What is the mood, tone, and purpose in Langston Hughes' "Life Is Fine"?

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 the roof of a tall building. However, by the end of the poem, the man declares, "Life is fine! / Fine as wine!"

There is a major tonal shift in the third to last stanza in this poem. The first six stanzas focus on the speaker's despair. In the third stanza, when he's standing at the top of a building, he says, "I thought about my baby / And thought I would jump down." In addition, the speaker proclaims, "But it was / High up there! / It was high!" However, in the third to last stanza, the speaker begins with a sense of resignation, "So since I'm still here livin' / I guess I will live on." He goes on to say that life can be difficult ("Though you may see me holler, / And you may see me cry—"), but he won't give up.

The simile in the final stanza, in which the speaker says, "Life is fine! / Fine as Wine! / Life is Fine!" demonstrates the author's purpose in writing this poem. Comparing life to wine shows that life gets better as people age. Yes, heartbreak hurts and there are tons of painful moments in life, but the older you become, the easier it is to deal with.

What is the theme of Langston Hughes's poem "Life is Fine"?

All right, so we need to determine theme. An easy way to think about theme is to answer this question: What statement about the world is the speaker of the poem sending to the reader. If you can answer that, you've got your theme.

Let's analyze the poem a bit. Although the speaker doesn't directly say it, through a little bit of inferencing we can tell that the first two stanzas suggest two different suicide attempts, one by drowning, one by leaping off a building. However, the italicized verses below each of these stanzas indicate some fears and/or excuses why the speaker didn't follow through on his plan: "It was cold!" (9), "It was high!" (18). We sense that the speaker may not actually kill himself after all. The third stanze tells us why:

I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!

Here, the final impact and message (and, hence, theme) is revealed. The speaker tells us that, while he could've killed himself "for love" (I'm assuming a failed relationship or the death of a lover), he says that he knows he was born "for livin'" and we'll be "dogged" if we're going to see him actually kill himself. Why? Because "life is fine." If we simplify that into one statement, we'll have a theme.

I'd go with something like this: While pain does exist and may lead to desperate thoughts, our purpose on earth is to live the fine, beautiful life we've been given. The speaker states this most clearly in the verses "I could've died for love/but for livin' I was born" (21-22).

How do the literary devices in Langston Hughes' "Life Is Fine" convey meaning?

I think if you are looking for a message in this poem, it has to concern the stubborn choice of the speaker to live in spite of what is happening to his or her life and the recognition that, as it says in the final stanza:

I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born.

In a sense, the message is one of hope as the speaker, and by implication we, as readers, realise that we could die "for love," but actually there is something about the tenacity of the human spirit that rejects such an easy escape, because we were born "for livin'," which means we have to face the harships that life throws at us and endure them. However, in spite of these massive hardships, the overwhelming message, conveyed through repetition, is that "Life is fine!" and that, in a simile that conveys just how fine it is, we are told that life is as "fine as wine." The poem ends with a recognition that life is hard and we will suffer, but still the speaker will be "dogged" if we see him or her commit suicide. You will want to comment on the use of the final simile and the repetition in how this message is established and supported.

What is ironic about the title of Langston Hughes' poem "Life is Fine"?

The title of the poem is ironic because the poem describes the author being so miserable in life that he attempts to drown himself in a cold river, and then contemplates jumping off of a high building-all in order to end his life.  So, the author doesn't really think that life is fine, he is being sarcastic.  In fact, the only thing keeping him in this life is a combination of cowardice ("If that water hadn't a-been so cold/I might've sunk and died" and "If it hadn't a-been so high/I might've jumped and died"), and a resignation that since he is so terrible at trying to die, that "for livin' I was born".  So, because he's not going to die, and even though life is so miserable that he will "holler" and "cry" about it, he'll keep living it.  He ends the poem by sarcastically bemoaning, "Life is fine!  Fine as wine!" as a sort of "yeah, life is great, isn't it?  Here I am, stuck," sort of moment.  So, the title is ironic because the author doesn't think life is fine, but since he's stuck here through a fear of dying, he might as well pretend that it is.