Let America Be America Again: Poem Analysis

“Let America Be America Again” is a poem written by Langston Hughes in 1935. In the poem Hughes openly shares his thoughts on the American dream. The meaning of the poem is that the idea of the “American Dream” seems to be just that, a dream. Since the beginning, early Americans practiced slavery and oppression, they destroyed the land that belonged to the native people in order to build their own settlements. So this whole idea that America was founded by people with complete freedom in mind is nothing but a dream. But still, in the poem Hughes says “Let America be the dream that dreamers dreamed, let it be that great strong land of love, where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme, that any man be crushed by one above.” (Lines 6-10) This changes the tone and meaning of the poem, it changes it from complete disappointment, to disappointment with a sprinkle of hope. This shows that the tone of the poem is even though Hughes feels America has never been this “Dream” that people speak of, it can still change and become that dream. The tone of his writing shows disappointment because America is supposed to be this great place a freedom, yet it couldn’t be farther from it. But also it shows that he feels America can be that great place that it was supposed to be.
In the poem Hughes says “I am the people, humble, hungry, mean – hungry yet …show more content…
When there is such a huge gap between the people in poverty and the top earners in the country, you know something is wrong. It doesn’t necessarily matter how hard you work, you can be in poverty and work as hard as someone like Bill Gates and yet only earn a fraction of was he does. This means that the future of freedom in America is in the hands of the 1 percent and not in the hands of the average person. And that is something that is not good for the