“As I Grew Older” – A Poignostic Life of Blacks by Langston Hughes

“As I Grew Older” – A Poignostic Life of Blacks

P.Kavithapriya,

Bishop heber College,

Trichy.

 “AS I GREW OLDER” poem was written by Langston Hughes.

The poet very well shown the slavery and suppression of African and American people. The speaker once had a dream,which is now hidden behind a thick wall of shadows.As he gets older,though,he gains the confidence and strength to attempt shattering the wall to reclaim his dream.He moves from listlessness to empowerment over the course of the poem.He also addressed his poetry to the people,specifically to black people.During the twenties when most American poets were turning inward,using language and themes,attitudes and ideas familiar to the society.He often transformed a Racisim in his poem.

In this poem, he brought a black people’s suffering and their slave life very well in all his poems.It contains a narrative about struggle and empowerment that shares thematic similarities wit “Dream” and “Harlem”.He is used a potential allusion to the Greek myth of Icarus. Icarus was tantalized by the brilliance and glory of the sun and built himself wax wings to fly there. However, his excitement caused him to fly much too close, his wings melted, and he plummeted into the sea. Although there is a risk inherent in the speaker's decision to shatter the “thick wall," the largely affirmative tone of the second half of the poem seems to suggest that even if he fails, there is spiritual value in possessing the self-realization to grasp for a dream that might be out of reach.Thus,this poem brought a clearview on slavery and racisim.

James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist,playwright.He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry. Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue".

Hughes's ancestry is complex. Both of Hughes' paternal great-grandmothers were African-American.First published in The Crisis— official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — in 1921, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", which became Hughes's signature poem, was collected in his first book of poetry The Weary Blues (1926).Hughes and his fellows tried to depict the "low-life" in their art, that is, the real lives of blacks in the lower social-economic strata. They criticized the divisions and prejudices based on skin color within the black community. He states,

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

The poem analyses an African-American poet involved in the civil rights movement. He lived when black people were heavily oppressed in America, and he believed that poetry and art could bring about racial equality. Hughes was involved in the Harlem Renaissance and was one of the first poets to promote African-American culture. It deals with the experience of growing up with racial inequality.

Everyone has their own dream, but many people cannot succeed on their goal. In this poem, poet beautifully depicts the African American’s dream and who it was shattered of.In the beginning of the poem, the speaker recalls his dream which he was thought very years back and had nearly forgotten, but  now  that dream raised again. The children born to a African American will suffer for most. They  are considered to be a blissful ignorance. They were treated as a second-class-citizens.

The speaker wanted to break the thick walls and dark hands, so that he can access his dream. The thick wall was separating him from the dream. His dream was a bright like a sun.He uses the violent language to show that  the speaker is suddenly empowered and feels no equivocation or anxiety about what he must do. The speaker imagines the shadow breaking apart into thousands of fragments of sunlight and liberating his dreams. The speaker specifies that he is black and lies in that shadow. It  casts a dark shadow over him.Now, he realizes that he is black, only the black remains. As he grows older, though, he decides to break through the wall with his hands, smashing the night and shattering it into sun so that he can be reunited with his dream.

The wall is a symbol of racial discrimination. It symbolizes all the impediments and humiliations that confront the black man in America. The poem is a bold assertion that no human being should be discriminated against on the basis of the color of his skin.

Many of Langston Hughes’s poems invoke the theme of the American Dream.  Hughes addresses this concept from the perspective of the country's disenfranchised, including African Americans, Native Americans, downtrodden immigrants, and poor farmers. He portrays the glories of liberty and equality as out of reach for these populations, depicting individuals who are trapped under the fist of prejudice, oppression, and poverty. Their dreams die or are forgotten in a life defined by a desperation to survive. However, Hughes does often end his poems on a somewhat hopeful note, revealing his belief that African Americans (and others) will one day be free to pursue their dreams.

 ‘As I Grew Older’ is a typical Langston Hughes poem that presents this painful social reality.

Works Cited:

Hughes, Langston. The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes (Vintage Classics).   Oct, 1995.