Similarities Between I Hear America Singing And Langston Hughes

Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, both wrote poems about America. Although both poems are about America, they are written from very different points of view. Walt Whitman’s I Hear America Singing is an optimistic view of America. The theme is the happiness of people in their everyday lives. It describes all types of people and their jobs, like carpenters, masons, and woodcutters. This poem is also patriotic, because it is celebrating American workers and their success. Langston Hughes poem, Let America be America, again was not optimistic. He writes the poem from a point of view as one being left out of the American dream. The theme is that America has let a lot of people down and it has not lived up to their dreams. Langston Hughes’ poem speaks of the difference in opportunity among people in America. The verse in I Hear America Singing, “those of mechanics, …show more content…
Another verse, “I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-- Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, the poorest worker bartered through the years,” shows a very different America than the one Walt Whitman wrote about. I think the purpose of each poem was to portray the experience of America for each of the poets. They had different views of the same country, due to them being different races and they were written at different times in history. Walt Whitman’s poem appeared in 1867 and Langston Hughes’s poem, was written in 1935. The different views could also be due to the fact that the view of America during 1867 was better than 1935. One poet feels the American dream has been fulfilled and the other feels that it falls