What makes a country? Is it its people born in the country, its citizens? Is it the lines on the map, its borders? Or is it an idea the country claims to stand on? For Langston Hughes, the American Poet, Writer and social activist, one of the leader of the Harlem Renaissance, the answer is simple, yet elegant: His homeland the United States of America is everything above! It is his home just as it is his family and it is himself. It is the ideas that he put his faith in and the song he sings. In his 1921’s poem I, Too , Hughes offer us a look into his current life, his observation into the relationship between America and her children of African descent, as well as his hope in the American dream of a better tomorrow.
When Hughes started his poem by one simple sentence: “I, too, sing America.” It is instantaneous for any reader to immediately know that he is an American, yet he does not feel included. The reason behind this instant understanding is the verb he use: “Singing”. My first impression of such word choice was that Hughes was …show more content…
Such spirit optimism is also characteristic of the American ethos, of the American dream, which is the idea that every American should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and “through hard work, determination, and initiative”. And while it is true that there were oppression in the United States during the time period toward non-white American, Hughes’ reaction to such persecution isn’t that of hopelessness, but of hope, not of sadness, but of dream to a better future. When faced with oppression, he laughed, and he grows. Hughes expressed a strong belief in a day of him and African American will one day be treated as equal in the United States. For Hughes, America was the land founded on that same idea, that all people are created equal and deserve equal rights, he believed in it, for he claims he is
When Hughes started his poem by one simple sentence: “I, too, sing America.” It is instantaneous for any reader to immediately know that he is an American, yet he does not feel included. The reason behind this instant understanding is the verb he use: “Singing”. My first impression of such word choice was that Hughes was …show more content…
Such spirit optimism is also characteristic of the American ethos, of the American dream, which is the idea that every American should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and “through hard work, determination, and initiative”. And while it is true that there were oppression in the United States during the time period toward non-white American, Hughes’ reaction to such persecution isn’t that of hopelessness, but of hope, not of sadness, but of dream to a better future. When faced with oppression, he laughed, and he grows. Hughes expressed a strong belief in a day of him and African American will one day be treated as equal in the United States. For Hughes, America was the land founded on that same idea, that all people are created equal and deserve equal rights, he believed in it, for he claims he is