One of the most brilliant poets of the Harlem Renaissance, substantially underestimated during his lifetime, was Langston Hughes. His brilliant poetry is devoted to people, namely black people. The bulk of his poetry speaks of black people for black people from black people as unique entities interrelated by their collective unconsciousness. However, Langston Hughes was not only a poet. He engaged in numerous social activities and became a famous novelist, columnist and playwright. Hughes displayed an utter interest in literature since the very childhood. Later, he was forced compromise with his father and study engineering, however, he did not manage to finish studies and dedicated himself to writing poetry. Eventually, Hughes earned a B.A. degree in Lincoln University and continued writing (Meltzer 28). On the whole, the poet had a difficult life characterized by a constant fight with social prejudices and various life circumstances.
In “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, Hughes does not construct a black man’s identity in opposition to that of a white man, but derives it from its very origins in historical terms. Anthropology claims that Africa is the cradle of humanity, which proves all findings connected with Australopithecus, or the Southern man, that dawned in south-eastern Africa and later reached the neighboring continent. The logic of primacy and even superiority to a certain extent applies in this case, because that was a modern man’s ancestor, and this fact is not to be ignored or questioned. “Negro Speaks of Rivers” applies the use of symbolism for conveying the picture of the evolution of black man in America. The poem uses the word “I” right through the poem which represents the African people as a whole and not as an individual person. Hughes uses “rivers” as a figure of speech helping him to express his feelings and opinion. Hughes is an African person who has faced the pain of racism and slavery. Hence, the poem under consideration is a spiritual reflection tightly connected with the most painful moments of the author's life. His priority was to capture the essence social and racial injustice and manifest it back through his writings omitting racial stereotypes (Hughes and Arna 16-84). The tone of the poem is pride mixed with confidence, however, without any aggression and negativity towards representatives of other races and ethnicities.
The author's first volume of poetry was published in 1926 and it was sponsored by wealthy patrons. In the 1930s, Hughes got involved in politics, and joined the American Communist Party because he believed that communist ideology may bring an anticipated justice and equality to society. The most idiosyncratic feature that characterizes Hughes is as Johnson and Farrell point out that he is “the first poet in the world to transform the idioms of blues and jazz into poetic verse. Hughes's career displays the solidity of the Harlem Renaissance as the basis of modern African American literature.” (Hughes and Earl 94-108).
Basically, that could be one of the interpretations of the poem. …