What is the theme of theme for English B?
‘Theme for English B’ is one of Langston Hughes’ best-known poems. It delves into themes of identity and race through the depiction of a black man’s writing assignment.
Who wrote theme for English B by Langston Hughes?
A LitCharts expert can help. A LitCharts expert can help. “Theme for English B” was published the American poet Langston Hughes in 1951, toward the end of Hughes’s career. The poem is a dramatic monologue written in the voice of a twenty-two-year-old black college student at Columbia University in New York City.
How does the narrator of “theme for English B” differ from Hughes?
The differences between Hughes and the narrator of “Theme for English B” may be of a part with Hughes’s career-long ideal of focusing on the archetypal black man—a man similar to, but also distinct from, Hughes himself.
Does “theme for English B” use end-stop or enjambment?
“Theme for English B” uses both end-stop and enjambment throughout the poem. However, the speaker doesn’t establish a pattern or a set of rules about when he uses one or the other.
What means English B?
English B is about developing your ability to speak and write in English, using the right words for the situation you are in: to communicate effectively.
What is one of the major themes of Theme for English B?
Major Themes in “Theme for English B”: Identity, creativity, and racism are major themes of this poem. Right from the beginning, the black speaker struggles to come up to the expectations of his white professor.
What is the thesis of Theme for English B?
Through his poem “Theme for English B”, Langston Hughes expresses his will to exterminate discrimination by proving that despite different skin colors, Americans all share similarities and learn from each other. Langston wrote the poem in 1900, when black Americans were not considered Americans.
Which is the best statement of a major Theme of Theme for English B?
Which statement is the best statement of a major theme of "Theme for English B"? America's educational system is a bastion of equality in a nation otherwise beset by vast inequality.
Who is the speaker in Theme for English B in what ways does he define himself?
The speaker of “Theme for English B” self-identifies as a black person, “the only colored student in my class.” For the first half of the poem, the speaker emphasizes the ways in which his ethnicity separates him, physically and figuratively, from his white classmates and professor.
What is the mood of the poem Theme for English B?
The mood of this poem is very inspiring. Hughes writes how he is very accepting to the fact that he's African-American. It's inspiring because, if he is happy with who he is-even being treated unfairly-then we should learn to love ourselves.
What does the speaker mean by saying that he and the professor are a part of each other?
In "Theme For English B", the speaker says that he and the instructor are part of each other. He believes that despite the fact that he was a colored man and the instructor was white, they were still inseparably tied to each other.
What figurative language is used in Theme for English B?
The line "Bessie, bop, or Bach" show both alliteration and allusion because it repeats the 'b' sound and it refers to two musical artists. The metaphor builds you up towards his main idea of race and equality by saying that they are all one and the same.
What is English A and English B?
English A is generally referred to as American English ,whereas,English B is all about British English. The basic differences or the point of distinguishing these two different branches of English lies in it's vocabulary.
What is the theme of English B?
Theme for English B by Langston Hughes. ‘Theme for English B’ is one of Langston Hughes’ best-known poems. It delves into themes of identity and race through the depiction of a black man’s writing assignment. Within ‘Theme for English B,’ Hughes creates a young, twenty-two-year-old narrator who speaks about his own experience as a black man in ...
How many lines are there in the theme for English B?
Structure of Theme for English B. ‘Theme for English B’ by Langston Hughes is a thirty-six line poem that is divided into stanzas of varying lengths. The shortest is only one line long and the longest is twenty lines. There is not a single pattern of rhyme that Hughes used to structure the entire poem, although the poem does contain rhyme.
What poetic techniques are used in theme for English B?
Hughes makes use of several poetic techniques in ‘Theme for English B’. These include but are not limited to personification, anaphora, and alliteration. The latter, alliteration, occurs when words are used in succession, or at least appear close together, and begin with the same sound.
How old is the narrator in theme for English B?
Within ‘Theme for English B,’ Hughes creates a young, twenty-two-year-old narrator who speaks about his own experience as a black man in a primarily white community. Despite having been written decades ago, this poem, like many others Hughes wrote, is still applicable to today’s society.
How many lines are in the third stanza of the book?
