Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Compare and contrast "The Weary Blues" by Langston Hughes with "I, too."

Both "I, Too" and "The Weary Blues" focus on African American men who try to express themselves. In "I, Too," the speaker tries to express himself by an act of simple defiance, namely his refusal to "eat in the kitchen / When company comes." His act of defiance is built upon the assertion that he too represents and is America. In "The Weary Blues," the piano player expresses himself through his music and his singing. His form of self-expression is also defined, at least in part, as an act of defiance. The piano player's music is an act of defiance against his oppression as a black man, which is implied by the fact that the music he plays is called "those Weary Blues."
One key difference between the two poems is that "I, Too" is written in free verse, meaning that it has no regular rhyme scheme or meter, whereas "The Weary Blues" has a more regular rhyme scheme. The free verse form of "I, Too" lends to the poem a more natural, spontaneous tone, which helps create the impression that the words are spoken in and are a product of a moment. They are the personal, impromptu response of a man pushed too far. This impression is compounded by the fact that the poem is written as a first-person narrative.
However, in "The Weary Blues," there is a more regular rhyme scheme, built around rhyming couplets like "tune/croon," "night/light" and "floor/more." These rhyming couplets perhaps reflect the music being described and specifically the repetition of certain chords in blues music. The piano player's self-expression thus comes across as a more practiced form of self-expression, which is perhaps why it is described in the title as "Weary."


There's no one correct way to compare two pieces of literature, so let me just draw your attention to some of the main avenues you could take your discussion. From there, you can develop your own argument.
The most obvious connection between the two poems is clearly their treatment of race. In different ways, both "The Weary Blues" and "I, Too" are statements about the integrity of African American art and life. If you know anything about Hughes's biography, this won't be surprising; he's likely the most famous figure associated with the Harlem Renaissance, which represented not only a flowering of African American culture, but also an attempt to shift society's perspectives on what constituted "high" art. Hughes, for instance, often incorporates the conventions of blues or jazz, traditionally African American genres of music, into his poetry. "The Weary Blues" is itself a good example of this; Hughes's use of repetition in particular (for instance, the back-to-back lines, "He did a lazy sway... / He did a lazy sway..." (6-7) is characteristic of blues music.
"I, Too" also deals with race, but from another angle. The subject here is not music, but the validity (and, in fact, American-ness) of African American experience: the poem opens with the statement, "I, too, sing America," which is an allusion to "I Hear America Singing," a famous work by Walt Whitman, a canonical American writer. In comparing the two poems, then, it might be helpful to think about how each constructs an argument about race/racial experience via the different ways in which they use literary and poetic devices, such as allusion, meter, rhyme, etc.

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