James Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin Missouri to an abolitionist family. His farther was the first black man elected to public office in 1885. Langston attended high school in Ohio, where he began to write poetry in the eighth grade. He was elected class poet. His farther did not think that Hughes could make a living writing poetry and urged him to peruse a different career. He’s farther paid for Langston to attend Columbia University to study engineering. However, Langston continued to write poetry.
He eventually dropped out to peruse his desired career, poetry despite maintaining a “B+” average, at Columbia University. Langston was one of the pioneers of the Harlem Renaissance. In the roaring twenty’s blacks poets, artist, and singers in Harlem emerged to show that they had talent in all of the arts. This was an important time for blacks. The Harlem Renaissance symbolized the first time in history; black artistes received recognition for their work. Langston’s first poem was The Negro Speak of the River in 1926 this poem opened the door for many great poems to follow.
In that same year a poem called The Weary Blues was also published, this poem happens to be on or of my favorite poems. In this, poem Hughes tells a story of the time he went into a Harlem blues club and saw a live performance. Hughes in these poem talks about a male singer he once saw singing the blues in a Harlem nightclub, the male singer is pictured sitting down behind a piano playing and singing and playing the blues. There is noise of just the singer moaning and singing Hughes mentioned that people were tapping there feet, smoking, and drinking. In analyzing the poem I used the dramatistic approach, I chose to use Fisher’s theory of analysis because I think his approach allows the best method for analysis of this rhetorical artifact. Fisher believed that communication is about story telling.
Research Paper On langston Hughes
... poems Langston Hughes appears as a peoples poet, the man, who wanted to reeducate his audience and to lift the theory of the black ... novelist and columnist. His name is associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes was born in a small town Joplin, Missouri. ... grown deep like the rivers. His "The Weary Blues" made Langston Hughes famous among literary Americans. After he received B.A.degree in ...
The rhetor conveys his message by story telling a story which we all, the audience, can identify. He believed that people find ways to identify with stories that relate to us. The important elements of any story are its characters, narrator, setting, plot/action, conclusion, climax, theme and audience. There are two kinds of relationships in every story or rhetorical artifact, casual and temporal. “Casual relationship” which deal with the sequence of events in the story. While this poem, narration is done by Hughes himself.
An example of so language and dialogue is when he used words like ma, mo, fo, and I’s gwine to capture the type of slang that is used in this type of setting The setting talked about in the poem was in a Blues nightclub in Harlem. In the club, it was dark; smoke consumed the room, by the pale dull pallor of an old gas lead the reader to believe that Hughes is in a hazy environment. He also describes it as being semi crowded in the nightclub. This picture described in the poem immediately establishes a relationship with the audience because the lone character seems to be in another world; his own world because he obviously appears very concentrated on the song he is singing. The reader of the poem is made to feel that they are watching and intruding on a depressed man’s private act. A for the plot of the commercial, that develops in the middle of the poem when the man singing the blues is described frowning his face in a look of depression.
Until the singer brought his head up from playing the piano with his face haunted with the look of depression that seems to be the plot of the story. Casual relationship or the way the events are told is very simple. First, when he poem begins you see the depressed made playing and signing the blues in a dark room with the spotlight on him. Second, the audience notices that the singer is moaning threw out the song and the fact that he is singing about the thought of taking his life. By the end of the story, the audience knows that the singer is singing the song with passion, and emphasis on him being depressed. As we about the turn of events we tend to visually except the fact that they are happening, we place ourselves in the circumstances of the poem, which is what Fisher calls Narrative Rationality. In this case, I believe that by becoming one with the singer (character).
The Essay on Appalachian Musicians And Singers And The Songs They Write
Appalachian Musicians And Singers and The Songs They Write Growing up in Appalachia and around its music has made a great impact only life. I can remember, as if it were yesterday sitting on grandpa's front porch with my family singing along with Hillbilly songs on the radio. Alongwith entertaining the music eased the tensions of living a meager existence in Appalachia. By relating with these song ...
The audience becomes involved because Hughes (The narrator) expresses and makes the audience consider the singer life agony threw his song, which is something, most individuals do not often think about. The reader becomes involved because they have been made aware of threw song of specific circumstances of the singer. A relationship has been established between the reader and the story or song of the singer. I believe that the theme, or in rhetorical terms “message”, is the most important element for the analysis of any story. Again because the reader is first presented with the picture of the sad mad singing the blues, one might at first easily assume a simplistic and one-dimensional message intended. However, upon further analysis, as the sequence of the events unfold, what the poem seems to be about in the beginning is not what it turns out to be in the end.
At first because we no it is a Langston Hughes poem we think the focus is about Hughes. Then we see that the poem is about an experience of Hughes. Then the reader becomes interested. I think that there are two events in the poem, which could be defined as the climax to the story. One comes when the reader discovers that the singer is moaning and depressed. This information gives the story change in plot; it forces the reader to rethink the action sequences. The other event which could be defined, as the climax to the story is when the singer stops singing and sits there five minute after the song is over with a happy look on their face.
At that point, the reader feels his sense of accomplishment of an expressive song, in spite of his depressive state that could have limited his performance from being so great. Both of these events broaden the overall theme of the poem. The conclusion of the story comes when the poem ends with Hughes describing the singer as sitting there after the song with no emotion but the look of exhaustion on his face. Coming at the point in the end of the poem and the performance makes the theme more meaningful. These acts of greatness give the reader a message of inspiration and enlightenment. Hughes does and excellent job of catching type of emotion in this poem.
The Essay on Fly Buzz Poem Dickinson Reader
The Mood and Image in Poetry "This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight; the trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves; The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves; And the houses ran along them laughing out of square; Open windows" (Lowell 185). This quote, taken out of Amy Lowell's poem "September 1918," illustrates the ability of the author to be very ...
Throughout lines in the poem there was evidence that the singer was upset helpless and wanted to die. As stated earlier in the paper Hughes use some slang, This captures the realism of the [poem and proves Hughes feels that you don’t have to conform to the conventional type of poetry. Langston Hughes changed the way readers of his poem thought about themselves. He used a variety of mediums to express himself. He was a poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, journalist, and Lyricist. He is an intelligent man who dedicated his life to reaching his full potential.
Hughes is not only a great written but also according to Fisher’s Theory a great storyteller as well.
