalty and betrays his father by warning de Spain that his barn is about to be burned.  The family is finally free when Snopes is killed at the end of the story.  Snopes is presumably shot to death by de Spain.  The whole family was loyal but they still ended up alone.                                        

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Barn Burning.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 22 Mar. 2011.

William Faulkner - Introduction and Biography

          William Faulkner came from an old southern family.  He was born on September 25, 1897, in New Albany, Mississippi but he grew up in Oxford, Mississippi.  He was the oldest of four sons of Murray Charles Faulkner and Maud (Butler) Faulkner.  At the age of 13, he began to write poetry.  He played quarterback on a football team and suffered a broken nose at Oxford High School.  Before graduating High School, he dropped out of school and worked temporarily in his grandfather’s bank.  Faulkner joined the Canadian, and later the British, Royal Air Force during World War I.  He studied at the University of Mississippi but he never graduated from there.  He worked briefly for a New York bookstore and a New Orleans newspaper.  He worked on the majority of his novels and short stories on a farm in Oxford.  He did take some trips to Europe and Asia and he had a few brief stays in Hollywood as a screenwriter.  Faulkner created a host of characters typical of the historical growth and later corruption of the South in an attempt to create a legend of his own.  In 1949, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.  His style is not very easy.  He has connections to European modernism.  Faulkner’s sentences are long and hypnotic and sometimes he withholds important details.  He also refers to people or events that the reader will not learn about until much later.  Faulkner failed as a poet during the 1920s because many companies rejected his work.  He has written many novels which have been successful.  His works created some of the most enduring and detailed portraits of life on the American South.  Most of his novels explore family dynamics, race, gender, and social class.  His novels has fascinated and challenged readers for over sixty years with his iconic characters, difficult plotlines, and many shifts in time.  He is known for an experimental style with detailed attention to language and accent.  Faulkner used “stream of consciousness” in his writing.  He often wrote highly emotional, delicate, clever, complicated, and sometimes Gothic or bizarre stories.  He used a wide variety of characters in his stories including slaves or descendants of slaves, poor white, agrarian, or working-class Southerners, and Southern aristocrats.  He died on July 6, 1962.                  

"William Faulkner - Biography". Nobelprize.org. 22 Mar 2011 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-bio.html

Ernest Hemingway - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber

                The short story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” by Ernest Hemingway was a great story to read.  The narration of this story is told in third person with an all-seeing narrator.  Hemingway tells the story from the views of Macomber, Wilson, Margot and the lion in which Macomber flees.  The plot of this short story is powered by personal relationships.  The use of personal relationships is a technique that is effective at exposing each character’s motivations and the reasons for their behavior.  This story is told mainly through the points of view of Macomber and Wilson.  This is a regular trend with Hemingway’s downgrading of Margot.  This story is about one man’s “coming of age” with the help of the African flatlands, a rifle, and a friendship with another man. The story is also about how Macomber’s freedom was possibly foreseen by a self-centered wife.  Hemingway was a great supporter in the power of nature to improve one’s quality of life.  He spent most of his life as an outdoorsman. He went hunting, fishing, camping, and boating in many diverse places such as Europe, the Caribbean, the United States, and Africa.  This short story was wrote by Hemingway following a 10-week safari trip in East Africa.  There are many different themes that Hemingway uses such as manhood, fear, and the “coming of age.”  All of these themes are exposed through nature and by overcoming the challenges of the wonderful outdoors.  Francis Macomber is described as a handsome man.  He is good at court games, setting fishing records and his safari clothes were practically new.  He has never had any real exposure to a raw, pure natural environment even though he was considered very athletic.  He is described as timid, submissive to his wife, cowardly and frustrated.  He becomes inspired, supported, and overjoyed once he conquers his fears and guns down three buffalo.  He has finally become a man by defeating nature.  His wife, Margot Macomber, is selfish, spiteful, disgraceful, double-crossing, cunning, and possibly murderous.  Hemingway considers Margot as a necessary criminal in this story, as an awkward but vital component of the survival of his male characters.  The main question at the end of the story is whether Margot murdered Macomber or if she was only trying to kill the buffalo.  I was astounded with the ending but in my opinion I think that Margot was shooting at the buffalo because she seen that her husband was in danger.                                                         

Evans, Sara. Wang, Bella ed. *Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"*. GradeSaver, 10 December 2010 Web. 19 March 2011.

