“A Theme for English B” Analysis
In the 1951 poem, “A Theme for English B,” Langston Hughes addresses the ideas of race and the American identity. Hughes describes a young, twenty-two-year-old colored college student. The student’s instructor tells him to “go home and write a page tonight.” However, the instructor tells the student to “let that page come out of you” because only then “it will be true.” The young man then wonders whether this assignment will be as easy as the instructor makes it seem. He points out that he is the only colored student in his class and, therefore, faces many challenges in his everyday life. He goes on to describe the exhausting road he must take to get back home to Harlem from his college campus. He explains that
In the 1951 poem, “A Theme for English B,” Langston Hughes addresses the ideas of race and the American identity. Hughes describes a young, twenty-two-year-old colored college student. The student’s instructor tells him to “go home and write a page tonight.” However, the instructor tells the student to “let that page come out of you” because only then “it will be true.” The young man then wonders whether this assignment will be as easy as the instructor makes it seem. He points out that he is the only colored student in his class and, therefore, faces many challenges in his everyday life. He goes on to describe the exhausting road he must take to get back home to Harlem from his college campus. He explains that