Ted Hughes

Considered as one of the most preeminent writers of the twentieth century African American, Zora Neale Hurston is a novelist, folklorist, essayist, short story writer, dramatist and an anthropologist. Hurston was an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance and a passionate promoter of the African American culture. However, she refused to let race and racism be the only focus of her work, something that she was criticized a lot for by her African American peers. Instead Hurston’s short stories…

Renaissance writers, one of the most important of which is James Mercer Langston Hughes. Hughes was American poet, columnist, novelist, playwright, and a social activist. Even more, he was the part of the innovators of the new literary art form of jazz poetry. Majority of his poems touched on the struggles of African Americans in white society. Also, the problems he endured throughout his life. When Jazz became popular, Hughes incorporated…

The majority of the population assumes that the Harlem Renaissance was a period in which racial prejudice and segregation was tolerated. As some discriminatory activity did occur, several African Americans did not endure the same physical abuse from the caucasian race as before. This era originated the period in which African-American achievements in art, music, and literature flourished. As the diversity in the United States continued to expand, more and more African Americans were living…

In the short story “Salvation” Langston Hughes describes his traumatizing experience at a religious revival as a twelve-year-old boy. The revival was a popular event that occurred in town for ongoing days and one his Aunt Reed had attended every night. On the final day of the event, the children of worshippers were invited to the congregation to receive salvation from Christ. Before the event, Aunt Reed had explained to young Langston that once he became saved he would see a light, meaning Jesus…

expertise. Langston Hughes, however, implemented the use of many devices in his piece, “Salvation” that made the memory as vivid and intense as the day it happened. Hughes implemented personification throughout his piece to amplify the impassioned, but overwhelming, tone of the church during the revival. Though personification may seem unnecessary to some readers, the use of personification in Hughes’ piece allowed for the reader to understand the magnitude of pressure Hughes felt in the…

Langston Hughes’ poem “I, Too” from 1925 reflects on the humiliation African Americans were tired of experiencing during the Harlem Renaissance; however, Hughes also ignites hope by looking forward towards a better future, free of this oppression. Hughes begins with a blunt proclamation of inclusion for patriotism, “I, too, sing America” (1090). He, as well as the rest of blacks, is an American who can sing along to a patriotic tune, regardless of the national prejudice. However, within the next…

Salvation Twentieth century poet/writer Langston Hughes shares the account of a boy who deceives others in church about his having been saved by Jesus. All children are meant to rise upon their seeing of The Lord, but the boy who does not truly witness the event, rises as a way to escape the pressure. This account, entitled “Salvation,” comes from Hughes’s autobiography The Big Sea, signifying the boy to be a young Langston Hughes. The story denies condemnation of Langston for his deceit by…

Hughes tries to explain the obstacle faced by a black writer (artist) as a mountain in his article “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” which stands sturdy in the way of most black persons literary work expression; that mountain is mainly based on color. Since arrival of black people to the new world from West Africa as slaves, blackness is associated to all bad things on earth. The subjugation of blacks at the hands of white masters generated fear, anxiety, depression, and self-hate.…

In the short story “Dreams” by Langston Hughes, Langston shows that if you are striving for a goal, you must hold on to it, persevere and protect it. If you give up life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly and a barren field frozen with snow. First off in the beginning of the poem it is saying that you must protect and continue to strive for your dream, if not it will eventually die. This is because in the poem it says “Hold onto dreams for if dreams die”. So what the author is trying…

In my opinion, the whole book was based on deferred dreams. In the beginning, Langston Hughes read a poem about what happens to deferred dreams. He asked an essential question, do deferred dreams dry up like a raisin in the sun? Challenging the reader to think what really happens to dreams put off to the side. In the novel, Walter Lee was a huge dreamer. He had so much ambition but felt he had very little motivation around him. Walter felt no one in his family would support his dream, and that…