Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen: Perspective on Religion

In the 1920s, the somewhat genteel world of American poetry was shaken to its foundations when the Harlem Renaissance started. During those times, in exclusively every(prenominal) over the United States, on that point was an outburst of bullnecked threatening fathoms, piece of writing with African-American cadences and rhythms. Moreover, during that period, gener solelyy several(predicate) and diverse subject matters and styles subsisted in poetry. Furthermore, the blues and jazz clubs in Harlem served as an opportunity for the up-and-coming colour writers who wrote to increase the aw atomic number 18ness of the Negro people and inculcate pride in their African heritage.Among these writers were Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes. These writers employed the policy-making, religious, and affable facets of the African American happenings as springboard for poetic illustration. Nevertheless, these two writers differ in their bread and butter act upons, style, and expressi on usage. A proclaimed poet of the Harlem Renaissance, Countee Cullen, uses his poem, Yet Do I Marvel, to send a very strong and enthusiastic message.The poem is a first-person monologue in which a Black poet, indistinguishable from Cullen, voices doubt and confusion dependable about the world, about the relationship between god and man, and about this particular poets place in the world. No earreach is addressed directly. The poet stupefys by professing his belief in a God who is exclusively-good, good-intentioned and almighty. He besides affirms that God has reasons for everything that happens in the world, even if these reasons argon a lot difficult for man to under cornerstone.In particular, the poet wonders why such an all-good compulsive Being could allow things like physical disabilities and death. In the two quatrains the poet observes several examples of worldly imperfection. He workforcetions the sightlessness of the mole and the mortality of human flesh. He as well as refers to the never- ending punishments of two figures from Greek mythology Tantalus, plagued by insatiate hunger and thirst in the midst of unreachable food and drink and Sisyphus, faced with the impossible project of rolling uphill a rock which ontinuously slips back to the starting-point before the task is finished. In the sextet the poet wonders whether there is each way to explain the blindness of the mole, the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus or the death of human existences and decides that only God has a satisfactory explanation for these worldly imperfections. The ways of God are beyond understanding and human beings are too distracted by the everyday cares of life to see reason behind the mighty pass of God. The poet does non mention that he is Black until the final couplet.The I at the beginning of the poem is an unidentified human. At the end of the poem this I proudly reveals himself to be not only a poet, merely a Black poet. This revelation tra nsforms the poem from a general comment upon the human put through with(predicate) to private reflection. Of all the incomprehensible follow ups of God, the well-nigh amazing for the poet to understand is that God make him both(prenominal) a poet and Black. The strong mood of religious reflection in this poem stems in large part from the central shoes of the Christian church in the culture of Afro-Americans.Intensity of religious fervor and a vivid gumption of presage anthropomorphism are cat valium themes in the poetry of Black American poets. A split second cardinal theme for Cullen is his speed. Blackness is a focal point of the poem. It is the last of a series of imponderables in the human condition. On the one hand, the poets unappeasable skin is included in the same category as the blindness of the mole or the punishments of Tantalus and Sisyphus. It is anformer(a) example of the mysterious ways of a God who inexplicably made humans of different skin color.On the other hand, the blackness of the poet is a source of pride, a endow of that Almighty Creator whose ways are always right. Thus Cullen, a poet of the Harlem Renaissance in the ahead of time part of the twentieth century, was asserting the mysterious beauty of black skin long before the easy-bred Rights movement made Black pride fashionable later in the century. At the same time, Cullens experience as a Black man is set in the context of his role as a poet. He is a poet made Black, not a Black made a poet. Like his black skin, Cullens poetic talent is a mysterious source of both pain and joy.This poet who fashions a highly prettify poem filled with sophisticated allusion is, at the same time, a member of an oppressed race often denied the opportunity to acquire such erudition and poetic skill. Indeed, Cullen emphasizes the involuntary nature of his poetry. He did not pack to be a poet any more than he chose to be Black. It was God who made him both a poet and Black. It is God wh o commands him to sing. The poet cannot help himself anymore than he could change the color of his skin. The source of his poetic power is divine and lies outside him.While some poets find this source in nature or in the individualized subconscious, Cullen attributes this power to the Supreme Being who dominates this poem. Cullens insistence upon the divine inspiration of the poet is assume in a poem which combines themes from Classical and Biblical sources, for both traditions affirm the ability of supernatural beings to speak through humans. The Greeks called these deities of inspiration Muses spot the Biblical God inspires prophets with warnings for humans. A similar God bids Cullen to sing.In the end, the poem offers more than the personal posture of a Black poet. It speaks not just of the Black condition but of the human condition. All humans feel the irony of a life filled with petty cares, with mysteries, with struggle and with death, but a life brimming with the marvel o f Gods great deeds, with the excitement of divine inspiration, and with an appreciation for the beauty of a poem well made. Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues and jazz into words. An African American Hughes became a well kn protest poet, novelist, journalist, and playwright.Because his father immigrated to Mexico and his mother was often away, Hughes was brought up in Lawrence, Kansas, by his gran Mary Langston. Her second husband (Hughess grandfather) was a fierce abolitionist. She helped Hughes to see the cause of affectionate justice. As a lonely boor Hughes turned to reading and writing, publishing his first poems while in high indoctrinate in Cleveland, Ohio. The speaker in The Negro Speaks of River delivers his claims in a cosmic voice that extends throughout all time and space. This voice includes all peoples.Hughes ancestry included three major race groups he lived as an African-American (Hughes referred to himself as colored or Negro, because he was writing before the term African-American was genuine widely) his parents were African-Americans. But Hughes interests removed exceeded racial limitations. He embraced all of life. He suffered the color-line, when racism was strong in archaeozoic twentieth-century America, but he rose above racial hatred and felt love and compassion for all races. His acceptance is especially evident in The Negro Speaks of River spoken by a cosmic voice that includes and unites all people.The poem begins, Ive known rivers / Ive known rivers ancient as the world and older than the / flow of human line of merchandise in human veins. The river symbolizes the linkage of all human life from the earliest time to the present. He stay puts naming rivers that represent the hi news report of Western culture. From the Euphrates to the Mississippi, the history of mankind from Biblical times to the period of the American Civil War is represented. The Euphrates is considered the cradle of Western civilization. The speaker of the poem claims to have bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. Thus the cosmic voice begins at the origin of civilization. The speaker because moves westward to the Congo claiming, I built my shanty near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. Here he focuses on the African experience, as he does in the following line, I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. Neither claim limits the voice to a black voice, because the blank and sensationalistic races have lived along the Congo and were among the slaves employed by the ancient Egyptians in constructing the pyramids.Hughes cosmic voice unites the races in one cosmic person. He highlights the American experience claiming, I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe capital of Nebraska / went down to New Orleans . . . . Lincoln reminds us of the process of emancipation of slaves, and the Mississippi River symbolizes the human blood of all races. The speaker repeats My soul has grown deep like the rivers. Because the soul is the life force of the body, the period of energy, the person who recognizes that his soul has grown deep recognizes his own identity.In this poem the river symbolizes the link of mankind as the blood in the body is believed to be linked because we are all children of God, and thus we have the common ancestry originating with Adam and Eve, the symbolical first parents. The cosmic speaker portrays selfhood and recognizes his roots, his identity as a child of not only one set of biological parents but as a child of the earthly concern (or of God), and he is linked with all humanity, all races, all creeds for all time through the depth of his own soul.Susan Glaspell lived in a time where the most evident social issue was the inequality between men and women, and that women greatly relied on men in order to live. Glaspell, as a budding writer and feminist, assay to resurrect them scathe by writing plays regarding the free dom of women against the gender roles that the society dictates. With the help of her husband and friends, she started the Provincetown Players, where they are able to experiment on new plays which explores sensitive social issues like gender inequality. Glaspells Trifles is a good example of these plays.This play depicts the role of women in the society during the time it was made. During that time, men are fluid considered to be superior to women. It is also the time when men usually undermines the capabilities of women, as well as forefront their decision-making ways . The play showed how women were usually ruled by their emotions and intuitions, which they used to successfully unmask the graphic symbol . The story revolves around the case of the murdered John Wright, who was strangled with a rope while he sleeps in his farmhouse. The main suspect was his was wife, Minnie Wright, who was already arrested and is not portrayed in the play anymore.The problem of the characters wo uld be to prove whether Minnie Wright was really guilty of murdering her husband. Susan Glaspell was born on the late 19th century, where women are not yet recognise as equals of men. Her writing style is influenced by her Midwestern background. The first career she took after graduation was a reporting job for a daily newspaper. The play Trifles was base on an actual murder case that she has worked on during her days as a reporter. After she quit her work as a reporter, she began writing fiction novels. Susan Glaspell became open to radical ideas when she met George pay off, a married man from Davenport.She was able to work on the conventional gender roles, just like what is being tackled on Trifles. Glaspell and Cook developed an affair, and were married afterwards. With Cook being a nonconformist, Glaspell was able to freely do what society restricts her to do because of her gender and class. It was also through Cook and some of her friends that she was able to practice her literary freedom and come up with plays that talk about societal issues of her time. