Who Is Left Out of the Poem in Terms of Opressed Groups in the Poem Let America Be America Again

'Let America Be America Once again' was written in 1935 and originally published a year afterward in Esquire Mag. Then subsequently in A New Song, a small collection of poems. The verse form was written while Hughes was traveling from New York to meet his female parent in Ohio. Due to recent personal events, reviews, and the health of his mother, he turned to writing every bit an outlet to express some of his deeper thoughts about what information technology was truly similar to live in America. This poem explores the themes of identity, freedom, and equality. It is just every bit applicable to today'southward 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 Once again

'Let America Exist America Again' by 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 accept been put-upon by a organization that is supposed to help them. They are the poor, the immigrants, the African Americans, and the Native Americans. They are any who take sought the American Dream and found information technology to exist nonexistent, at least for them.

Through the text, Hughes outlines what information technology would mean to really have the America that people say exists. It will crave taking the country back from the "leeches" who feed on the poor and truly achieving liberty.

You can read the full poem hither.

Construction of Let America Exist America Once again

'Let America Be America Again' by Langston Hughes is an lxxx-half dozen line poem that is divided upwards into seventeen stanzas of varying lengths. The shortest stanzas are only one line long and the longest stretches to twelve. Ordinarily, the poem is quite interesting. The stanzas are inconsistent, some of the lines are in parenthesis and some in italics.

There is non a single rhyme scheme that unites the entire poem, but there are patterns for stanzas and for sections. For example, the first three 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, also known as slant or partial rhyme, is seen through the repetition of assonance or consonance. This means that either a vowel or consonant audio is reused inside one line or multiple lines of verse. For example, "soil" and "all" in lines 30-one and thirty-three.

Poetic Techniques in Permit America Exist America Again

Hughes makes use of several poetic techniques in 'Allow America Be America Once more'. These include but are not limited to anaphora, enjambment, alliteration, and metaphor. The kickoff, anaphora, is the repetition of a word or phrase at the outset of multiple lines, usually in succession. This technique is oft used to create emphasis. A list of phrases, items, or actions may exist created through its implementation. This technique is used oft throughout the poem. For example, "Allow it exist" at the kickoff of lines ii and three, as well every bit "I am the" which starts a total of ten lines.

Alliteration occurs when words are used in succession, or at to the lowest degree announced close together, and brainstorm with the same audio. For case, "dream the dreamers dreamed" in line six.

Some other of import technique commonly used in poesy is enjambment. It occurs when a line is cut off before its natural stopping point. Enjambment forces a reader down to the next line, and the next, apace. One has to movement forward in social club to comfortably resolve a phrase or judgement. At that place are several examples in this poem, including the transitions betwixt lines eleven and twelve, also equally twenty-6 and twenty-seven.

A metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things that does not use "like" or "as" is too present in the text. When using this technique a poet is saying that i thing is another thing, they aren't just similar. For instance, a reader tin can look to lines 20-half-dozen and xx-seven which read "Tangled in that aboriginal endless chain / Of profit, power, gain, of grab the state!"

Assay of Let America Exist America Again

Lines 1-five

Let America exist America again.

Let information technology be the dream it used to exist.

(…)

(America never was America to me.)

In the showtime stanza of 'Permit America Be America Again,' the speaker begins by making use of the line that afterward came to be used as the title. He is asking that things go back to the manner they used to be, at to the lowest degree in everyone's listen. There was, some indeterminately long time ago, the feeling that annihilation was possible in America. There was the freedom of the "patently" and the ability to seek a home for oneself. But, that dream is irresolute. It is not what it "used to exist".

This first 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 six-x

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let information technology be that great strong land of beloved

(…)

(Information technology never was America to me.)

The second quatrain reemphasizes what for some was a real, tangible dream they could strive for. The word "dream" is repeated several times throughout these kickoff stanzas, emphasizing the fact that that is what information technology is—a dream. The poet asks that the "great strong land of honey" return. It is, in this description, an ideal place where tyranny has no foothold. Never, in this idealized version, was a man crushed by 1 higher up him.

Merely, as a contemporary reader should understand, this is but fiction. That is not the America that exists today, nor did it ever exist. Hughes makes this clear in the follow upwardly of a single line, once again in parenthesis, which says "It never was America to me". He knows his own experience and is not going to ignore it.

Lines 11-xvi

O, let my land be a state where Liberty

Is crowned with no faux patriotic wreath,

(…)

(There'due south never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the gratuitous.")

The 3rd quatrain follows the aforementioned ABAB rhyme scheme as the previous two. A two-line stanza, in parenthesis, follows. He dives back into this over the top, arcadian image of America. Information technology is, in the stories, songs, and movies, a "land where Freedom / Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath". Everything is perfect there and each person tin can accomplish success and happiness. The "opportunity is real" and "life is free". The word "gratuitous" is key hither.

