Poem analysis

I analyzed the poem, “I, too, sing America.” by Langston Hughes with my classmate. We found out about the poet’s background and we found out that the poem was related to food. We chose this poem because first of all, we were attracted by the title. And then we saw how short the poem was compared to the others and knew that there’s a lot to analyze. We especially thought there was a deep meaning in the word, “darker brother”.

First, I will introduce the background of Langston Hughes.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri, and died in 1967 from cancer. His parents divorced when he was a young child and his father moved to Mexico. He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen.

Langston Hughes was an American poet, novelist, and playwright. He published his first poem in 1921. He attended Columbia University in1921 but left after one year to travel. His African American themes made him a primary contributor to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.

I think he wrote and expressed his feelings towards this poem. Even though he feels he is an American, he looks different because of his skin color. He feels that he is excluded because he is an African American, however, he speaks out against racism and sings that he is an American. 

This is the poem we analyzed.↓

I, too, sing America.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

The rhetorical devices included in the poem are:

Metaphor: “I am the darker brother” is a metaphor for the African American population. 

Also, in the poem, the narrator is denied from sitting at the ‘table’ and is forced to ‘eat in the kitchen.’ I think this is a metaphor for the segregation and inequality experienced by the African-Americans during the 1900s. 

Repetition: the repetition of pronouns like ‘I’ ‘they’ and ‘me’ make the poem personal and powerful. ←this use of repetition makes the reader feel like they have a connection with the narrator and gives them a deeper understanding of the themes. 

Allusion: the first line, “I, too, sing America” alludes to Walt Whitman’s poem “I Hear America Singing” which explores the different voices that make up American and how one group is forgotten. 

We thought the tone of the poem is patriotic because Hughes wants to be a part of his country. 

We looked into each line in detail. In the first stanza (first line): “I, too, sing America.” The use of “I” is very personal and we can understand that the speaker is the poet Langston Hughes.

In the second stanza, in the first line, Hughes writes “I am the darker brother” and he identifies himself as “darker brother”. Also, we can interpret “darker brother” as African American as he recognizes himself as the color of his skin by saying darker. The word “they” in the second line refers to the white people and this tells that the Blacks cannot dine with the Whites. However, Hughes emphasizes hope is not lost. He takes the situation positively not negatively.

In the third stanza, it looks towards the future. We can interpret this way because the tense has changed to the future tense. The first two stanzas, it is written in the present tense. He hopes that he would be able to sit with the other Americans and he has a vision of no discrimination and the African American would be treated equally as the White.

In the fourth stanza, it recognizes how beautiful the African Americans are. Not only will he and other African Americans be treated equally, but those who have persecuted them for centuries will be ashamed of what they did. They will recognize the beauty and vitality of the African Americans and realize their wrongs.

In the last line, “I, too, am America.”, we can interpret that Hughes feels he is an American and we can see that the feelings towards being an American are even stronger compared to the first line. This phrase may have a message that each person is important and everyone should be accepted and treated equally. 

Our first impression of the poem was that from the stanza Tomorrow, it sounded that the speaker wanted to make a change and make his life better. We thought that the poem was the poet Langston Hughes' experience because it was written in the first person. 

Analyzing the poem, we found out that the poem is looked at as a big theme which is about racism. Hughes' experience applies to other African Americans' experiences and this poem showed the relationship between the White and the Black. We thought the word, “I” stood out because the “I” meaning African Americans who are the minorities sounded like they are seen as individuals. 

Lastly, we thought that the poem was related to food. There are words related to food in the poem such as eat, kitchen, and table. The table is a piece of furniture where people eat and gather together. A kitchen is a place where food is prepared and cooked. We thought that the writer including the African Americans was looked at as slaves or servants. In the poem, it is explained that the Whites eat at the table and the African Americans are moved to eat in the kitchen although the kitchen is not a place to eat. Their status is extremely low and they do not have a chance to eat in a proper place. Normally, we do not eat in the kitchen. In fact, we mostly eat at a table. Eating at a table means that we sit down and have a rest while we eat. However, eating in a kitchen, we will feel that there is no rest and it is a difficult area to have communication. We thought dining together is very important and the White and the Black eating together would be one of the dreams and a vision for equality.