An Analysis in Langston Hughes’ “I, Too, Sing America”

Excerpts from the Paper

An Analysis in Langston Hughes' “I, Too, Sing America”
Introduction
Langston Hughes’ poem “I, Too, Sing America,” written in 1951 (122) is a poem that expresses Hughes’ thoughts relating to the differentiated classes of Americans, and black slavery, specifically as it relates to a person’s vocation and class standing in the context of the vocation. The tone of the work is one of hope, subdued peaceful power with a mixed, but hopeful outlook for events to come, as well as a response to other New York poets of the day, like Walt Whitman, who seemingly left out the black man and woman in their salutes to New York and to America and the American dream. Hughes’s poem is a recognition of being left out of the American dream, which is the white...

.....ass citizens. In addition, there is a strong sense of hope in the poem from the other lines. “But I laugh and eat well” represents the black man’s conviction, today, at the time of the servitude, to hang in there and stay focused on freedom and civil rights.
For each of these reasons, Hughes’s poem presents both a powerful vision of civil rights as well as an important stance on the traditional roles of vocation and lifestyle for blacks and whites.
Works Cited
Hughes, Langston. “I, Too, Sing America.” In I Am the Darker Brother: An Anthology of Modern Poems by African Americans, Ed. Arnold
Adoff
. New York: Simon, pp. 122. Web. 1997.
Whitman, Walt. “I Hear America Singing.” Web. 1861. Retrieved from, http://www.potw.org/archive/potw345.html