Poetic Devices In Langston Hughes's Poems
Can you count how many times you have used a simile to convince your parents to get you something? For example, “Please buy me this game! It’s as important as paying your bills!” Merriam-Webster defines simile as a phrase that uses the words like or as to describe someone or something by comparing it with someone or something else that is similar. There are many famous poems that use similes as a poetic device. The poet 's’ background influences their writing. “A Red, Red, Rose” by Robert Burns, “Ode to My Socks” by Pablo Neruda, and “A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes are three examples of poems which use similes to help develop their theme. Langston Hughes is a famous Scottish poet and lyricist. He is seen as the national poet of Scotland. …show more content…
Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and a columnist. Hughes spent most of his childhood with his grandmother, who filled his imagination with stories of the past. The tradition of storytelling inspired Hughes to write. Additionally, he was influenced by American poets Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman. “A Dream Deferred” is a poem based around the question, “What would happen if dreams were postponed?” The similes used in this poem are indirect comparisons of the theme, which is dreams, hopes, and plans. “It dries up like a raisin in the sun.” Dreams can become dry in a matter of time if you don’t take action when given the opportunity. Leaving your dreams untouched for too long can result in them to having little chance of occurring. “It festers like a sore.” Things fester when they aren’t healing or aren’t being cared for properly. The speaker is saying that a deferred dream won’t heal or go away. “It stinks like rotten meat.” The sense of smell reminds us to do something about it, like throw the rotten meat away. Hughes makes an interesting distinction between ignoring dreams and getting rid of them altogether. “It sags like a heavy load.” The heavy load can refer to all the thoughts on the speaker’s mind. The load is being carried with great effort and will take hard work to reach the destination, just like a dream. These similes helped readers to understand the theme more as it gave examples that everyone could
Theme Of Oranges By Gary Soto
199 Words | 1 PagesThe overall theme of the poem is sacrifice, more specifically, for the people that you love. Throughout the poem color and personification are used to paint a picture in the reader's head. “Fog hanging like old Coats between the trees.” (46) This description is used to create a monochromatic, gloomy, and dismal environment where the poem takes
Rhetorical Analysis Of Fish Cheeks By Amy Tan
427 Words | 2 PagesTan wants the audience to take in how Tan portrays an American’s view of Chinese food. A simile is comparing two things to each other creating a better idea of description to the reader. Throughout the essay, Amy Tan uses Imagery and simile to create a vast and detailed idea of the surroundings in her essay. Through using Imagery and simile Tan creates a deeper connection from the reader to her essay.
I Am Offering This Poem By Jimmy Santiago Baca
484 Words | 2 PagesFor example, the poet uses a personification towards the poem saying to keep it “as a warm coat”, displaying the poet's desire to comfort and bring a warm feeling to the reader. The poet also uses a simile to express the poet’s want to protect the reader and keep them “tucked away like a cabin or hogan in dense trees” to protect them from any worldly dangers that might threaten to harm them. This simile presents the poet’s desire to act as a haven for the reader, and their desire to give the reader all their love because they can’t give any materialistic things. Throughout the poem, the poet presents the reader with lots of imagery to convey images of warm, protected, and comforting feelings. An example of this imagery is the poet welcoming the reader in with “a pot full of yellow corn”, giving the reader an image of coming in from the cold to be embraced with a warm comforting
Figurative Language In Anne Lamott's Shitty First Drafts
765 Words | 4 PagesThis simile makes Lamott feel more relatable to the reader because this is a feeling that most inexperienced and discouraged writers go through. Saying things like “feel despair and worry settle on my chest like an x-ray apron” only connects the reader to Lamott even more (Lamott 469). Once the reader becomes engaged and forms a connection with what the writer is saying and feeling, continuing to read the essay is easy. At this point the reader wants to know what can be done to shake the feelings of “despair and worry” when it comes to
Langston Hughes The Negro Speaks Of Rivers
244 Words | 1 PagesHughes Langston. The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Joplin: MO, 1902 - 1967. The speaker Langston Hughes claims that he has known rivers as “ ancient as the world “ older than the blood that flows in our veins.
Analysis Of Kevin Young's Poem 'The Hunch'
659 Words | 3 PagesKevin Young is an American poet, author, and editor of nineteen books. Young typically relies on imagery and rhymes in his poems, however, in his poem “The Hunch,” he used similies when writing to illustrate the evolution of love. Young skillfully depicts this adventure in just nineteen lines, from first sight to drowning in your love for someone. Before genuinely understanding how similes emphasize love progression throughout the poem, it is imperative to understand what a simile is. A simile is a figure of speech that makes a depiction more vivid.
