A Literary Analysis Of Cross By Langston Hughes

Literary Analysis Paper of “Cross” As a writer and civil rights activist, many of Langston Hughes poems speak to the real lives of backs in the South during the time of slavery and racial prejudice. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of cultural, social, and artistic explosion taking place during the end of World War 1 and lasting through the mid 1930s. This is where many artists like Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps and Clauda McKay bloomed in “a literary movement that involved racial pride, demanding civil and political rights.” (Wormser). In Langston Hughes “Cross,” religious allusions and symbols, along with the rhyme scheme used help us to understand the life of a mixed child in the prejudiced South. Much of the literature written during
Other than the name of the poem, which is “Cross”, the poem is three stanzas representing the places where Jesus was nailed to the tree, once on each hand and once through both feet. The poem also contains four lines in each stanza representing the top, bottom and both sides of a cross, forming the picture of a cross in the minds of the readers. Christ was a sinless man who died to save a sinful world much like this boy has to bear the sin and shame that this white man committed by sleeping with a black woman and having an interracial child. It states in the Bible, “He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; and with his stripes we are healed.” (Isai 53.5). This means that all the pain and suffering Christ endured was all for the day when we make mistakes and mess up we can ask God for forgiveness and through the blood Jesus shed we are forgiven. This boy bears the cross of being mixed growing up in the prejudice South, while not knowing where he belongs. All the pain, suffering, and wickedness he will have to withstand is not because of something he did, but that of the white man, his cross to
In “Cross” we see the injustice and mistreatment of people considered different from what was thought to be pure, clean and superior through the diction Hughes uses to describe the homes in which blacks lived in at this time compared to that of the whites. Another possible reason for the Hughes choosing the name of the poem to be “Cross” is the fact that being both black and white the child is a cross between black and