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a self-proclaimed philosopher, writer, educator and an intellectual activist of the womens movement from the late 1890s through the mid-1920s.She demanded equal treatment for women as the best means to advance societys progress. She was an extraordinary woman who waged a lifelong battle against the restrictive social codes for women in late ordinal-century America. The Yellow Wall-Paper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, reflects womens role in the Nineteenth Century. Women were controlled by their husbands and other men. Women did not have much social life. Women did not have any. Gilman uses many complex symbols, such as, the house, the bedroom, and the wallpaper to forces on the major theme of the story.The story is an interpretation how women are oppressed by males in society. Gilman attempts to reveal this onerousness through her use of male imposed wear out. One wom ans struggle with both mental and physical effort represents the greater battles between women and men. Confinement represents classic male oppression and the woman represents all women and their struggle to inlet free from male authorisation. The significance of the confinement is seen in both the vivid descriptions which symbolize the male dominance and the womans subsequent reaction to this incarceration.The yellow wallpaper paints a distinct picture of confinement in both the physical and symbolic sense. Physically the house itself serves to lead to feelings of isolation. It represents the classic institution, that part of society which attempts to constrain the individual. symbolically the narrator being confined to the room by her husband is representative of opportunity to see the oppressive society in its truest light. Within the pattern the narrator sees nursery complete with rings and things in the walls and a bed nailed to the floor.It is in this men had over women, t he ability to ensure a womans dependence on a man through exerting the began to tear down the walls of female oppression that exist to this day. She broke free from the confinement that suffocated her and for a moment showed society its greatest flaw, inequality. Completely in the end as her insanity dominates her, she does begin the process, a process which his wife to the nursery John exercised this dominance over his wife. The story The Yellow paper is about a woman who fights for her right to express what she wants, and fights for her right for freedom.The story also shows the uneven equilibrize of power between husband and wife in the Nineteen Century. Gilman uses many symbols to show the readers womens social condition, lives, and all unfair treatment they had in the Nineteenth Century at different level of scopes. By apply symbols, Gilman represents the effect of the oppression of women in society in late the Nineteenth Century. This story is primarily existential in natur e. Gilman believes that with the fight, she can be free all women can get freedom from the male rule world.From her story, she does not agree women have to accept the unfair truth. She believed women can change their own situation. Booker T. capital of the United States and W. E. B. Du Bois, both early advocates of the civil rights movement, offered solutions to the discrimination experienced by black men and women in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Despite having that in common, the two men had polar approaches to that goal. Washington, a man condoning economic cleverness had a more gradual approach as opposed to Du Bois, whose course involved speedy and centre equality both politically and economically.For the time period, Washington boilers suit offers a more effective and appropriate proposition for the time whereas Du Boiss approach is precedent to movements in the future. Both have equal influence over African Americans in politics. Washingtons proposal excels in re ference to schooling while Du Bois can be state for achieving true applaud from white Americans. Du Bois urged African Americans to involve themselves in politics. Gaining this power would be essential to immediate beseeching of rights.Political association would prevent blacks from falling behind because when the Negro found himself deprived of influence in politics, therefore, and at the same time unprepared to participate in the higher functions in the industrial development which this country began to undergo, it soon became evident to him that he was losing ground in the basic things of life (Doc I). Du Bois also directly challenged Washington when he stated that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is a not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them (Doc E). W. E. B.Du Bois goes on to tap that that the principles of democratic government are losing ground, and caste distinctions are growing in all directions (Doc F). All of t hese political demands are comprehensible but Du Bois desired a radical change Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season (Doc E). This is close to nagging, which was surely unfavorable among primarily white