As I Grew Older - Langston Hughes

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    For this blog, I chose to analyze the poem "As I Grew Older" by Langston Hughes.
 
    In the poem "As I Grew Older", Langston Hughes uses specific word choice to convey his message on how it is increasingly difficult for black people to achieve their dream in a racist world and the only way to move past this is to take matters into their own hands. 
    To begin with, Langston references the hopes of the marginalized people as a "dream" and how it is a "forgotten" one. A dream is typically referred to something that people yearn for but usually is difficult or not possible to achieve. This immediately sets up the idea that the freedom that the people are yearning for is something far out of reach and "forgotten" by the people due to the oppression. This idea is further cemented when Hughes mentions how a "wall rose" between his dream and himself. A wall so "thick" and high that it dimmed the light of his dream. As it can be seen, throughout the whole poem, Langston reiterates how the wall of racism has just been growing higher and higher and causing the dream and hopes of freedom to be out of reach. 
    But, Langston ends his poem off on a very bold and optimistic tone. He highlights how everyone just help each other and unite to "break through the wall" of racism in order to achieve the thousands of dreams. This word choice by Hughes achieves two things. Firstly, it shows how Hughes believes it's time for everyone to unite in order to break past this barrier. And secondly, it highlights the number of people who have been oppressed due to racism, it's not just a few people, it's actually "thousand lights of sun" and "thousand whirling dreams" that have been repressed by the society and racism. 

Comments

  1. Kian SchneeweisNovember 5, 2023 at 10:19 AM

    I really like how you broke down his use of certain words and analyzed how they contributed to his overall message. I certainly agree that the poem is highlighting how difficult it is for black people to chase their dreams.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel (Yungeun) LeeNovember 5, 2023 at 11:05 AM

    I liked how you connected specifics words and concepts to ideas that the author was trying to portray, such as with the word "dream." I also liked how you focused on specific words and phrases and adequately connected them to the general message you stated in the beginning.

    ReplyDelete

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