27 pages • 54 minutes read

Let America Be America Again

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1936

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Patriotism and Hope

The theme of patriotism—love of country—and the hope and pride that it engenders is clear from first line to last. In the very first stanza, the poem invokes the American dream, the pioneers, and the idea of freedom. In the next stanza, the speaker embraces the ideal of America as it was conceived, a “great strong land of love” (Line 7). Even after qualifications and negations appear, as the speaker explores the ways in which America does not live up to its ideal, the surging hope that the nation will shake itself free of its inadequacies and be the country that it proclaims itself to be never disappears for long. It can be heard early on in the call for “Liberty” (Line 11), with its echo of the Declaration of Independence, and for freedom, opportunity, and equality—qualities that define what America is or aspires to be. References to the dream with its “mighty daring” (Line 42) abound—about a dozen in all.

Optimism shines out in the later part of the poem, as the speaker resembles someone who has been traveling underground for a while but is now emerging again into the clear light of day, in which the land that America dreamed of becoming “must be—the land where every man is free” (Line 64). This stanza (Lines 62-69) strongly evokes the forces of hope, determination, and belief that must triumph over all the things that would hold it back. It proclaims that the land that is America belongs to everyone who helped and is helping to make it what it is, with their “sweat and blood…faith and pain” (Line 67). From that point on to the end of the poem, patriotism and hope triumph in the expansive sweep of the poet’s vision. So passionately does he feel about his theme that he swears an oath that “America will be!” (Line 79) and alludes to the Preamble to the US Constitution, stating that “We, the people” (Line 82) will redeem the nation from its past failures. The poem then moves swiftly to its inspiring conclusion, which is also a call to action.

Frustration and Protest

Despite the speaker’s enthusiasm for the founding ideals of the nation, his frustration with America’s failure to include all its citizens in the freedom and prosperity that is enjoyed by some is readily apparent. That note of dissatisfaction and protest is first sounded in Line 5, “(America never was America to me.)” The speaker goes on to state that he has never had either equality or freedom in America. The critique of America broadens and intensifies in the central part of the poem, from Line 19 to Line 61, before the mood swings back again to optimism. The critique is introduced by two italicized lines that contain a hint of hostility and menace, as if spoken by someone who resents this voice of protest in its effort to make itself heard: “Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? / And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?” (Lines 17-18). One can just hear in these lines the resentment of America’s privileged, white individuals of Hughes’s day, in the 1930s, that someone might speak out so daringly against their precious land, on which the stars shine so brightly.

The speaker, however, is only just getting started. He launches into a devastating, wide-ranging broadside on behalf of all the “have nots” who live hard, deprived lives in the land of the free. Differences of race and an exploitative economic system are at the heart of it. He names and closely identifies with African Americans, Indigenous Americans, immigrants, poor white people, farmers, and industrial workers, who are victims of either racism or a capitalist system, or both, and are sunk by the prevailing ethos of “profit, power, gain” (Line 27). The speaker’s anger and dismay at the presence of injustice is passionate and all-embracing; he pulls no punches, and the power of the prophet who dares to speak the uncomfortable truth puts wind in his sails.

Ambivalence and the Dialectic

In his book, Langston Hughes: The Poet and His Critics (American Library Association, 1981), Richard Barksdale quotes literary critic Arthur Davis, who wrote of Hughes’s “‘ambivalent vision’—his ability to see both sides of a situation” (75). This is very apparent in “Let America Be America Again,” which has a kind of “yes, but” approach to its topic. It is not that the speaker is confused, but he does see a discrepancy between the ideal of America and the reality of it. He understands the ideal and fully endorses it, but he brings attention with equal fullness to America’s failings. He sees the whole thing and gives expression to both sides, and he believes in both sides. He can look two ways at once.

In 1936, when Esquire magazine published the poem but only the first 50 lines of it, Hughes was understandably irked at how his work had been treated. He complained to his agent Maxim Lieber that omitting the final 36 lines meant losing the “dialectic solution” (as quoted in Arnold Ampersand’s The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1 Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 320). Given Hughes’s leftwing and communist sympathies, it is likely that he had in mind Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism. This refers to Marx’s belief that history progressed through a clash between opposing economic interests as manifested in class conflict: capital versus labor, bosses versus workers. In the dialectic, a thesis was opposed by an antithesis and out of that conflict a synthesis arose. Thus resolved, the whole process would begin again at a different level.

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Hughes seems to apply this process to the poem. The first three quatrains set out the equivalent of the thesis—the ideal America—while the body of the poem for the most part sets forth the antithesis—America is not living up to its promises. Then from Line 62 on, Hughes creates a synthesis that emerges from the initial dialectic. This is his “dialectic solution.” The synthesis moves American history forward to a new level, where America is remade in a way that brings it much closer to its ideal. As a result of the actions of those who love America and actively strive for its improvement, there is a “new birth of freedom” (as Lincoln put it in the Gettysburg address) in the land.