Literary devices Langston Hughes includes in his poem "Let America Be America Again" include the following.
Hughes utilizes apostrophe, in which a speaker directly addresses an absent person, idea, or object. In this poem, the speaker is addressing the traditional concept of "America," which embodies the idea of freedom. For example, Hughes, using the casual vernacular "sure," says to America,
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose.
Hughes also uses anaphora, which is the repetition of the same words at the beginnings of consecutive lines. This literary device creates a sense of litany, as in a religious service, and helps the reader remember the repeated lines. For example, this poem's speaker repeatedly says, "Let America ..." and in another place repeats "and all the ...":
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung ....
The poem alludes...
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to or references Walt Whitman'sSong of Myself. In that poem, Whitman wrote very exuberantly about the the American experience, feeling himself connected to every American. Although Hughes's mood is grimmer, he follows Whitman's pattern of listing a series of images and using the pronoun "I" universally. Like Whitman, Hughes's speaker imagines himself in many guises (note that this quote also uses anaphora):
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land ....
Another literary device Hughes employs is metaphor. Metaphor is a comparison that does not use the words like or as. For example, the narrator compares freedom to steel:
The steel of freedom does not stain.
Hughes employs simile as well, which is a comparison using the words like or as, when he likens certain people to leeches:
those who live like leeches on the people's lives ....
In both the metaphor and the simile, Hughes also uses alliteration to create a sense of rhythm.
Another literary device that Langston Hughes uses in his poem "Let America Be America Again" is change of voice or narrator. The first narrator is more optimistic, expressing the ideal form of America. This person says, "Let it be the dream it used to be" in the second line. The second narrator comes in with parenthetical remarks between the stanzas. For example, the second narrator says after the first stanza, "(America never was America to me.)"
In the second stanza, the first, more hopeful narrator says, "Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed." Again, this narrator stresses the promise of America. The second narrator, in between stanzas, says, "(It never was America to me.)" After the third stanza, the second narrator says, "(There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this 'homeland of the free.')" The use of shifting narration emphasizes the difference between the promise of America and the reality for many Americans, including African-Americans, Native Americans, and others. The change of narrator emphasizes the duality of America.
In addition, Hughes uses alliteration, or the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of words that are close together. Examples are "pioneer on the plain" and "land of love."