Review Of Langston Hughes 'Poem Let America Be America Again'

Dai’Ja Person
Professor Gannon
ENGL 1302.4
5 February 2014
Is America Really America?
Langston Hughes, a major African American writer, is committed to telling the truth about the lives of black people through his passionate poetry. For instance, in his poem “Let America be America Again”, Hughes, being less than sanguine, claims that in reality people who possesses power often deprive others of America’s – the land known of equality, liberty, and freedom opportunities. Not only have those in power deprived lower class American access to the opportunities promised by the America value system, they have replaced it with the relentless pursuit of money, sex, and power. Hughes successfully executed his claim to be true by contributing tone, connotation anaphora, abstract language and personification.
Hughes possessed a very angry and resentful tone throughout his poem “Let America be America Again” to help him express his own experience in America allowing him to build credibility.
He believe that his experience as an African America has “never been equal for him.” (Line 15) Hughes felt that he was never completely free in this “homeland of the free.” (Line 16) Hughes also gave a sense of a positive tone in his poem. Then directly after purposely use diction to betray the claim. Let it be “that great strong land of love,” Hughes said. Express the little sense of hope he had in America but, Hughes being the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, he used the thought of “Kings connive” and “tyrants’ scheme”(Line 8) to point out the reality of the people being taking for granted instead of been give equal
opportunities.

Langston Hughes also demonstrated his ideas and gave his examples by using abstract language. He used abstract language to give the words he used a bigger meaning and use them in ways that most people would not use. He gives things and objects a bigger meaning. Also he gives animals deeper meanings for example the word “leeches” he uses it to demonstrate how the political people and the whites are sucking everything the other cultures have and keeping it for themselves. Also he uses “faith” and “pain” as a way to show what they are feeling, that they have faith and they do not know what to do. He uses pain as a way to show how the whites treat them and the type of life the “Negros” live. “Negros” is also an abstract use of language, he uses Negro to show how they were called by the rest of the people, and he uses it as an insult to the African American culture. Abstract Language helps the poem allot because this makes the poem not only literal but deeper and makes the reader think and can be a different meaning to each reader, because the word could have many different meanings. Hughes had to use allot of personification to make the poem a little more interesting. He uses personification to show what he thinks of the land and the people. Hughes gives America life, he says “Let America be America again” like he is talking to the people and saying that they should leave him alone, and let him be. He also gives human characteristics to other things, for example to Liberty. He gives liberty a human characteristic when he says “O, let my land be a land where Liberty is crowned with no false patriotic wreath” in this part he is giving liberty the characteristic of a human that can be crowned and can be patriotic. Because liberty can’t be crowned or patriotic but he uses these words to give a bigger meaning to the things he says. personification to these in depth words gives the poem a special touch. This is only one of the many poetic devices Hughes uses in “Let America be America Again”.
Furthermore, Hughes continues to stir up a patriotic picture of America as well as to make the reader question this picture by uses connotation in this poem. Was American a "dream" for everyone? Lines such as "But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe" (Line 13-14) make the reader question the idea of opportunity for all because as Hughes states, "there has never been equality for me" (Line 15). Many of these lines use not only connotation but an appeal to emotion as well. "I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land," (Line 21). These images are very vivid. The idea of scars connotes all the violence and beatings of slavery, which makes the reader even more passionate. These lines pull at the heartstrings of any reader with a conscience as we are forced to remember some of the atrocities that are also America. And yet, Hughes ends the poem on an optimistic note.
Throughout the poem, Hughes uses rhetorical questions to cause the reader to pause and think. For example, "The free? Who said free?" (Line 53) makes the reader question that exactly the free in this country are. With rhetorical questions, the reader is supposed to pause and think. But just as quickly, Hughes provides answers, "Not me" (Line 53). He answers the question quickly for the reader.
The most powerful aspect of the poem "Let America Be America Again" is the repeated use of anaphora. By using this repetition and parallel structure, Hughes gives the reader many ideas right in a row to think about. In the beginning of the poem the repeated phrase "let it be" tells the reader right away that America is not what it was supposed to be. In between, in parenthesis for emphasis, is the repeated idea of "America never was America to me" (Line 5). And to answer the unspoken question of to whom America was unfair, Hughes uses the anaphora "I am the" and continues to list all of the people who were never able to reap the benefits of the American Dream. This he does in two different stanzas and in between these two stanzas is the repetition of "of grab the" in order to show that America has taken money and property from some in order to give it to others. Anaphora is used for emphasis, and Hughes uses it well to emphasize the idea of inequality.
The poem "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes is a powerful indictment of the idea of equal opportunity for all in America. He clearly shows the reader that there never was such an idea of equality for all through such rhetorical device as connotation, rhetorical questions, and anaphora. He emphasizes all the people who have not had access to the American Dream and gives each group of people a voice in this poem. However, Hughes ends this poem on a note that is truly American-the idea of hope. He hopes that America can be all the things it was supposed to be for all. He is not about to give up on the idea of the American Dream, and he wants America to be better.
In conclusion, Langston Hughes poem “Let America be America Again” successfully executes my claim that America will never be the America that it used to be but because of the people that live here don’t let it. He achieved this by using contributing tone, connotation anaphora, abstract language and personification and personal experiences. He used tone to help express his feeling bout America. He used connotation to express the patriotic picture of America. He used anaphora to express the important of this topic. He used abstract language to make readers think and to use more in depth ideas, his use of personification made the poem more interesting and difficult, and his history shows you that he really had a motivation to make this a good poem and a poem that would touch and change people’s thoughts. Imagine being them coming to America to have a better life, but it ends up you live worse than where you used to live. “Let America be America Again.”