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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes is renowned for his insightful poetry and his realistic depictions of life for African-Americans in the 1920s through the 1960s. A response to poetry requires that the reader...
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Langston Hughes
The thesis of Langston Hughes's short essay "Salvation" is that people often pretend to believe something merely because of social pressures and, in this way, act hypocritically. The support for...
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Langston Hughes
In Langston Hughes' short story "Thank You M'am," a teen boy named Roger attempts to steal the purse of a large lady named Mrs. Jones. Roger claims that he is stealing the purse because he would...
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Langston Hughes
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Langston Hughes
I just answered a question concerning "Salvation" that might be helpful to this question. With regards to how time passes, the essay begins a few weeks before an important revival meeting at...
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Langston Hughes
In "Salvation," Hughes tells us about the revival meeting through the voice of his 13-year-old, or almost 13-year-old, self. Throughout the essay he stays tightly within this 13-year-old...
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Langston Hughes
Point of view refers to the perspective from which the narrator tells the story or a speaker presents his thoughts in a poem. In this poem, Langston Hughes has adopted a first-person perspective....
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Langston Hughes
The first and most obvious device that the author use is repetition. This is obvious when the speaker, Simple, consistently uses the word 'black' as a reference to the point he wishes to make, as...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes's "The Ballad of the Landlord" is told from the point of view of a black tenant living in a run-down apartment. The tenant asks the landlord to fix his roof because it's "sprung a...
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Langston Hughes
"Mother" compares life to stairs, and contrasts her life (or stairs) against that of a "crystal stair," which, in this poem, becomes a symbol of luxury and ease. The smooth delicacy of crystal is...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes's poem "Life is Fine" focuses on the struggles of a man who is dealing with heartbreak. In this poem, the man contemplates suicide by both jumping into a river and then jumping from...
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Langston Hughes
"Ballad of the Landlord" is a super fun poem to read. It's not a happy poem, but there are humorous moments in it. The reason that I think it is a fun poem to read is because it is written in...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes's poem "The Ballad of the Landlord" is a poem told in song form about a tenant (or tenants) complaining about the unfair housing practices suffered at the hands of the tenant's...
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Langston Hughes
The theme of appearances and reality is one of the strongest themes in "Berry." There is a phoniness to Dr. Renfield's home that "troubles" Berry. He sees it in "Mrs. Osborn's grand manner to...
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Langston Hughes
I'll list and discuss some quotes below that might be taken as indirect evidence for Berry's potential for curiosity, but to my mind, he's more of an observant person rather than someone who...
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Langston Hughes
Milberry had learned to solve problems through hard work. He had made a decision that he was not going to be bothered by other people's prejudices because he had suffered too much and was not...
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Langston Hughes
This is such an interesting question! I do not want to hedge in my answer, but there are ways in which it does matter and ways it does not matter. I will certainly explain that as I go along. The...
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Langston Hughes
No, the teacher in Hughes's "Theme for English B" does not appear to be racist. Rather, the professor at Columbia ("this college on the hill above Harlem") where the speaker is the "only colored...
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Langston Hughes
In this humorous poem by poet Langston Hughes, a woman named Alberta, who works as a household servant, speaks in the first person about the duties she is required to perform for her employer, whom...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes, born in 1902, is remembered for his short stories and poetry which were great influences in the Harlem Renaissance. His work was steeped in the politics of race relations, as he...
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Langston Hughes
In the poem "Harlem," Langston Hughes creates a central metaphor surrounding a dream by comparing a dream to multiple images of death and destruction in order to ask what happens to a "dream...
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Langston Hughes
Since the speaker of Langston Hughes's poem "Dreams" is not identified, one might interpret that the speaker of the poem is Hughes himself. In the poem, Hughes urges his readers to hold on to their...
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Langston Hughes
The mood is solemn and proud. Consider the first line, which is repeated in the second: "I've known rivers." The speaker's use of the present perfect tense evokes knowledge that was acquired in the...
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Langston Hughes
A claim is what you would use to support a larger argument, or thesis. When it comes to poetry, there are many ways in which you can create an argument and support it with claims. The most...
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Langston Hughes
The description of Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones’ purse is symbolically interesting in Langston Hughes’ short story, “Thank You M’am.” Both the purse and the woman are described as...
