18 pages • 36 minutes read
Langston HughesTheme for English B
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context
“Theme for English B” is part of Montage of a Dream Deferred, written in 1948, while Hughes was in his mid-forties. According to the editors of The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, Rampersad and Roessel, Hughes composed the book-length poem after he moved into a Harlem townhouse purchased with money from Street Scene, an opera he co-wrote. These details are one clue that Hughes takes on a persona, or character, for the speaker of “Theme for English B,” who is 22 and lives in a room at the YMCA. While many readers might assume that the first-person speaker of the poem is a younger version of the poet, the fact that the speaker and Hughes were born in different states—North Carolina and Missouri, respectively—further distinguishes the poem’s “I” from Hughes. The final biographical clue that separates the speaker from Hughes is that Hughes went to college in Columbia, while the speaker attends CCNY.
The truth is that the body of Hughes’s work contains many such personas who are separate from the poet. The speaker’s character could have been inspired by people the poet saw while living in Harlem, or he could be a completely imaginary person inspired by the vibe of Harlem and Hughes’s experiences in college classrooms. In the 1940s, Harlem was experiencing an influx of residents as part of the Second Great Migration of African Americans from the South. The speaker of “Theme for English B” being from North Carolina makes him a representative of this migration.
Literary Context
Hughes was central to the Harlem Renaissance—a “term in which Harlem [...] stands for the variety of outposts of African-American cultural production in the United States and abroad” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetic). While this literary movement flourished in the 1920s when Hughes was publishing his earlier books, “Theme for English B” still represents Harlem Renaissance ideals. For example, despite its creation in 1948, “Theme for English B” retains the jazz and blues influences that define many poems of the 1920s. It also participates in the Harlem Renaissance project of “championing Black artistic production as a way of attaining full rights and participation in American society” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics). “Theme for English B” focuses on the production of writing—the process, or craft, as well as the “page” (Line 41) itself. Harlem Renaissance artists used their voices to shift the stereotypical cultural narrative regarding Black Americans, and this aspiration is clear in a poem where the Black speaker is acutely aware of (and burdened by) societal regard.
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