Song for a dark girl analysis

Poetry is one of the medium that poets convey their opinions, views and suggestions to their audiences. Poets use different styles and techniques to ensure that their messages are understood. The poet employs allusion in enhancing understanding of the setting of the poem. Dixie was a famous song during the 19 th century sung to celebrate the glory of the South. Therefore, using this in the introduction part of the poem sets the impression that the poem setting was in the South American. The irony in the use of the song is that whites sang it and it demeaned and patronized the African Americans.

JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. We know from the title that the speaker of this poem is a black girl. She's singing, and we're going to guess that she's singing something like the blues. But then we get these weird parentheses, which let us know that someone or something is breaking our speaker's heart. In other words, keep the Kleenex close.

After reading it, the reader is left to dwell on themes such as racial inequality, violence, and love lost. Hughes uses clear diction that conveys the meaning of the poem in a direct fashion. There are a few moments in which the syntax is rearranged in order to make lines feel more poetic and rhythmic, but not so much so that the meaning is obscured. The poem describes through simple stanzas the loss that this young woman has suffered.

Poetry has been battling cultural and social norms since cavemen wrote on walls. African Americans, however, did not get the opportunity to truly express their voice and challenge the discrimination and oppression they faced in America until after emancipation. Even after this blacks were subject to extreme violence and injustice, still being seen as inferior citizens of the United States. Langston Hughes wrote poetry that opposed the social views on race of the white population during the s. He incorporated aspects of the perspectives of both races in order to show the injustices being done to African Americans.