Let America Be American Again Analysis

'Permit America Be America Again' was written in 1935 and originally published a year later on in Esquire Magazine. And so later in A New Song, a small collection of poems. The poem was written while Hughes was traveling from New York to see his female parent in Ohio. Due to recent personal events, reviews, and the wellness of his mother, he turned to writing as an outlet to express some of his deeper thoughts about what it was truly like to live in America. This poem explores the themes of identity, freedom, and equality. It is simply every bit 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 Once more

'Let America Be America Once again' by Langston Hughes is focused on the American Dream, what it ways, and how it is impossible to capture.

The poem takes the reader through the perspective of those who have been put-upon by a system that is supposed to help them. They are the poor, the immigrants, the African Americans, and the Native Americans. They are whatever who take sought the American Dream and found it to be nonexistent, at least for them.

Through the text, Hughes outlines what information technology would mean to really have the America that people say exists. Information technology will require taking the state dorsum from the "leeches" who feed on the poor and truly achieving freedom.

You can read the total poem here.

Structure of Let America Be America Once again

'Let America Be America Once more' past Langston Hughes is an eighty-six line verse form that is divided up into seventeen stanzas of varying lengths. The shortest stanzas are but 1 line long and the longest stretches to twelve. Normally, the poem is quite interesting. The stanzas are inconsistent, some of the lines are in parenthesis and some in italics.

There is not a single rhyme scheme that unites the unabridged poem, merely there are patterns for stanzas and for sections. For example, the first 3 quatrains, four-line stanzas, mostly rhyme ABAB. As the poem progresses though the rhyme scheme is less consequent. There are several examples of half-rhyme too.

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 sound is reused inside i line or multiple lines of poesy. For example, "soil" and "all" in lines thirty-i and thirty-iii.

Poetic Techniques in Let America Exist America Again

Hughes makes utilize of several poetic techniques in 'Let America Be America Again'. These include but are not limited to anaphora, enjambment, alliteration, and metaphor. The start, anaphora, is the repetition of a word or phrase at the commencement of multiple lines, normally in succession. This technique is often used to create accent. A list of phrases, items, or actions may be created through its implementation. This technique is used frequently throughout the poem. For example, "Allow it be" at the beginning of lines 2 and three, as well equally "I am the" which starts a total of 10 lines.

Ingemination 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.

Some other of import technique commonly used in poesy is enjambment. Information technology occurs when a line is cut off earlier its natural stopping betoken. Enjambment forces a reader downward to the next line, and the next, quickly. One has to motility forward in order to comfortably resolve a phrase or sentence. In that location are several examples in this poem, including the transitions between lines eleven and twelve, likewise as twenty-six and xx-seven.

A metaphor is a comparing between ii dissimilar things that does non utilise "like" or "as" is also present in the text. When using this technique a poet is saying that one matter is some other matter, they aren't just like. For instance, a reader tin look to lines twenty-six and xx-seven which read "Tangled in that ancient countless chain / Of profit, ability, gain, of take hold of the land!"

Analysis of Let America Be America Once more

Lines 1-5

Allow America be America again.

Let information technology exist the dream information technology used to be.

(…)

(America never was America to me.)

In the first stanza of 'Permit America Be America Again,' the speaker begins past making employ of the line that afterwards came to be used as the title. He is request that things go back to the way they used to be, at to the lowest degree in everyone's mind. At that place was, some indeterminately long fourth dimension ago, the feeling that annihilation was possible in America. There was the freedom of the "plain" and the power to seek a home for oneself. But, that dream is changing. It is not what it "used to be".

This kickoff quatrain is followed by a unmarried line "(America never was America to me). To Hughes, living every bit a black homo in America, things were always different.

Lines 6-10

Permit America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that peachy strong land of love

(…)

(It never was America to me.)

The 2d quatrain reemphasizes what for some was a real, tangible dream they could strive for. The discussion "dream" is repeated several times throughout these first stanzas, emphasizing the fact that that is what it is—a dream. The poet asks that the "great strong state of dearest" return. It is, in this description, an ideal identify where tyranny has no foothold. Never, in this idealized version, was a human being crushed by one in a higher place him.

Only, as a contemporary reader should understand, this is only fiction. That is not the America that exists today, nor did it ever be. Hughes makes this clear in the follow up of a unmarried line, once again in parenthesis, which says "Information technology never was America to me". He knows his own experience and is non going to ignore information technology.

