Its disintegration mirrors the continuing failure of
American society to achieve harmonious integration
Of blacks and whites.
"Harlem explores the unfulfilled span of life where dreams appear as impossible as ideals". The poem is coated with a sense of hopelessness and utter despair as to "what happens to a dream deferred!"…to a dream that seems beyond the human reach…the dream that writhes away like a "raisin in the sun…or fester like sore". In his poem Hughes is reminiscent of the severe slavery in America which had shriveled the hopes and dreams of all Afro-Americans who had to "defer" or cast aside all their future plans in a racist America. The poem is meant to discuss the dreams and hopes of all Africans who came to America heavy-loaded with dreams and ideals of the land of the free, but who were shocked by the image of utter sterility and despair haunting them like heavy shadows wherever they go:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
The poem is ever filled with the feeling of marginalization and loss of identity of all the blacks who were left aside to suffer the loss of the dream that just "sags like a heavy load" in the fathomless abyss of the ocean. But even though the dream often appears unattainable, even though it "stinks like rotten meat" when one thinks it is over…there is always hope of the fulfilled dream in the darkest moments of despair. Hughes' message is that one should never ever yield or give up to moments of despair, but should try his best to
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is like a broken winged bird
That cannot fly
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow
Hughes emphasizes the need of all human beings to dream in order to escape the harsh reality. This poem poses a positive mood, a mood that would encourage all the blacks to move on believing that tomorrow is another day…when tomorrow
I'll be at the table
When company comes
Nobody'll dare
Say to me
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then
Besides
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed-
I, too, am America.
Langston Hughes, being an American tells all of us in his poetry that freedom must belong to all of us before it can be freedom of any one. In his poem "I, too, sing America", the darker brother is waiting for his opportunity to share the table of freedom with all Americans. He laughs, eats well and grows strong. For indeed, the black man's roots are deep in America, even deeper then those of most Americans, there fore Hughes celebrates America as well, but not an America that is but an America that is to come. Hughes' democratic vistas are still on the distant horizon yet to arrive.
Hughes was considered a conscientious artist who kept his middle-of-the-stance and worked hard to chronicle the black American experience contrasting the beauty of the soul with the oppressive circumstance. In addition to poetry and fiction, Hughes wrote many essays that portrayed the black experience in America and their quest for racial justice. His essay "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain" which decried the willingness of black artists to accept white standardization while decrying their heritage condemns the young black man who "want[s] to be a poet-not a negro poet meaning "I want to write like a white poet…meaning subconsciously…I would like to be white" And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself." Encarta
Hughes rhapsodizes "about the rich variety of black beauty visible to the naked eye. He propagated the slogan "Black is Beautiful" which celebrates blacks as equal human beings who "intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame". If white people are pleased, we are glad, if they are not, it does not matter. We know we are beautiful…the tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. We build our temples for tomorrow strong as we know how, and we stand on the top of the mountain free within ourselves. Encarta
Langston Hughes had earned himself a place among the greatest poets of America; he has given a voice to the African American experience. Like the sharp peal of a jazz trumpet, Hughes' poetry announced to the world that the streets of black America contained a rich culture which is vibrant and fiercely poetic. This announcement was to become his life's mission, something he foretold in this little piece written long before his name became a beloved household word:
But someday, somebody'll
Stand up and talk about me
And write about me
Black and beautiful
And sing about me
And put on plays about me!
I reckon it'll be
Me myself!
Yes, it'll be me
Hughes stressed the richness of African culture and echoed Du Bois who believes that "renewal" could only come from an understanding of African roots:
There is so much richness in the Negro humor, so much beauty in black dreams, so much dignity in our struggle, and so much universality in our problems, in us-in each living human being of color-that I do not understand the tendency today that some American Negro Artists have of seeking to run away from themselves, of running away from us, of being afraid to sing our own songs-when it is our music that has given America its greatest music…our rhythm that has guided its dancing feet.(Wong)
In a poem entitled "Afro American Fragment", Hughes felt such a deep desire to throw off everything and return to his own origin i.e. to the Africa of his dreams:
Through some vast mist of race
There comes this song
I do not understand
This song of atavistic land,
Of bitter yearnings lost
Without a place-
So long
So far away
Is Africa's
Dark face
Thus, he decided to sign onto a boat that was sailing to Africa. While on board ship, Hughes threw all his books onto the sea. Hughes recorded that his books symbolized
The feeling of always being controlled by others…by some
outer necessity not your own…I wanted to be a man on my
own, control my own life, and go my own way.
The first sight of the continent made Hughes recall time and time again his own motherland that seemed once "so long…so far away is Africa":
When I saw the dust green hills in the sunlight, something took
hold of me inside. My Africa, motherland of the Negro peoples!
And me a Negro…the real thing to be touched and seen not
merely read about in a book.
Though he was very glad to see Africa, yet he later wrote:
Africa was the only place in the world where I've ever been
called a white man. They looked at my copper-brown skin
and straight black hair…and they said "you-white man".(Radford)
Being neither black nor white, Hughes struggled to find his own cultural identity and to reconcile the differences between the black voice and the white experiences. This struggle for unity and reconciliation as well as the battle to find his own identity is illuminated in Hughes' poem "cross" which outlines the essential problems facing all colored races, especially blacks, in the 20th century white America:
My old man died in a fine big house
My ma died in a shack
I wonder where I'm gonna die
Being neither white nor black?
One way to reconcile this problem is to write poetry which is neither black nor white, poetry that "delivered a powerful impact to both black and white audiences. This duel voice is most evident in Hughes' famous poem "the weary Blues" which marks a new beginning to music and folk poetry.
Hughes embraced all of life; he suffered immensely from racism which was at its best in the early 20th century America, yet he rose above all racial hatred and felt love and compassion for all the races. His acceptance of all the races is especially evident in his "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" when he united all cosmic voices of all people and all races. In the poem, Hughes traces and celebrates black America, black strength and heritage which is
As ancient as the world and older than the
Flow of human blood in human veins
……….
I've known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers
My soul has grown deep like the rivers
The poem goes back to the Euphrates i.e. to "a pre-racial dawn and geography far from Africa that is identified with neither blackness nor whiteness-a time considered the cradle of all the world's civilizations and possibly the location of the Garden of Eden"(Hutchinson). The poem traces the movement of black life from the Euphrates and Niles in Africa to the Mississippi River that symbolizes the human blood of all races. The magical transformation of the Mississippi from mud to gold by the sun's radiance is mirrored in the transformation of slaves into free men by [Abe Lincoln's] Proclamation."(Jemie):
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
Went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy
Bosom turn all golden in the sunset
The cosmic speaker portrays selfhood and recognizes his roots, his identity as a child of not only one set of biological parents but as a child of the cosmos(or of God), and he is linked with all humanity, all races, and all creeds for all time through the depth of his own soul.
