Origin of the Dream Let America Be America Again
'Permit America Be America Again' was written in 1935 and originally published a year later in Esquire Mag. Then later in A New Song, a pocket-size drove of poems. The poem was written while Hughes was traveling from New York to see his mother in Ohio. Due to recent personal events, reviews, and the health of his female parent, he turned to writing equally an outlet to express some of his deeper thoughts about what it was truly like to alive in America. This verse form explores the themes of identity, freedom, and equality. Information technology is just as applicable to today's world as it was in the mid-thirties. Readers today will find several entry points into Hughes' experience of the American Dream.
Summary of Let America Be America Again
'Let America Be America Again' past Langston Hughes is focused on the American Dream, what it means, and how it is impossible to capture.
The verse form takes the reader through the perspective of those who take been put-upon past a system that is supposed to help them. They are the poor, the immigrants, the African Americans, and the Native Americans. They are any who have sought the American Dream and found information technology to exist nonexistent, at to the lowest degree for them.
Through the text, Hughes outlines what it would hateful to really take the America that people say exists. Information technology will require taking the country dorsum from the "leeches" who feed on the poor and truly achieving freedom.
You can read the full poem hither.
Structure of Let America Be America Once again
'Let America Be America Once again' by Langston Hughes is an eighty-six line poem that is divided up into seventeen stanzas of varying lengths. The shortest stanzas are simply one line long and the longest stretches to twelve. Usually, the poem is quite interesting. The stanzas are inconsistent, some of the lines are in parenthesis and some in italics.
There is not a unmarried rhyme scheme that unites the entire poem, but at that place are patterns for stanzas and for sections. For example, the beginning 3 quatrains, four-line stanzas, generally rhyme ABAB. As the poem progresses though the rhyme scheme is less consistent. There are several examples of half-rhyme as well.
Half-rhyme, too known as slant or partial rhyme, is seen through the repetition of assonance or consonance. This means that either a vowel or consonant sound is reused within ane line or multiple lines of verse. For case, "soil" and "all" in lines xxx-one and 30-3.
Poetic Techniques in Let America Be America Over again
Hughes makes apply of several poetic techniques in 'Permit America Be America Again'. These include simply are non express to anaphora, enjambment, alliteration, and metaphor. The showtime, anaphora, is the repetition of a word or phrase at the outset of multiple lines, commonly in succession. This technique is ofttimes used to create emphasis. A list of phrases, items, or actions may be created through its implementation. This technique is used oft throughout the verse form. For instance, "Allow it be" at the get-go of lines two and 3, too every bit "I am the" which starts a total of 10 lines.
Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and brainstorm with the same sound. For example, "dream the dreamers dreamed" in line six.
Another important technique commonly used in poetry is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping signal. Enjambment forces a reader downwardly to the next line, and the side by side, rapidly. One has to motility forrard in lodge to comfortably resolve a phrase or judgement. In that location are several examples in this poem, including the transitions between lines eleven and twelve, equally well as twenty-vi and twenty-seven.
A metaphor is a comparison between 2 unlike things that does not employ "like" or "as" is also present in the text. When using this technique a poet is saying that one thing is some other affair, they aren't only like. For example, a reader can look to lines 20-6 and 20-seven which read "Tangled in that ancient countless chain / Of profit, power, proceeds, of grab the land!"
Analysis of Let America Exist America Once again
Lines ane-5
Let America be America again.
Allow information technology exist the dream it used to exist.
(…)
(America never was America to me.)
In the get-go stanza of 'Let America Exist America Again,' the speaker begins by making use of the line that later came to be used as the title. He is asking that things become back to the way they used to exist, at least in everyone's mind. There was, some indeterminately long time ago, the feeling that anything was possible in America. There was the freedom of the "plain" and the ability to seek a dwelling house for oneself. Merely, that dream is changing. It is not what it "used to exist".
This start quatrain is followed by a unmarried line "(America never was America to me). To Hughes, living as a black human in America, things were always different.
Lines 6-10
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that nifty stiff land of dearest
(…)
(It never was America to me.)
The second quatrain reemphasizes what for some was a existent, tangible dream they could strive for. The give-and-take "dream" is repeated several times throughout these get-go stanzas, emphasizing the fact that that is what it is—a dream. The poet asks that the "smashing potent land of dear" return. It is, in this description, an ideal identify where tyranny has no foothold. Never, in this idealized version, was a human being crushed past one higher up him.
But, as a gimmicky reader should understand, this is simply fiction. That is not the America that exists today, nor did information technology ever exist. Hughes makes this clear in the follow up of a single line, again in parenthesis, which says "It never was America to me". He knows his own experience and is not going to ignore information technology.
Lines 11-xvi
O, let my country exist a state where Liberty
Is crowned with no imitation patriotic wreath,
(…)
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the costless.")
The third quatrain follows the same ABAB rhyme scheme as the previous two. A two-line stanza, in parenthesis, follows. He dives back into this over the elevation, idealized image of America. Information technology is, in the stories, songs, and movies, a "country where Freedom / Is crowned with no faux patriotic wreath". Everything is perfect there and each person can attain success and happiness. The "opportunity is real" and "life is gratis". The give-and-take "costless" is key here.
The ii that follow, which provide the reader with insight into the speaker's real thoughts about America, describe something different. He has not experienced that universal "quality" that America is supposedly known for. It is non the "'homeland of the free"' for him.