The two 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. Information technology is not the "'homeland of the costless"' for him.

Lines 17-24

Say, who are you that mumbles in the night?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

(…)

And finding only the same sometime stupid plan

Of canis familiaris eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

The design that had been developing in the previous stanzas of 'Let America Be America Over again' dissolves when some other two-line stanza follows. Lines seventeen and eighteen are in italics. This was ane in lodge to describe increased attention to them equally a turning point in the poem. Things are near to modify in how the speaker talks almost America.

These lines ask ii questions. They are directed at the previous statements that came in parenthesis. The speaker'south negativity is questioned. These lines suggest that the speaker is trying to practise something evil. In his free spoken language, he is trying to disrupt the normal mode people see the earth.

The following six lines provide the voice with the start part of an answer. The speaker responds past maxim that he is not just one person, but many. He is the collected mind of those that have not been able to get in affect 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 too the "Negro bearing slavery's scars" and the "blood-red human," a reference to Native Americans, who were "driven from the land". These, as well as immigrant children, are outlined in this get-go stanza of response.

He has establish aught in the world to make him believe in the American dream. There is only the "same old stupid plan / Of dog eat dog" and the strong destroying those beneath them.

Lines 25-xxx

I am the fellow, full of forcefulness and hope,

Tangled in that aboriginal countless chain

(…)

Of work the men! Of have the pay!

Of owning everything for ane'south own greed!

The side by side half-dozen lines of 'Let America Be America Over again' provide additional lines in response to the question. He is representing the "young man" who began total of hope and is now stuck in the web of capitalism and the "dog eat canis familiaris" world.

Hughes uses anaphora in these lines to emphasize what it takes to move through the world while seeking success. One has to grab "profit, power". They have to "catch the gilt" and "grab the ways of satisfying need". It is have, take, take.

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 iv lines of 'Permit America Be America Over again' likewise use 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 alliteration in this line makes the stanza overall feel more rhythmic. One should bounce from word to word while taking in Hughes's significant.

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 be for him. He refers to them as men and women who "never got ahead". He is the "poorest worker bartered" past employers, "through the years".

Lines 39-50

Nevertheless I'm the one who dreamt our bones dream

In the Old World while however a serf of kings,

(…)

And torn from Black Africa'southward strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

The side by side stanza of 'Permit American Exist America Again' is the longest of the poem with twelve lines. It speaks on the history of those who have come up to America in search of that dream but accept been unable to detect it. He "dreamt our bones dream" while still in the "Onetime World" where dreams such as that felt impossible. He relates the immigrants who first came to America, and the dream they were seeking, to its nonexistence today. They wanted something strong, brave, and true but that does not be now.

He casts himself as "the human being who staled those early seas" looking for a new home. He is the Irishman, the Pole, the Englishman, he is the African "torn from Blackness Africa's strand". All are in America now wanting to build a life.

Lines 51-61

The free?

Who said the free?  Non me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

(…)

The millions who take nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that'due south almost expressionless today.

The word "free" is in question in the following line. It stands by itself, a 2-word line. "The free?" It draws the reader'south attention in an acute and precise way.

He follows this up with a series of questions request who would even say the discussion "gratuitous?" The millions who are "shot down when we strike?" Or those who "have zip for our pay?" There is no "free" to speak of.

All that'south left for any of those people that Hughes has mentioned is the sliver of the dream that'southward "almost dead today".

Lines 62-69

O, let America be America again—

The state that never has been still—

(…)

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plough in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

The opening line of 'Let America Be America Again' is repeated at the offset of this stanza. Here, he explores what America is actually similar and what he would like it to be. He speaks of himself, "ME" and all those who "fabricated America" what it is. Those who should do good about are also those who gave their "sweat and claret". America is built on "faith and pain" and it is those who have given the most who should benefit. He hopes that the dream volition return to them, anytime.

Lines 70-79

Sure, phone call me any ugly name yous cull—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

(…)

O, aye,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

(…)

The seventieth line of 'Let America Be America Once more' admits that many are going to push back confronting the speaker. He will be called "ugly name[southward]" just nothing is going to stop him from pursuing the freedom he wants. Information technology is a brave 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, "We must take dorsum our land again" and make it the America it was meant to be.

It might non have been America to this speaker earlier, or right at present, but 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 decease,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

(…)

All, all the stretch of these smashing light-green states—

And make America again!

In the concluding lines of 'Let America Be America Again' the speaker explains that from the nighttime, "rape and rot of graft, and steal, and lies" there will come something bright and practiced. The people are going to be redeemed and free. The vastness of the land will resemble the vastness and freedom of the people. Those put upon and forgotten volition renew the world.

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Source: https://poemanalysis.com/langston-hughes/let-america-be-america-again/

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