I, Too by Langston Hughes

The Norton Anthology American Literature

The theme I am focusing on is slavery. This poem seems to be about wanting freedom and overcoming slavery in the African American race. "They send me to eat in the kitchen" Hughes (1039). In days past, slave owners made their slaves eat dinner in the kitchen so as not to be seen by the owners eating in the fancy dining room,  should they have guests or not. It was all about shaming the race.

The way this poem speaks to me is through tone. It is strong and independent sounding. Throughout, the structure is deliberate and the words are placed to make the meaning clear.

The significance of this poem is to address racism, equality and independence through the main point of slavery. This poem is similar to the modernist work "To Elise" by William Carlos Williams(782)
It has short deliberate stanzas that reminds me of "I, Too".
"The pure products of America
Go crazy
Mountain folk from Kentucky" (782)

Langston Hughes was an activist especially in racial justice. This poem at first glance seems simple and easy to read, but when I focused on each line, it made more sense to me what this poem was exactly about. Slavery ran rampant in Missouri and racism still exists in 2017.

A Street Car named Desire-Southern Literature

A Street Car named Desire

This play is about New Orleans and several characters. Stella and her husband Stanley, several of Stanley’s friends, Blanche (Stella’s sister) and the upstairs neighbor, Eunice. From the beginning, one could see that this place, New Orleans was not paradise. Blanche comes to “visit” her sister and brother-in-law and ends up staying for almost the entire time. The sisters are from Oriole, somewhere South. It would seem as if they had a pretty posh life until recently. Blanche is homeless and later we find out all kinds of juicy details about her. Blanche tries to talk sense into Stella p. 1140 “In my opinion? You’re married to a madman!” Stella doesn’t want to hear it, despite Blanche being correct. We find out later, Stanley is a manipulative evil man.

The theme I chose is women’s rights for this project. From the start, one could tell that women were not respected in this area or the time period. Women were good for several reasons: cook, sex and have babies. There is no strong woman figure in this story and they were all manipulated by men. Women in this story had no back bone to the rough men and kept going back to them after horrible things happened.

I think that Stanley was grossly misunderstood by Blanche. Yes, on the surface he seemed harmless and simple minded but we find out that what he spun was a terrible scheme including both sisters. A madman was simply a deeply troubled drunk man who, under unknown circumstances ended up in Louisiana in The French Quarter. He seemed to recover quickly enough when he seemed so drunk he lost his temper.

I see Stanley as an opportunist, that is he saw dollar signs in Stella and she was easily manipulated by his good looks. I believe he cheated on Stella and he even raped her sister. What kind of man does that? A madman? I do not believe so, I think he had the misfortune of living in a rough neighborhood, did time in WWII and was an alcoholic. When he was younger, perhaps he tortured animals too. This play was almost entirely dialogue, very descriptive dialogue.