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As I Grew Older Literary Analysis: Langston Hughes's Use of Form, Meter, and Rhyme Scheme to Convey



In this poem, Hughes talks about how he was barred to achieve his goal. He had a dream in his childhood. As he grew older, he realized that it was difficult to fulfill his dream in a country where racial discrimination and inequality existed. The hindrances were like a big, thick wall that stood between him and his dream. However, with time, he learned how to fight back. He knew the power inside him. With this energy, he wished of breaking the wall and lightening the space his community was barricaded into.


As Hughes grew older and become young, he identified the growing wall of discrimination is raising invisibly. This wall projected all the hapless African Americans from the projectile of development, freedom, and growth. This wall represents a variety of things such as racism, inequality, discrimination, and injustice.




As I Grew Older Literary Analysis



1. In his poem "As I grew older" Langston Hughes depicts a very negative image of the notion "American Dream". The poet metaphorizes his own experiences of racial discrimination and thus also his experiences containing the reality of the American Dream in four steps that can be outwardly seen as four stanzas.


2. The poem "As I grew older" by Langston Hughes contains many contradictions between its subject and the Declaration of Independence. One main aspect, the poet tries to deliver, is the discrimination of coloured people living in America nowadays. The Declaration of Independence offers all people living in America certain unalienable and God-given rights. Liberty and individual rights shall be guaranteed for everybody. The poem expresses the opposite. By regarding the second and the third stanza, you can easily read between the lines that all these personal rights, such as "life", "liberty" and the "pursuit of happiness", are not valid for all people living in America, the so-called nation of unlimited possibilities. Not all Americans live up to the law, that is also expressed in the Declaration of Independence. It seems as if Langston Hughes really had to suffer from discrimination and racism. All his hopes and his dreams have been covered by these problems, he could not really live the American Dream. This main aspect that can be found in the Declaration of Independence has also been expressed by Martin Luther King. A historical reference to Martin Luther King can be seen in the last stanza. ("My hands! Break... wall!", ll. 26/27) Langston Hughes tries to break out of this system, he somehow tries to overcome all his problems, the nation's problems, exactly as Martin Luther King did. The guaranteed rights of liberty and life are thus not valid for all Americans. "Pursuit of happiness" is also not fulfilled. The Declaration of Independence promises this right, but how can anybody live a happy life being discriminated by people living in his own country? The "can-do-attitude" also fades: One important aspect of the American Dream is having this pioneers' spirit, having a very strong will to reach all imaginable aims. Sadly, this "can-do-attitude" fades if somebody isn't even able to live up to his own nature. (ll. 15-17: "The light of... wall.") These aspects are the reasons why Langston Hughes criticizes the American nation and thus the American Dream so heavily. He wants to be "free at last", as Martin Luther King expressed it in his address "I have a Dream".


3. The poem "As I grew older", written by Langston Hughes teems with stylistic devices, such as alliterations, chiasm, comparisons, caesura, opposites, enumerations, metaphors, anaphoras, epiphoras, personal pronouns, historical references, a paratactical sentence structure and parallelism.


Questions about his own racial identity plagued James's childhood and early adolescence. James persistently expressed his curiosity to his mother, but saw race as secondarily important. When the racial changes of the 1960s swept through New York, James had difficulty reconciling the rise of black power with the fact that his mother was white. James was constantly embarrassed by his mother's whiteness, because it signified her difference from his peers and their parents. As James grew older, however, he began to accept his mother more easily, embracing her quirks and eccentricities rather than resenting them.


The classic Great Expectations protagonist, Pip, is perhaps one of the most worthy literary characters for exploration and analysis of all time. Author Charles Dickens divulged this character in his famous 1860 novel, and he remains one of the most studied fictional characters of all time. Pip's character is kind, naive, curious, ambitious, and boyishly optimistic. Fully named Philip Pirrip, Pip's story is a classic coming-of-age novel, as it is a novel about maturity from childhood to adulthood. It watches Pip transform from a young, immature boy, to a man. In Pip's story however, this coming-of-age honors his simplicity and kindness in that he does not lose these qualities in becoming a man, but instead refines them. Great Expectations is the journey of Philip Pirrip. In it, Pip tells the story as both of the narrator and the protagonist of his own life and of the lessons he's learned along the way.


Literary analysis means closely studying a text, interpreting its meanings, and exploring why the author made certain choices. It can be applied to novels, short stories, plays, poems, or any other form of literary writing.


A literary analysis essay is not a rhetorical analysis, nor is it just a summary of the plot or a book review. Instead, it is a type of argumentative essay where you need to analyze elements such as the language, perspective, and structure of the text, and explain how the author uses literary devices to create effects and convey ideas.


The traits that Peter follows began as something that his parents pushed him into. As he grew older however, he continued to carry out these traits. He did this because he was interested in what he had been raised into and he believed that it was something he wanted to continue. The social group he was raised in (Catholic) influenced his life and his behavior even as he grew older.


Kinsey evolved from lecturing to hectoring as he grew older, insisting on his theories in statements of unwavering certainty. His behavior may have been influenced by unwise use of barbiturates, at a time when their danger was not fully understood; he slept little, drove himself too hard, alienated colleagues. And having found that people are rarely exclusively homosexual or heterosexual but exist somewhere between zero and six on the straight-to-gay scale, he found himself settling somewhere around three or four. The film's director, Bill Condon, who is homosexual, regards Kinsey's bisexuality with the kind of objectivity that Kinsey would have approved; the film, like Kinsey, is more interested in what people do than why. 2ff7e9595c


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