Lines 11-16

O, let my land be a land where Freedom

Is crowned with no false 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 meridian, idealized epitome of America. It is, in the stories, songs, and movies, a "land where Liberty / Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath". Everything is perfect at that place and each person tin accomplish success and happiness. The "opportunity is real" and "life is complimentary". The give-and-take "gratis" is fundamental here.

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. It is not the "'homeland of the free"' for him.

Lines 17-24

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

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

(…)

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of canis familiaris consume dog, of mighty beat the weak.

The design that had been developing in the previous stanzas of 'Allow America Be America Once more' dissolves when another ii-line stanza follows. Lines seventeen and eighteen are in italics. This was one in lodge to depict increased attending to them as a turning indicate in the poem. Things are about to change in how the speaker talks about America.

These lines ask two 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 do something evil. In his free speech communication, he is trying to disrupt the normal way people see the world.

The following six lines provide the voice with the first function of an respond. The speaker responds by maxim that he is not but one person, simply many. He is the collected mind of those that take not been able to get in 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 bearing slavery'south scars" and the "carmine man," a reference to Native Americans, who were "driven from the land". These, as well as immigrant children, are outlined in this outset stanza of response.

He has plant cipher in the world to make him believe in the American dream. There is just the "same old stupid plan / Of dog swallow canis familiaris" and the strong destroying those beneath them.

Lines 25-xxx

I am the boyfriend, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

(…)

Of piece of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's ain greed!

The side by side half dozen lines of 'Allow America Be America Again' provide boosted lines in response to the question. He is representing the "young man" who began full of hope and is at present stuck in the spider web of capitalism and the "dog swallow dog" world.

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

Lines 31-38

I am the farmer, bondservant to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the motorcar.

(…)

I am the man who never got alee,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

The side by side four lines of 'Let America Be America Again' also employ anaphora in the repetition of "I am" at the starting time of the lines. He explains that he also represents the farmer, worker, Negro, and "people, humble, hungry, hateful". The use of alliteration in this line makes the stanza overall feel more than rhythmic. Ane should bounce from discussion to word while taking in Hughes's meaning.

He is everyone that has been pushed down and locked out of the American Dream every bit he outlined it in the commencement few stanzas. That dream does non exist 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

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old Earth while still a serf of kings,

(…)

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the gratis."

The side by side stanza of 'Let American Be America Once again' is the longest of the poem with twelve lines. It speaks on the history of those who have come to America in search of that dream just have been unable to find it. He "dreamt our basic dream" while still in the "Sometime Earth" where dreams such as that felt incommunicable. He relates the immigrants who first came to America, and the dream they were seeking, to its nonexistence today. They wanted something potent, brave, and true but that does not exist now.

He casts himself every bit "the man who staled those early seas" looking for a new dwelling. He is the Irishman, the Pole, the Englishman, he is the African "torn from Black Africa's strand". All are in America at present wanting to build a life.

Lines 51-61

The complimentary?

Who said the free?  Non me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

(…)

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that'southward almost dead today.

The word "costless" is in question in the post-obit line. It stands by itself, a 2-word line. "The free?" It draws the reader's attending in an astute and precise style.

He follows this up with a serial of questions asking who would even say the word "complimentary?" The millions who are "shot downwardly when we strike?" Or those who "accept zip for our pay?" There is no "free" to speak of.

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

Lines 62-69

O, let America be America once again—

The land that never has been yet—

(…)

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

Must bring back our mighty dream once more.

The opening line of 'Let America Be America Once more' 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 it is. Those who should benefit well-nigh are also those who gave their "sweat and blood". America is congenital on "organized religion and hurting" and it is those who have given the most who should benefit. He hopes that the dream will return to them, someday.

Lines lxx-79

Certain, phone call me whatsoever ugly name yous choose—

The steel of liberty does not stain.

(…)

O, yep,

I say it patently,

America never was America to me,

(…)

The seventieth line of 'Let America Be America Again' admits that many are going to push back against the speaker. He volition be called "ugly name[due south]" but nix is going to end him from pursuing the freedom he wants. It 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 back our country over again" and brand it the America it was meant to be.

It might not take been America to this speaker before, or right now, but through these lines, he establishes a goal to brand it 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 swell green states—

And brand America again!

In the final lines of 'Let America Be America Again' the speaker explains that from the dark, "rape and rot of graft, and steal, and lies" there will come something vivid and good. The people are going to exist redeemed and free. The vastness of the country will resemble the vastness and freedom of the people. Those put upon and forgotten will renew the world.

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

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