The third stanza is ten lines long and contains the young speaker’s thoughts about the possibility of writing. He wonders if it’s likely that it’s “that simple” to write. He gives the reader bit of his background. The speaker is a young man, twenty-two years old, black, born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
What is the theme of English B?
“Theme for English B” is a lyric poem, which means that it is fairly brief, that it contains the thoughts of one speaker who speaks in the first person throughout the poem, and , rather than relying on action and plot to convey its point as a narrative poem would do , it largely reflects on the speaker’s experiences and feelings about those experiences . The lyric is the most common and popular form of poetic writing today.
Why is the theme for English B important?
Jarraway calls “Theme for English B” “arguably the most important poem in the Montage sequence” because it “explodes the notion of a racially pure self.”.
What are the central questions Hughes poses in “Theme for English B”?
The central questions Hughes poses in “Theme for English B” seem simple: who are we and how is it that we know who we are? Such questions, he suggests, must be simple because an instructor in a basic English class—“English B”—uses them as the basis for an almost offhand assignment: “Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you— / Then, it will be true.” But of course it is exactly this idea—that knowing who we are is never simple—that Hughes plays with throughout the duration of the poem. In it, he illustrates the various ways in which we come to understand our identities by having the student list the most basic autobiographical details about himself (how old he is, where he was born, where he now lives, etc.) and, later, by indicating the ways in which he likes to spend his time and the things he enjoys. But as is evident from the student’s initial autobiographical details—“I am the only colored student in my class,” he says in line 10—identity contains, or references, or “means” much, much more than this.
How old is the narrator in Theme for English B?
In the context of the montage of which it is a fragment, “Theme for English B” is in some ways incongruous. Its first person narrator, a twenty-two-year-old student at the “college on the hill above Harlem” (Columbia University) has moved to New York from the South, where he was raised and schooled.
What does the student say in line 40?
In line 40, the student avows that the free man can still learn something from those “less” free—the descendent of slaves and the still politically, economically, and socially marginalized member of American society. The final line, then, is full of irony.
What is Hughes's title?
Title. Hughes’s title categorizes the poem for us, generically. This is going to be an assignment, a “theme” composed for “English B,” a piece whose audience is essentially the speaker’s teacher.
How many times does the theme for English B repeat?
Also repeating—also unpredictably—are the hill in Harlem; “a part of me” and” a part of you”; the important word “true”; and, clumped at the center of the poem, “hear”—five times.
What is the theme of English B?
Langston Hughes's "Theme for English B" is what literary critics term "self-reflexive" or "self-referential," meaning that it is a poem that reflects on itself as a poem and on the act of the writing the poem, a characteristic typical of literary modernism, a movement that influenced the Harlem Renaissance, of which Hughes was part. The very title of the poem focuses the reader's attention on the act of writing and composition. The opening lines frame the poem as an assignment in a university writing course, offering first the professor's instructions to the students about writing and then the student's process as a writer, reflecting on that process in ways that complicate the act of writing by suggesting that there are specific obstacles faced by the Black writer in trying simultaneously to complete the assignment and to be true to his own identity. He worries about whether "my page be colored that I write" and struggles to understand if that will vitiate his work in some manner. In the end, though, he resolves the dilemma by suggesting that the common humanity of writer and reader is what enables successful writing and communication and concludes with the line "This is my page for English B." The conclusion serves as what some literary theorists would describe as a "performative utterance." In other words, the text before the readers is not just a poem about the page for English B but also is the page.
What is the theme of Langston Hughes's poem?
The first major theme of Langston Hughes's "Theme for English B" is education. The very title of the poem frames the work as an assignment for a university class. "English B" suggests the second semester of a first-year writing or literature course, one likely to be required of all students rather than an advanced course for English majors.
What are the three aspects of identity in the poem?
The narrator is described as "twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem." Thus the reader is confronted with three separate aspects of identity: age, race, and geography .
What is the name of the college on the hill above Harlem?
