1 Short Paper on Langston Hughes

Farnood Jahangiri

Short Paper on Langston Hughes’ “Negro Speaks of Rivers”

19 Feb. 2016

946 Words

Langston Hughes’ “Negro Speaks of Rivers”: A Response Paper

Poems reflecting on the identity of individuals or a particular ethnic group are abundant

in literature. Many of such poems were acclaimed for the occasional revolutionary importance

they had. One of the poets with such fame in writing such poems is Langston Hughes and his

poem “Negro Speaks of Rivers” shines as one of his best works. Dean Rader, in his essay

published in Poetry for Students (206-8) makes a comparison between Langston’s poem and

Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and explains different distinct features of Langston’s work. He

points out at factors such as the use of first person singular and its significance, the notion of

growing and thriving and also political aspects of the poem. Dean Rader has provided a rigorous

analysis of one of Hughes’s earliest poems which shows young Hughes’ brilliancy and foresight

toward his identity and origin. What is also fascinating about this poem is the possibility of

Hughes’ poetry and overall literature to represent any person, African and non-African with a

shared experience. And this makes the poem a highly global and even a hybrid work of literature.

This poem and its counterpart, Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”, reminds me of a

philosophical and anthropological claim that personality is the result of history, and culture.

Rader has truly provided such good explanation of this capability of the poem. In the first

paragraph of his essay, he refers to the fact that the poem connects the individual to history in

addition to geographical places. But what connects the Negro to these geographical places is not

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simply a mere connection. In fact, it connects the Negro to greatest civilizations, to themselves,

the color of their skin, their ability to endure hardships and other such abilities. The idea of the

dislocation of the black race that is emphasized in the essay is the center of attention for many

other scholars too. Isabel Soto in her essay, “The Empowerment of Displacement”, claims that

the motive behind “The Negro Speaks of the River” is an actual displacement (172); but she

herself admits that this displacement carries the poem “across aesthetic, personal and historical

lines” (173). With this in mind, this poem becomes not only a poem for the black race, but also

for humanity in general and even for all the ethnic groups and diaspora, who feel dislocated.

Rader further points at the “I” of the poem which is used metaphorically and not

autobiographically; it is reminiscence of Walt Whitman’s poems, especially “Song of Myself” in

which with “I” he tries to include all the Americans and even the whole world. The “I” is

attached to all the black people across the globe and also all the black peoples in history.

However, the question that remains is why should Hughes use this general “I”? One answer is a

rather pessimistic one. It may mean the same thing as eternal recurrence in Nietzsche’s

philosophy. In fact, Hughes may want to indicate that slavery and hardship is what is always

connected to blacks and as blacks are born and born again, this slavery is always connected to

their personality and it is something that never goes away. Therefore, it can be a criticism of the

status quo too. Another response is a positive and optimistic one. Hughes may want to say that

since all the blacks share the same experience, they should become united. So there is no

difference between Africans in North America, South America, in Asia and Africa. They have a

motive to become united and that is the fact that they have “known rivers” (1) and their soul “has

grown deep like the rivers” (4). This positive response makes more sense considering the

metaphor of river and sea that Rader himself explains.

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While Rader usually has focused on African American aspect of the experience and

thinks that the audience should be white and black Americans, the poem is also able to include

any individuals in general and in their connection to history and culture. First as we mentioned in

the first part of the essay, the “I” of the poem can metaphorically include everyone and it can be

a reference to the possible unity of human race. It is this aspect that makes the poem very much

like Whitman’s “Song of Myself” that has a universality in itself. Secondly, it has become

obvious that this poem is indeed a tale of civilizations. The oldest civilizations grew first around

big rivers and many people and ethnic groups were sacrificed for a nation to grow. In other

words, civilization is also a hierarchy of the suppressors and the suppressed. So any suppressed

people should feel sympathy with the black experience and even connect the poem and its theme

to themselves. Even William Hogan refers to this global potential of the poem by talking about

Hughes’ attention to the roots of community by “emphasizing the global connections and

cultural continuities between people” (Hogan 188).

In short, in addition to being a poem about the identity of blacks, “The Negro Speaks of

Rivers” is a poetry of all the suppressed groups on earth. It not only provides us with a new

dimension toward history and civilization, but it also creates a hope for anyone who is in search

of his/her identity and in desperate need of showing his/her selfhood to others so that they will

give legitimacy to his/her being there in the first place. Considering themes of identity and

difference as the most rampant issue of our generation amidst high demands of democracy and

human rights, this poem will be still alive and have many different people reading it, liking it and

even finding themselves attached to it.

Works Cited List

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Hogan, William. “Roots, Routes, and Langston Hughes’s Hybrid Sense of Place”

Langston Hughes (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views). Edited by Harold Bloom. New York:

Infobase Publishing 2008: 183-202.

Soto, Isabel. “The Empowerment of Displacement”. Montage of a dream : the art and

life of Langston Hughes. Edited by John Edgar Tidwell and Cheryl R. Ragar. Columbia and

London: University of Missouri Press, 2007: 169-180.

Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” The Collected Poems of Langston

Hughes. New York: Vintage Classics 1994. P. 23

Rader, Dean. “Essay for Poetry for Students”. Poetry for Students Volume 10. Edited by

Michael L. LaBlanc. Canada: Gale Group, 2001. 206-8

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