Symbolism In Langston Hughes Poetry

During the 1920s the African American people suffered strong racial discrimination, they lived facing oppression like racism in employment, education and culture, consequently they lived a low quality life. Nevertheless despite all the racism and prejudice, many artists raised exalting their culture with the intention of create a new and positive image of themselves, through art, music and literature, transforming the 1920´s in the era of Jazz, Blues and the Harlem renaissance.

Among the entire artists that surged in that season Langston Hughes was one of the most emblematic in the Harlem Renaissance. In his collection of poems he talks about various themes like war, dreams, love, but the most outstanding is about the life of African American people.

Langston uses a lot of symbolism in his poems, yet the most important

These characteristics are distributed through Hughes’s poems in a way in which he can transmit joy and happiness or rage and grievance.

Quoting him from one of the essays he wrote about the influence of jazz in communication “Jazz seeps into words—spelled out words.” This is clearly understood once you read one of his poems because you hear no music; no instrument is playing but you can feel it, intertwined in each word creating the beat and rhythm with each verse, just as he explained in the same essay “Jazz is a heartbeat—¬its heartbeat is yours.” He believed jazz is everywhere inside each one of us, in all the words spoken and only once we understand it we could feel it.

The poet’s relationship to music goes beyond the verses of jazz rhythm in his poems. He also wrote musicals, operas, cantatas, and he cooperated with several composers and jazz musicians. He wrote music guides, including “Famous Negro Music Makers”, and the children’s title, “The First Book of