Langston Huges

At the beginning of his career, he was surrounded by the Harlem Renaissance. New York City in the 1920’s was a place of immense growth and richness in African-American culture. For Hughes, this was the perfect opportunity to establish his poems. His early work reflects the happy times of the era. However, as time progressed he became increasingly bitter and upset over race relations. Except for a few examples, all his poems from this later period spoke about social injustice in America. The somber tone of his writing often reflected his mood. Race relations were the shadow of his career, following him from his first poem to his last. The tone and subject matter of Hughes’ poetry

For Hughes, it would appear that his life ended on a dejected note. Before his death in May of 1967, he wrote his final poem “Flotsam.” The title suggests that Hughes considers himself forgotten wreckage, and all his writing is wasted and forgotten. Its tone reeks of depression and self-pity, “On the shoals of Nowhere, / Wasted my song / Yet taken by the sea wind / And blown along.” Unfortunately, Hughes died feeling as though his writing did not help his race, and that his legacy was to be forgotten. For his entire life he had been writing about racism, slavery, and inequality. And yet in this final poem, even after the civil rights movement had peaked, Hughes is left feeling worthless. The bitterness he faced during his lifetime built up to a dull indifference that appears in this piece. Despite the fact that Hughes is “...among the most eloquent American poets to have sung about the wounds caused by injustice,” he thought his poems made no impact on society (Rampersad 3). On the other hand, Hughes’s poems had an incredible influence on African-American society. Although scholars and critics throughout his career dismissed his poetry as too “simple and unlearned,” his primary audience, the black masses, and even Hughes himself viewed his work as “folk poetry” which was beneath criticism (Rampersad 4-5). His poems, when studied as a collection over the span of his life, clearly show how the tone and emphasis in the writing reflect the mood of Hughes himself, as he grew old. The universal theme of racism and race relations defined all the important work of Langston Hughes.

can be linked to certain points in history, and his life.

The youth of Hughes is brought out by his poem “Harlem Night Club”, a piece that describes living in the moment. Often children do not consider the consequences of their actions; they act on instinct and desire. Hughes might have been twenty-seven when he wrote thi

Some topics in this essay:
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