Ernest Hemingway - Introduction and Biography

        Ernest Hemingway was one of the most famous American novelist, short-story writers and essayist of his time.  His simple style of writing influenced a wide range of writers.  In 1954, Hemmingway was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature.  Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899.  His mother was Grace Hall and she had an operatic career.  She dressed Hemmingway as a little girl in his youth and he never forgave her for that.  Dr. Clarence Edmonds Hemmingway was his father and he taught his son to love the out-door life.  In 1928 Hemmingway’s father took his own life after losing his health to diabetes and his money in the Florida real-estate bubble.  Hemingway attended the public schools in Oak Park.  Some of his earliest stories and poems were published in his high school newspaper.  After he graduated from high school in 1917, he worked six months as a reporter for the Kansas City Star.  During World War I, he joined a volunteer ambulance unit in Italy.  He suffered a severe leg wound in 1918.  The Italian government acknowledged him twice for his service in their country.  During his hospital recuperation, he had an affair with an American nurse named Agnes von Kurowsky.  This affair was the basis for the novel A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1929).  This novel was a tragic love story and it was first filmed in 1932.  He worked as a journalist in Chicago after the war.  In 1921 he moved to Paris, where he wrote articles for the Toronto Star.  Hemingway’s language is very straightforward.  He uses irony and omission which make the text meaningful and rich in allusions.  When Hemingway was a reporter he had already started drinking and he could tolerate large amounts of alcohol.  For a long time, his drinking didn’t disturb the quality of his writing.  Late in the 1940s he started to hear voices in his head, he was overweight, he had high blood pressure and he had all the signs of cirrhosis of the liver.  He taught his 12-year- old son Patrick to drink along with all his other brothers.  Hemingway was hospitalized in 1960 at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for the treatment of depression.  He was released in 1961.  He was given electric shock therapy for two months.  Hemingway committed suicide with his favorite shotgun at his home in Ketchum, Idaho on July 2, 1961.   

                                                    

"Ernest Hemingway." Www.kirjasto.sci.fi. Web. 19 Mar. 2011. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/hemingwa.htm.

Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God

          I really enjoyed reading the novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’ by Zora Neale Hurston.  Once I started reading this novel, I had a hard time putting it down.  This was a novel that kept me interested but at first I didn’t think that I was going to like it.  One theme that I noticed in this novel was love and relationships versus independence.  In this novel Janie reaches a strong sense of self and comes to value her independence.  Janie’s journey toward enlightenment is not started alone. The gender differences that Hurston promotes require that men and women provide each other with things that they need but do not have.  Janie considers fulfilling relationships as equal and based on mutual respect.  Janie demonstrates this by her relationship with Tea Cake which uplifts her into equality noticeably absent from her marriages to Logan and Jody.  Relationships are indicated to be necessary to a satisfying life, but Janie’s search for spiritual fulfillment is basically a self-centered one.  Even though Janie is alone at the end of the novel, she seems to be very content.  Janie frees herself from her horrible and difficult relationships with Logan and Jody.  Logan and Jody delay her personal journey.  Janie experiences true happiness and insight with Tea Cake and she becomes secure in her independence.  Janie feels a deep connection to the world around her and at the end of the novel she even feels the spirit of Tea Cake with her.  She may be alone in the world physically but she doesn’t feel alone.  Throughout this novel, Hurston makes reference to Janie’s hair.  I believe that her hair is a symbol of her power and unusual identity.  Her hair represents her strength and individuality in many different ways.  First of all, her hair represents her independence and disobedience of unimportant community standards.  At the beginning of the novel the town criticizes her hair and says that it is inappropriate for a woman of Janie’s age to wear her hair down.  Janie refuses to bow down to their norms which clearly reflect her strong, rebellious spirit.  Her braid is continuously described in phallic terms.  It is a symbol of male power and strength which distorts gender lines and thus threatens Jody.  Her hair was very straight and it symbolized whiteness.  Mrs. Turner loves Janie because of her straight hair and other Caucasian characteristics.  Her hair contributes to the normally white male power that she carries which helps her disturb traditional power relationships (male over female, white over black) throughout the novel.  I enjoyed reading this novel because it really was a wonderful love story.  The language was a little hard to understand but once I got the hang of it I was able to understand it.        

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Their Eyes Were Watching God.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 12 March 2011.