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.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
“Theme for English B” is free-verse and written in the persona of a young Black college student living in Harlem in the late 1940s. It is also jazz poetry. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics defines this poetic form as “thriv[ing] on the artful balance between discipline and freedom, silence and noise, and presence and absence of notation. The white space beyond and between lines informs pacing within the poem.” Hughes includes some rhyme in “Theme for English B,” but the scheme is irregular, or spontaneous, like jazz improvisation.
The poem’s structure involves a repetition of the number five. There are five stanzas total. The first five lines of the poem are from the teacher (the teacher’s dialogue tag and writing assignment). The next stanza’s 10 lines can be broken up into five lines for the speaker’s reaction to the assignment and five lines for the description of his journey home. The fourth stanza, the assignment itself, is 25 lines, or five times five. Five is a common chord progression in jazz harmony (two-five-one), and jazz musicians say “take five” to mean take a break.
Furthermore, the white space changes when the assignment changes subjects. When the speaker discusses how the teacher is white, the lines become shorter, adding more whiteness to the page. This reflects the white space in the first five lines of the poem: the line indicating the instructor is talking, as well as the italicized and indented lines of the writing assignment. Conversely, one of the poem’s longest lines discusses how the speaker and Harlem “talk” (Line 19) on the page, their discussion overwriting the white page with black letters, or characters.
Em-Dashes
Hughes’s use of em-dashes is influenced both by the rhythms of jazz and the tradition of American poetry or, in other words, from both Black and white artistic traditions. In Line 20, Hughes writes, “Me—who?” (Line 20). This recalls Emily Dickinson’s use of em-dashes in her poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?”; she writes “Are you — Nobody — too?” (Line 2). Both Hughes and Dickinson are writing about the nature of the self with the same punctuation mark.
However, Hughes’s lived experience was dramatically different from Dickinson’s, so his poetry integrates her style with other (Black) influences. According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, “Though poets such as Hughes [...] are frequently identified with the heavy use of blues, jazz, and other spiritual materials in their work [...] [they] also composed poetry in traditional European forms, as Hughes insisted he be able to do in his seminal essay ‘The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain.’” In addition to these European forms, Hughes drew upon the (white) American canon of poetry, specifically Dickinson’s eccentric punctuation.
He also used the em-dash to mimic rhythmic changes in jazz music on paper. One could argue that the em-dash in poetry is like the rest notation in sheet music. A rest comes between notes like the em-dash comes between words. Like jazz notation on sheet music, the use of punctuation marks in written poetry is a way to show the reader how the poem would sound when read aloud.
The Craft of Writing
“Theme for English B” uses several metatextual elements, or details about the process of writing. These are presented before and after the speaker’s written assignment (Stanza 4). The text of Stanza 2, the instructor’s description of the writing assignment, is in italics and indented, which sets it apart from other stanzas. The assignment is spoken—”said” (Line 1)—unlike the rest of the poem, which consists of thoughts and the written word. Overall, “Theme for English B” is interested in tracking the circumstances surrounding how this verbal prompt is responded to, as well as the response itself.
The speaker clearly indicates where the written assignment begins and ends. The entire poem ends with the speaker’s summary of the fourth stanza: “This is my page for English B” (Line 41). The act of writing is a reaction. This metatextual content highlights the theme of being a Black student in a mostly white academy—the circumstances surrounding homework, e.g., where it is completed, are different for students who live in different places.
Related Titles
By Langston Hughes
