“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes

Introduction

“Theme for English B” by Langston Hughes is a poem that is both a college student's tale of being asked to write an essay for his English class and the “true” essay he therefore writes. The poem is also one piece of the long poem Montage of a Dream Deferred. It was written in Harlem in 1948, and published in 1951. It is Hughes's continuous struggle at creating a systematically modern, carefully significant poem.

One of Langston Hughes's most anthologized poems, “Theme for English B” explores issues of race, culture, and nationality, concluding with an inspiring yet subtly critical assessment of the possibility of racial harmony in America. Hughes narrates in the voice of a young African-American man writing a college theme, or English composition paper, responding to the prompt to “let that page come out of you….then, it will be true (Hughes, 45-50).” This young but self-assured, reflective, and cautiously hopeful narrator describes his southern past and his current life in New York, as well as his different pleasures in life, before addressing his English teacher and discussing the role of national identity in resolving racial and cultural conflict.

Discussion

Appearing near its center is the brief “Theme for English B,” whose familar vocabulary and speech ryhthms make it read like something we might hear every day. The narrator, who wonders if his homework assignment is really simple, poses his question in a poem that seems to answer it--the question comes from the midst of an uncomplicated bunch of words. This poetry is free of the strange phrases and the forced language and rhythm that inspire many readers of poetry to revile the genre. On closer inspection, we realize that the poem's themes are challenging, its patterns of rhythm, rhyme and sound refined. These marks of effort will never, however, remove from the poem its accessibility. (Emanuel, 25-30)

“Theme for English B” is written in free verse--it stays the track of no one rhythmic pattern; it has no regular rhyme scheme. It does, however, establish patterns. The instructor's homework assignment, for instance, is in an aabb rhyme pattern. Then, “Salem” and “Harlem” begin to establish one rhyme every other line, while “class” and “Nicholas” briefly establish another. By the end of the first stanza, however, both end-rhyme patterns have disappeared. Brief, catchy rhymes will reappear; the rhymes “white,” “write,” and later “me,” “free,” and “B” are conspicuous. A rhyming poem, “Theme for English B” is, however, ready to abandon its rhymes. (Hughes, 45-50)

Also repeating--also unpredictably--are the hill in Harlem; “a part of me” and “ a part of you”; the important word “true”; and, clumped at the center of the poem, “hear”--five times. If we thus feel urged to hear this poem as much as we read it silently off the page, it's no wonder: with “Theme for English B,” as for the whole of Montage of a Dream Deferred, Hughes wrote poetry closely tied to music--especially bebop. Borrowing bebop's skill with establishing assorted sound ...