Langston Hughes Essay examples -- essays research papers

The period of the Harlem Renaissance was a time of grand potpourri and exploration for African Americans . It was during this point in the early twentieth century that African Americans were exploring their cultural and social roots. With the rapid expansion of a cohesive vitriolic community in the area, it was only a matter of time before the finest minds in Black America converged to share their ideas and unleash their creative essences upon a state that had for so long silenced them. In the midst of this bohemian convergence, many notable figures arose who would give a new voice to African Americans. With such great notables as Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale, and James Johnson, mainstream American now had a unique window into the plight of African Americans all over the country. One individual though stands out as one of the most prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes defined himself by his ability to pursue the true essence of black folk at a t ime when black identity, culture, or art was considered an oxymoronic c oncept. Hughes sought to explore the true identity of Black America even amidst criticism that his work was anti-assimilationist in its literary expression. Wallace Thurman, one of Hughes closest friends had this to say about the poets subject matterHe went for inspiration and rhythms to those people who had been the leastabsorbed by the quagmire of American Kultur, and from them he undertookto select and preserve such autonomous racial values as were being rapidlyeradicated in order to speed the Negros assimilation. ( Bloom 161)To many black critics, including Thurman, the subjects of Langston Hughes poetry exposed an aspect of the black culture that, according to Countee Cullen threw wide, every door of the racial entourage, to the wholesale gaze of the macrocosm at large (Bloom 152). Hughes was a lover of his people and sought to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America. He created works of lite rature that were distinctively Negro in their cistronsWithout repudiating the Americanness of the Afro American, he defined how a work of art by a black American can be Negro, the artists Americanness notwithstanding..The black artist stands a good chance of capturing the Negro soul if he looks for his material not among the self-styled hi-class Negroes, but among the low down(p) folks, the ... ...gston Hughes manifested itself in The Weary Blues. Hughes wrote the poem to be played to music and it was performed with an accompaniment of jazz in the background. The flow of the poem is in seam to a blues beat. It incorporates the slow mellow mood of the blues and its easy free flow of thought. The poem captures the essence of sadness and melancholy that is attributed to the blues. Hughes writes about notice a piano player as he plays the sweet blues in the nightHe played that sad raggy tune like a musical foolSweet bluesComing from a black mans soul.O Blues(Norton 1733)The Weary B lues captures an important element of the black identity, that of its music and the soul which is put into its expression. The poem captures that soul of the black man as he wails a mellow tune to the beat of a blues rhythm. Langston Hughes established himself as the poet laureate of Harlem. He served as the voice of the downtrodden, as well the elite in black culture. The criticism that he once received is now praise as his influence is manifested in the affirmation of the black identity.