Langston Hughes Let The Us Dream To Be America Again

Compare/Contrast paper “America was never America to me.” This quote means that the author is not just exposing the problem; he promises to contribute to the future solution. In the poems “I Hear America Singing” and “Let America be America Again” the two poets are expressing their true love for America. Walt Whitman wrote “IHAS” and Langston Hughes wrote “LABAA” . These poets both love America but the perspectives of each poem is different.

To celebrate the founding of this country, many things come to mind when we are asked to describe the quality of America. From the various liberties Americans enjoy to the racial and ethnic mix of Americas people. The concept of the American Dream can be found throughout our culture and our history. It can also be found in the most humble of places. It is present in the efforts and sacrifices of a first generation American family to see their kids graduate

In Langston Hughes’s poem “I, Too, Sing America”, the context of the poem is based off of when he was segregated with an American family and how he will take a stand without hesitating. Langston Hughes is able to show the confidence and the beauty of a different race to another race showing that individuals are all equal. In Maya Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise”, she is talking to a single person and communicates the potential of an individual when it comes to fighting for what is right. Maya Angelou describes her personal characteristics that may have obstructed the individual’s life. Although the individual that she is talking about has bashed her and mistreated her, she is seen as a great example to many other African Americans who have faced segregation by still standing up to what she believes in despite the bitterness she may have received.

“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” a doctrine established by our founding fathers and adopted by the United States as the original meaning of the American Dream. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald illustrates the dissent of the American Dream. As time progresses the meaning of the American Dream became lost, but it still has pertinence to the present. The Declaration of Independence set the basis of what the American Dream meant and why it still has relevance to its people’s live today.

“Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great land of love […] But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe” (Source C). American citizens believe in the opportunities that America offers. The American dream is the ideal that every U.S. citizen should have an equal opportunity to prosper and succeed through hard work and determination.

Brooks does a good job of expressing universal longing in her poem by stating, “Grand griefs. And choices”(p.1064 line 11). By saying grand griefs, Brooks is relaying the idea that there are certain griefs that are felt by humans as a species, and not each one as an individual. Similarly, in his poem, Frederick Douglass, Hayden states, “When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful and terrible thing, needful to man as air, usable as earth”(p.1067 lines 1-4). In this excerpt, the author portrays the idea that freedom is something that all men need, not just whites or African Americans, but the entire human population of the world.

Dylan Thomas’s famous elegy “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” is perhaps the greatest example of villanelle in modern poetry, using death as its focus. Death is a unifier in the sense that no man, big or small can resist their eventual end. However, the author recognizes the solemnness of the concept and connects it to the audience’s fear of losing a loved one. By doing so, the poem taps into the raw emotion of the will to live. This paper will describe how Thomas uses a series of brilliant poetic strategies such as diction, structure and rhythm to suggest that all men, while different in character, should passionately resist the inevitability of death.

In the poem "Let America Be America Again," Langston Hughes paints a vivid word picture of a depressed America in the 1930's. In this poetic expression, a speaker is allowed to say what he wants for America to be America, what is that we don't have that high gas prices. I think that I would change, that people who aren't working should not get any money from the state, freedom is a privilege instead of the state giving it for free. My brother is epileptic and he works so how come everybody in the world wants something for free. I learned over two years that everything is the same in Germany as in America sure we speak different we have different opinions about something, but we are still the person who we want to be is our decision about how we want to live our lives.

The American Dream is this idea that every American has an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. Each citizen is had earned to live a happy life in America. In the poem “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes, it is stated that the American Dream is non-existent. Many may think it is there an American Dream, however, it is just an idea that has never been conceived. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the American Dream is present; however it is very hard for one to achieve.

The second speaker also reshapes the first two lines of the entire poem into a plea to the majority. Beforehand, the first speaker uses those lines as a call for the old American spirit to be revived: “Let America be America again / Let it be the dream it used to be” (1-2). Both speakers change the meaning of the lines to express their thoughts on America. As a result, the poem expresses the desire for everyone to be treated equally in the land of freedom. The readers can relate to the speaker because they wish that everyone has equal rights in the country that proclaims itself to be the symbol of freedom.

“We must bring back our mighty dream again,” said by Langston Hughes. That quote from “Let America be America Again” means everybody in America has a dream and some feel they can’t have a chance to achieve it because of the inequalities in America. Also, Walt Whitman’s poem, “I Hear America Singing,” ties in with the quote because they are working at a lower scaled job, but they are happy. They are happy because they feel that they are experiencing the American dream.

In “Let America be America again,” “The Latin Deli,” and “Two ways to Belong in America” America has been proven that it is only free for some but not for all. In these stories, they insist that that America has only been free and equal towards its American born citizens. They explain how most of the immigrants have been discriminated against and treated poorly. Most of them tell how they have been forced to make their own communities because of how they have been treated. The immigrants have all been discriminated against and are not free unlike American born citizens.