Langston Hughes I Too Tone

The Hopeful and Determined “I, Too” by Langston Hughes The poem “I, Too” by Langston Hughes was published sometime in 1945; it was published a 10 years before the Civil Rights Movement started. It was written during a time where racism was unrestrained and extensive towards African Americans. Some topics that will be covered are the vengeful yet confident and hopeful tone of the poem, the symbolisms that can be found in the poem, and why this poem is looked at as the response to Walt Whitman’s “I hear America Singing.” The closing will be based around the meaning of “I, Too, sing America. Langston Hughes expresses hope that one day he will see equality between blacks and whites. “I, Too” is a symbol of patriotism for African Americans of that time. “I, too” starts out with a vengeful tone. This can be seen in the beginning when the character in the poem is explaining how he is sent to the kitchen to eat then states “But I laugh eat wellAnd grow strong.” (Lines 4-6) He says this too say they treat me like this but I will show them as he continues to grow not meaning physically but more so a type of mental or maturity growth. The tones then changes to a confident yet strong tone, as he is making a daring statement. “Tomorrow I’ll be at the …show more content…
The persona of the poem gets his point across with minimal words yet they are powerful ones. “I, Too, sing America” is his most powerful, yet, he proves that he is no less or more than any other human being (Line 14). W.E.B Dubois once said "He did that because he was an American, not because he was a Negro; he was born here, he was trained here; he is not a Negro-what is a Negro anyhow? He is just human; it is the kind of thing you ought to expect"(104). The bottom line of this piece of artwork is the vision in which many people of that time had equality and justice for