Commentary on the poem "Will V-day be Me day too?"

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The poem “Will V-Day Be Me-Day Too?” is written by Langston Hughes. It describes the poet’s sight of racial combat due to inequality and injustice among colored individuals in America. The poet uses a lot of worldly imagery in order to magnify the plight of America due to inequality, segregation and injustice of colored individuals. He focuses his attention on his colored comrades and himself revolting and rebelling against the discrimination and inequalities which they are forced to endure in their own Nation. Through several literary techniques such as similes, metaphors, personification as well as intensive visual imagery, Langston Hughes enables the reader to adopt the same feeling of injustice and revolt which was once felt by the poet himself.

The poem is written in stanzaic form of nine stanzas each consisting of eight lines. In each stanza, the first four lines contain a rhyming scheme of ABAD and in the end of almost every stanza, it ends with a rhetorical question. This stanzaic form serves to reinforce the poem's flow, with the ending of a rhetorical question, serving to ensure that the poem progresses smoothly. Indeed, the structure of the poem may even serve to reflect the poet’s feelings and insights as he breaks down what he has to say stanza by stanza. The poem is also told through the eyes of the poet himself.

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In this poem, the poet keeps referring to how he has been treated unfairly and has been constantly judged based on the color of his skin. This is emphasized in the seventh and eighth lines of the fifth stanza---“ Will I still be ill-fated? Just because I'm black?”. From this rhetorical question the reader is able to better understand how unjustly the poet is treated simply based on the color of his skin. Due to these inequalities he comes across, the poet begins to get persuasive in his writing as he begins to speak out to the reader regarding himself ...

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