Andrea N.

Prez Rivera
Prof. Jos Irizarry
INGL3326; Sec.066
7 October 2014
Themes of Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes centers his poems and writings in some themes which are interrelated.
The music, the dignity, the racism, wisdom, aspiration, and the American Dream are the themes
that are shown through his writings. The time when he was born and raise influenced everything
that he wrote. He is considered one of the most renowned contributors to American literature in
the 20th century.
After he graduated he wrote his first poem, "Negro Speaks of Rivers". In this poem it can
be seen all the suffering and hard things that a negro has to live. Those problems and situations
that he compared to rivers are the things that the society dont see because you can only know
what you have been through. In this poem also is shown the American Dream that everyone is
searching for it, a false dream that is only a dream. The soul and courage of a person grow by the
knowledge that is learned on the road. Another theme that is shown is all the cultural background
that is show in every poem and in every short story. In this same poem is shown the admired for
his ancestors.
The American dream is represented too in the poem Let America be America Again. In
this poem a first voice is talking about all the dreams that are supposed to have America and all it
used to be. It is narrated how the opportunity is real and it have always be there. In the other
hand, a second voice talk about the reality and how is not real. Not a single word about the

dream and all the opportunities are real. It says that theres never been equality, we can see
how this person have dignity because he dont want to live in the false dream that most of
Americans believe in. it also show the cultural believing of most of Americans that believes in
what America has always said that is. It is shown in this poem by the first voice that everything
is going to be ok. This voice is the voice of all Americans that were raised believing in the
American Dream, in the hope, believing that in some point the Dream will be achieve.
The racism is one of the themes that Hughes presents in his writings. We can see it in
Bad Man. This poem is very impacting to me because what I understood is that because all the
discrimination those black men receive during his live and hearing that he is bad because he is
black and is normal to them to be bad, lead them to think that they were bad. In that poem he
says I wouldnt go to heaben if I could. it is shown how all the racism affects emotionally a
person that he also says in one part that he didnt knew why he was doing that. When a person
get insults during his life and is told how to act and how to be like because of his color or race,
he would do what is told to do because is what he have learned and what he think that is good
because all the society tells him the same.
He doesnt talk too mucho about love but he mention it in the short story Bodies in the
Moonlight were he talks about his love for a girl named Nunuma. We can see that all the
emotions of Hughes are affected by all the themes that he talks about in his work. The bad things
are the ones with more highlight because most of the people that suffered racism, death because
of it, and the American Dream, feel identified with the writings of Hughes because they know
they are things that he also lived and saw in his lifetime. All the history that he have gave us
through his poem is a treasure for America.