Lines 17-24
Say, who are y'all that mumbles in the nighttime?
And who are y'all that draws your veil beyond the stars?
(…)
And finding simply the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty beat out the weak.
The pattern that had been developing in the previous stanzas of 'Let America Be America Once more' dissolves when another two-line stanza follows. Lines seventeen and eighteen are in italics. This was one in club to draw increased attention to them as a turning point in the poem. Things are about to change in how the speaker talks well-nigh America.
These lines ask 2 questions. They are directed at the previous statements that came in parenthesis. The speaker'southward negativity is questioned. These lines suggest that the speaker is trying to do something evil. In his gratuitous speech, he is trying to disrupt the normal fashion people see the world.
The following six lines provide the vox with the showtime part of an answer. The speaker responds past proverb that he is non just one person, but many. He is the nerveless mind of those that have non been able to go far touch with the American dream. He is the "poor white" that has been "fooled" and taken advantage of by those richer than he. The speaker is also the "Negro begetting slavery's scars" and the "red man," a reference to Native Americans, who were "driven from the state". These, as well as immigrant children, are outlined in this beginning stanza of response.
He has found cipher in the earth to make him believe in the American dream. At that place is only the "same old stupid plan / Of domestic dog eat dog" and the strong destroying those beneath them.
Lines 25-thirty
I am the immature man, full of forcefulness and promise,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
(…)
Of work the men! Of have the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
The next six lines of 'Let America Exist America Over again' provide additional lines in response to the question. He is representing the "boyfriend" who began full of hope and is now stuck in the spider web of capitalism and the "dog swallow dog" globe.
Hughes uses anaphora in these lines to emphasize what information technology takes to motility through the globe while seeking success. One has to grab "profit, power". They take to "grab the gold" and "grab the ways of satisfying need". Information technology is accept, take, have.
Lines 31-38
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
(…)
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
The next four lines of 'Let America Exist America Once more' as well utilize anaphora in the repetition of "I am" at the beginning of the lines. He explains that he also represents the farmer, worker, Negro, and "people, humble, hungry, mean". The use of ingemination in this line makes the stanza overall feel more rhythmic. One should bounce from word to word while taking in Hughes's meaning.
He is anybody that has been pushed downwards and locked out of the American Dream as he outlined it in the first few stanzas. That dream does not exist for him. He refers to them equally men and women who "never got ahead". He is the "poorest worker bartered" by employers, "through the years".
Lines 39-50
Even so I'k the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
(…)
And torn from Blackness Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the costless."
The next stanza of 'Let American Be America Again' is the longest of the poem with twelve lines. It speaks on the history of those who accept come to America in search of that dream only have been unable to find it. He "dreamt our basic dream" while still in the "Former Globe" where dreams such as that felt impossible. He relates the immigrants who get-go came to America, and the dream they were seeking, to its nonexistence today. They wanted something strong, brave, and true merely that does not exist now.
He casts himself as "the man who staled those early seas" looking for a new domicile. He is the Irishman, the Pole, the Englishman, he is the African "torn from Black Africa'due south strand". All are in America at present wanting to build a life.
Lines 51-61
The gratuitous?
Who said the free? Non me?
Surely non me? The millions on relief today?
(…)
The millions who take nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that's almost expressionless today.
The word "free" is in question in the following line. It stands by itself, a two-word line. "The complimentary?" It draws the reader'southward attention in an acute and precise fashion.
He follows this up with a series of questions request who would fifty-fifty say the word "complimentary?" The millions who are "shot downward when nosotros strike?" Or those who "have cypher for our pay?" In that location is no "gratuitous" to speak of.
All that'due south left for any of those people that Hughes has mentioned is the sliver of the dream that'due south "nigh dead today".
Lines 62-69
O, let America be America over again—
The land that never has been all the same—
(…)
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plough in the pelting,
Must bring back our mighty dream once again.
The opening line of 'Let America Be America Over again' is repeated at the beginning of this stanza. Here, he explores what America is really like and what he would like it to be. He speaks of himself, "ME" and all those who "made America" what information technology is. Those who should benefit most are also those who gave their "sweat and blood". America is built on "religion and pain" and it is those who take given the nigh who should benefit. He hopes that the dream will return to them, someday.
Lines 70-79
Certain, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
(…)
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
(…)
The seventieth line of 'Let America Be America Once again' admits that many are going to push back against the speaker. He will be chosen "ugly proper name[s]" but aught is going to stop him from pursuing the freedom he wants. Information technology is a dauntless and honorable thing to pursue freedom and he won't be knocked down by the "leeches". These are the men and women who have advantage of the hard-working people mentioned in the previous stanzas. He speaks rousingly to the masses, "Nosotros must have back our country again" and make information technology the America it was meant to be.
It might non accept been America to this speaker before, or right now, just through these lines, he establishes a goal to make information technology the America he wants.
Lines 80-86
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
(…)
All, all the stretch of these peachy green states—
And make America again!
In the concluding lines of 'Permit America Exist America Once more' the speaker explains that from the dark, "rape and rot of graft, and steal, and lies" at that place volition come up something vivid and good. The people are going to exist redeemed and gratuitous. The vastness of the country volition resemble the vastness and liberty of the people. Those put upon and forgotten will renew the globe.
Source: https://poemanalysis.com/langston-hughes/let-america-be-america-again/
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