Literary Interpretation Paper

I decided to write my interpretation paper on Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. This paper will be centered around their similar yet different writing styles. I enjoyed reading both authors piece of work. I believe what I enjoyed most was everything wasn’t all black and white. Meaning their writing styles kept you guessing and filling in the blanks. After reading both authors work I realized that they both were born around the same time. Equally were amazing African American authors which we didn’t have many during that era. Although their writing styles are similar the authors themselves are different. One focused more on Socialism while the other focused on Christianity. In this interpretation paper my goal is to compare and contrast the differences and similarities of the two authors.   

HERITAGE-by...Countee Cullen

What is Africa to me:

Copper sun or scarlet sea,

Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?

So I lie, who all day long
Want no sound except the song
Sung by wild barbaric birds
Goading massive jungle herds,
Juggernauts of flesh that pass
Trampling tall defiant grass
Where young forest lovers lie,
Plighting troth beneath the sky.

So I lie, who always hear,
Though I cram against my ear
Both my thumbs, and keep them there,
Great drums throbbing through the air.

With the dark blood damned within
Like great pulsing tides of wine
That, I fear, must burst the fine
channels of the chafing net
Where they surge and foam and fret.

Africa? A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.

Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink; no more
Does the bugle-throated roar
Cry that monarch claws have leapt
From the scabbards where they slept.

Silver snakes that once a year
Doff the lovely coats you wear,
Seek no covert in your fear
Lest a mortal eye should see;
What’s your nakedness to me?

Here no bodies sleek and wet,
Dripping mingled rain and sweat,
Tread the savage measures of
Jungle boys and girls in love.

What is last year’s snow to me,
Last year’s anything? . . .

 . . The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set.

So I lie, who never quite
Safely sleep from rain at night—
I can never rest at all
When the rain begins to fall;
Like a soul gone mad with pain
I must match its weird refrain.

Quaint, outlandish heathen gods
Black men fashion out of rods,
Clay, and brittle bits of stone,
In a likeness like their own.

My conversion came high priced;
I belong to Jesus Christ,
Preacher of humility;
Heathen gods are naught to me.

Ever at thy glowing altar
Must my head grow sick and falter,
Wishing he I served were black,
Thinking then it would not lack
Precedent of pain to guide it,
Let who would or might deride it;
Surely then this flesh would know
Yours had borne a kindred woe.

Lord, I fashion dark gods, too,
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features. . . .

All day long and all night through
One thing only must I do:
Quench my pride and cool my blood,
Lest I perish in the flood.

Lest a hidden ember set
Timber that I though was wet
Burning like the driest flax. . . .

Nor yet has my heart or head
In the least way realized
They and I are civilized.

Harlem

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

Dream Boogie

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?
Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a —
You think
It's a happy beat?
Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a —
What did I say?
Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!
Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!
Y-e-a-h!

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

I’ve known rivers: 

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers. 

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. 

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. 

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it. 

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset. 

I’ve known rivers: 

Ancient, dusky rivers. 

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Literary Interpretation Paper