Although the "college on the hill above Harlem" is not named, its location suggests City College of New York. City College was originally founded as the Free Academy of the City of New York in 1847 with the mission of providing good education to the children of immigrants and other poor families. At the time Hughes was writing, City College was still distinguished for providing first-rate education to Blacks, Jews, immigrants, and other students who due to racial, class, and ethnic discrimination had limited opportunities to attend elite universities. Other educational institutions are also designated only by their locations in Winston-Salem and Durham, located in the racially segregated South. This institutional diversity suggests that education was often seen as a panacea that might eventually enable Blacks to overcome racial inequality. However, it is not just racially segregated Southern institutions that are seen as problematic but also City College, an institution described as a "college on a hill" in a phrase reminiscent of Matthew 5:14-16: "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid." Education is seen in the poem as dominated by White faculty and ideology and therefore incommensurate in some ways with Black cultural identity.
What is the theme of English B?
‘Theme for English B’ is a poem by Langston Hughes that is a part of the literature of the Harlem Renaissance. It provides the view of a racist world as seen by a young man living in Harlem.
Who wrote the poem "Theme for English B"?
It is a poem by Langston Hughes, and speaks about racial discrimination during early 20th century America. This article brings to you a ‘Theme for English B’ analysis along with its summary. It is a poem by Langston Hughes, and speaks about racial discrimination during early 20th century America.
Author Biography
- Langston Hughes’s writing career stretched from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s to the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. The most prolific African-American writer of his time, Hughes published sixteen collections of poetry, two novels, seven collections of short stories, two autobiographical works, five nonfictional texts, and nine books for children during his lifetime. H…
Poem Summary
- Title
Hughes’s title categorizes the poem for us, generically. This is going to be an assignment, a “theme” composed for “English B,” a piece whose audience is essentially the speaker’s teacher. But the title also plays on several words here: what else, for instance, might Hughes be referring … - Lines 1-6
This first stanza sets the scene for the poem, introduces its primary characters, and elaborates on the information already provided for us in the poem’s title. Here, Hughes tells us what the occasion for the “theme” and the poem will be—an apparently simple assignment, just a page to …
Themes
- Identity
The central questions Hughes poses in “Theme for English B” seem simple: who are we and how is it that we know who we are? Such questions, he suggests, must be simple because an instructor in a basic English class—“English B”—uses them as the basis for an almost offhand as… - Race and Racism
Although the poem builds on the individual themes of identity and race or racism, in some sense
Style
- “Theme for English B” is a lyric poem, which means that it is fairly brief, that it contains the thoughts of one speaker who speaks in the first person throughout the poem, and, rather than relying on action and plot to convey its point as a narrative poem would do, it largely reflects on the speaker’s experiences and feelings about those experienc...
Historical Context
- Langston Hughes “arrived” as a literary figure in American culture with the 1921 publication of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” in The Crisis, the literary journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which itself had been formed out of The Niagra Movement in 1910. The Crisis was under the general editorship of W. E. B. Du Bois, perhaps the …
Critical Overview
- Scholars and critics today generally agree that the work of Langston Hughes exhibits a tremendous experimental force, one that derives its importance not simply from the influence it has had on other writers (particularly those working to integrate poetic discourse with more generally popular forms of expression, such as jazz or vernacular speech), but from the firm fou…
Criticism
- Kristina Zarlengo
Kristina Zarlengo, who received her doctorate in English from Columbia University in 1997, taught literature and writing for five years at Columbia University. A scholar of modern American literature, her articles have appeared in academic journals and various periodicals. In the followi… - What Do I Read Next?
1. Langston Hughes was not only the writer, but the editor of a significant body of fiction. The Best of Simple, a “greatest hits” collection of Hughes’s stories featuring his popular folk character, Simple, appeared in 1990. Also of interest is the collection of African-American short stories Hu…
Sources
- Early, Gerald, “Three Notes Toward a Cultural Definition of the Harlem Renaissance,” in Callaloo,Vol. 14, No. 1, 1991, pp. 136-49. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present,New York: Amistad Press, 1993. Hughes, Langston, Fine Clothes to the Jew,New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. Hughes, Langston, I Wonder …
For Further Study
- Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds., Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present,New York: Amistad Press, 1993. Jemie, Onwuchekwa, Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry,New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Lewis, David Levering, When Harlem Was in Vogue,New York: Knopf, 1981. Pemberton, Gayle, “Another ‘Theme for English B,’” in The …