Long Live Langston Hughes Analysis
835 Words | 4 PagesThe Power of Art ¨Trumpeter of Lenox and 7th / through Jesse B. Semple,/ you simply celebrated Blues and Bebop / and beling black before / it was considered hip.¨ (Wesley Boone). Although the poems ¨Long Live Langston¨ by Wesley Boone, and ¨The weary Blues¨ by Langston Hughes were written in different time periods and with different purposes, the poems show similarities such as using similar figurative language to express an idea, and differences such as communicating different themes. Here are some examples of the similarities and differences shown throughout the poems. To begin with, in the poems ¨Long Live Langston¨ by Wesley Boone, and ¨The Weary Blues¨ by Langston Hughes, the authors include similes in their work, which helps the reader understand the similarities between the poems.
Similes In Harlem By Langston Hughes
225 Words | 1 PagesIn the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, several similes are used to portray the reality of dreams. Hughes employs effective metaphors, inviting us to visualize a dream and what may happen to it after it passes from conscious thought. Could a dream dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or even fester like a sore? (Hughes, 1951, p. 631).
Literary Devices Used In Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game
572 Words | 3 PagesA simile is a comparison that describes two different things using ¨like¨ or ¨as.¨ The first way Connell demonstrates using a simile is in the example, ¨The sea was as flat as a plate glass window.¨ He describes the sea to a smooth glass window. During this part of the story, there was no breeze in the air and the ocean waves were still and calm, which caused Rainsford to feel stressed about the strange things that were happening around the island. Another way Connell used a simile was ¨... his thick eyebrows were pointed and military mustache was as black as the night from which Rainsford had come.¨
The Influences Of Langston Hughes During The Harlem Renaissance
403 Words | 2 PagesOne of the most important literary figure was Langston Hughes. When the “Harlem Renaissance” became popular, Langston Hughes’ influences, style of writing, and themes made him different than the others. Langston Hughes was influenced by people and events. The people that influenced him were Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg, and Walt Whitman.
Compare And Contrast My Papa's Waltz
596 Words | 3 PagesCompare and Contrast: My Papa’s Waltz and Grape Sherbet “My papa’s waltz” by Theodore Roethke is a poem about the relationship between father and son, where the son try to teach the father waltzing. “Grape Sherbet” is a poem by Rita Dove, describes his/her childhood memories of father. Both author used literary terms such as simile and alliteration from the line/quote that I pointed out. Theodore Roethke used simile to explain what was waltzing is like and Rita Dove used alliteration, the name of the recipe.
The Negro Speaks Of Rivers Analysis
1409 Words | 6 PagesLangston Hughes poems “Harlem” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” are two poems that have a deeper meaning than a reader may notice. Hughes 's poem “Harlem” incorporates the use of similes to make a reader focus on the point Hughes is trying to make. In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes shows how close he was to the rivers on a personal level. With those two main focuses highlighted throughout each poem, it creates an intriguing idea for a reader to comprehend. In these particular poems, Hughes’s use of an allusion, imagery, and symbolism in each poem paints a clear picture of what Hughes wants a reader to realize.
Three Major Themes In Langston Hughes's Poetry
1089 Words | 5 PagesLangston Hughes was an American poem born in the early nineteen hundreds, who became known as the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He published many poems that brought light to the life of people of color in the twentieth century. There are three poems that the speakers are used to portray three major themes of each poem. Racism, the American Dream, and Hopes are all the major themes that Hughes uses to highlight the average life of a person of color. Theme for English B,” “Harlem,” and “Let America Be America Again” were three of Hughes’s poems that was selected to underline the themes.
Analysis Of What Happens To A Dream Deterred By Langston Hughes
762 Words | 4 PagesUsing the detail “Does it stink like rotten meat?” expresses how we don’t realize the gravity of something until something makes us realize it. When something is put away, we may forget about it or defer from it. After time it may be a lost detail in our minds until it hits us, and we remember about it. In life we may think about a dream and may want to accomplish it but something interferes so we put it to the side. In time something may remind us about is and what hits us is the inner emotions we may have locked
Poem Analysis: Nothing But Death By Pablo Neruda
1000 Words | 4 PagesThe poet compared the graves like a shipwreck that is the death will take the human go down and drowning to the underground like the dead bodies in the graves. The last line “as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.” is like the rotting of the dead bodies. The second stanza there is one Simile in this
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