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Langston Hughes
The story is a memoir by the author about a particular incident in his life when he was just about to turn thirteen, which made a huge impression on him. The narrator had attended a revival service...
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Langston Hughes
As the story opens, an employment office in Jersey City has sent a worker, Milberry Jones, to a large home near the beach that houses disabled children for the summer. It's run in part by Mrs....
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To Kill a Mockingbird
Langston Hughes, an African-American poet, wrote "Justice" about the unjust way in which African-Americans were treated. The poem reads, "That Justice is a blind goddess / Is a thing to which we...
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Langston Hughes
The short story "Berry" is an example of satire, which is used to expose or criticize human vices, habits or behavior through ridicule, humor, irony or exaggeration. The story revolves around a...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes's poem "Mother to Son" lacks a distinct setting, but it's clear that the what the speaker is doing during the poem is talking to her son. There is a sense that this is happening at...
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Langston Hughes
A metaphor is a comparison between two things that focuses on their similarities. A metaphor does not use the words "like" or "as" in the way a simile, which also compares two things, does. A...
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Langston Hughes
In the poem "Harlem," Langston Hughes uses five similes and one metaphor to describe what can happen to a dream when it is deferred. To "defer" means to put off or delay, and so all of the...
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Sojourner Truth
Both Sojourner Truth's "Ain't I A Woman?" and Langston Hughes's "Let America Be America Again" discuss the oppression of specific marginalized groups and beg for freedom. One difference between the...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was the poetic voice of not just a generation, but of an entire race. Born in the mid-west in the early 1900’s, his work became synonymous with the struggle for equality during...
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Langston Hughes
In Langston Hughes’ short story “Thank You M’am,” Roger shows that he can be trusted after making the mistake of attempting to snatch Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones’ purse. Roger, the...
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Langston Hughes
Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones takes Roger back to her simple, modest apartment for a couple of reasons. First, she wants the opportunity to talk to him and teach him a lesson about stealing....
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Langston Hughes
Literary devices are the tools an author uses--such as foreshadowing, imagery, hyperbole, characterization, and metaphor, to name a few--that provide the reader with details and bring the text to...
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Langston Hughes
The most famous writer of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes became the "poet laureate of Harlem." He once commented on his poetry as verse that deals with people up today and down...
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Langston Hughes
Although slavery had been abolished by the 13th amendment in 1864, the United States remained a deeply racist and segregated nation in the 1920's and 1930's. Most blacks in the south were little...
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Langston Hughes
The theme Langston Hughes's poem "Dream Deferred" shares in common with Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech is the idea that, although racism shrivels and cripples humanity, it also,...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes’ emotional poem about a lynching and the loss of a black girl’s lover uses several examples of metaphors and imagery to get across a message. First, the title is ambiguous in...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes uses two symbols in the poem, “As I Grew Older”, with his imagery of a sun that represents his dreams and a wall that keeps him from obtaining them. The sun in the poem...
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Langston Hughes
Firstly, one should ask what Hughes perspective was before his so-called salvation and how this had changed. We learn that before the revival service he was, as he calls it, 'a sinner' and that his...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes is the greatest poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His poems, especially "Dreams" and "Harlem," are often anthologized in high school literature textbooks. At the time Hughes was...
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Langston Hughes
Mrs. Jones does not ask Roger about his home life because doing so is superfluous; her powers of perception tell her all about Roger. After Mrs. Jones foils Roger's attempt to steal her purse by...
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Langston Hughes
Statistics show that the account of African-American poverty Langston Hughes gives in his one-act play "Soul Gone Home" is still very true today.In the play, as Ronnie, who has just died of...
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Langston Hughes
The term tone is defined as the author's attitude "toward a subject or an audience" ("Tone," Literary Devices). We can detect multiple tones in Langston Hughes's short poem "Dream." Since Hughes...
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Langston Hughes
One central literary technique, also called a literary device, in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem" is simile. A simile is a type of figurative language in which an author creates further meaning by...
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Langston Hughes
Langson Hughes's thesis in his essay "The Negro Artists and the Racial Mountain" is that the African-American artist cannot create true art, nor escape racism, if the African American is afraid of...
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Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes' poem “Harlem” looks at the adverse, and potentially even catastrophic, effects of the lack of opportunity in some parts of American society. Rhythm is the pattern created by...