politicians. The effectiveness of incessant complaining would steadily decrease. Washington avoids political involvement which in general is a neutral action neither promoting nor causing defacement of the Negro population.In 1880 the percentage of 5-19 division olds enrolled in school for whites was rough 60% while the percent of blacks was roughly half that, which was a vast improvement over just thirty years before when black enrollment was around zero (Doc A). Although black students appear to be bettering themselves, it is still quite unfortunate there may be more black students enrolled but their education system was still below that of white folk. This in effect explains why the illiteracy rate of the white population was at 10% while the percentage o f the black population unable to read sky-lined at 60% (Doc B).Both Washington and Du Bois recognized the gap but took completely different approaches to contact a remedy and also had differing views of what necessary education was. Washington believed that if blacks focused their attention on striving economically they would eventually be given the rights they deserved. To do this, he encouraged attending trade schools like the ones which he worked with. The Tuskegee Institute of Alabama, which he founded, was where no time was wasted on dead languages or superfluous studies of any kind.Then he proposed working either industrially or agriculturally since their education would be based on what is practical and what would best fit the young people for the work life (Doc G). Du Bois, on the other hand, had grown up well rounded culturally. A historian specializing in the history of blacks and a noted sociologist, at the age of 93 he became a member of the communist party and exiled himself to Africa. Du Bois had high hopes for the dexterous Tenth after thorough education they could succeed. The fight for first class citizenship could be earned through the university educated Negro through the court systems.Although it is a well thought out solution, the number of black college students enrolled was still quite low at the time. He believed along with others, that industrial education would not stand African Americans in place of political, civil, and intellectual liberty (Doc H). It is true that being cultured is important but for the time, labor was the necessity and would bring supposed status. W. E. B Du Bois, however, is able to surpass Washington in the area of overall respect and morality concerning white folk. Booker T. Washington made a point that if blacks could prove themselves useful, they could achieve their rights.Washington stated, No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracized. It is importan t and right that all privileges of the laws be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of those privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is charge infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house. In theory, Washington concluded that in order for African Americans to succeed, it was imperative for them to befriend the white men. Only then would the struggle for blacks end.He continually sounds of begging when stating to the white men Casting down your bucket among my people, destiny and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds and to education of head, hand, and heart While doing this you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unbitter people that the world has seen. All this had been said in his Atlanta Compromise Address in 1895 (Doc D). It was also apparent to everyone African American w ho did not totally agree with Washingtons idea that this was a sign of entree for the black race.The submissive part was, if none else, the fact that we were to accept that black people were going to continue to use their hands as a means to be productive to a white society. many a(prenominal) blacks turned away from such a statement and this is where W. E. B. Du Bois came to relieve them. Although Fortune stated, It is impossible to estimate the comfort of such a man (Doc G), Du Bois rejected the philosophy of Booker T. Washington declaring that he was condemning their race to manual labor and perpetual inferiority.He argues that the way for a people to gain respect is not by continually belittling and ridiculing themselves (Doc E). The De Facto segregation, such as a separate water fountain for colored only (Doc J) proposed by Washington did alleviate white and black tension but til now was degrading. He presents that the wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle earlier than of artificial forcing (Doc D).Barnett criticized that Washington, one of the most noted of their own race should join with the enemies (Doc H). Such attitudes from Washington could sincerely be appreciated by Southern whites who in no way would want to be equivalent to a Negro. Although both men approached the topic differently, the advancement of civil rights would not be as far along today if it were not for both simultaneous views. Each needed the other to achieve his agenda. However, the most experienced in dealing with the sensitivity of the prejudices was Washington.He seemingly knew what buttons to coerce and how far he could push them. Curiously, the year Washington gave his Atlanta Compromise Address in 1895, the number of blacks lynched dropped from 170 the previous year to jus t above 120. It is also interesting to note that after Du Bois gave his speech about The Niagara Movement in 1905, the numbers began to steadily increase again (Doc C, D, F). Du Bois approach of ceaseless agitation, unfailing exposure of dishonesty and wrong (Doc F) was not ready for the time where Washington is more rational in his gradual approach.