Let America Be America Again By Langston Hughes
“Let America Be America Again” is a poem written by Langston Hughes during the Great Depression in July 1936. The poem takes you from a dream, the American dream to reality by spreading the awareness that the “American Dream” is about freedom, equity, and prosperity. On the other hand, a dream is only as real as you make it, and the author along with Americans feels that it is just that a dream.
Throughout the poem, Lanston Hughes talks about the American dream and how different it is compared to the world he sees within the United States. Many of the people mentioned in the poem are born Americans getting treated differently as stated in (stanza 8) “I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.” Where there is no freedom, no equity, and prosperity at the cost of countless people being left behind, can’t be the dream they hope to perceive. Hughes stands on that America never was America to me put insight that he was never at peace with America, at least not the way he picture it.
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Freedom is one of the many broken pieces, he wants America to be America again such as the American dream. Subsequently, as the other characters mentioned, they can’t hope to have that without equality. “O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.” Even if America claims to be free for the free, as Hughes would put it, freedom is close but not
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