Claude McKay and Langston Hughes Essay

Claude McKay

Festus Claudius McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, in the year of 1889. He was a son of peasant farmers but was interested in literature from childhood. His neighbor and brother played a critical role in helping him to study English poetry. When he was 17, he left Sunny Ville and worked as a woodworker in Brown’s Town, and later moved to Kingston (Poetry Foundation, 2021). The common theme is “the Black individual’s quest for cultural identity in the face of racism” as a major part of the Harlem Renaissance (Poetry Foundation, 2021, para. 13). The speaker was the voice of the struggles of the Black community, where he believed that “Black Americans should unite in the struggle against colonialism, segregation, and oppression” (Poetry Foundation, 2021, para. 15).

The most prominent symbol from the poem by the poet was a comparison of his and the Black community’s enemies with “mad and hungry dogs” (McKay, 1919). McKay’s first major novel was Home to Harlem, written in 1928, where the story focuses on a Black soldier who remains true to his feelings and instincts and exhibits rebelliousness to the Western civilization (Poetry Foundation, 2021). McKay’s Banana Bottom reveals a Black person’s quest to find his or her cultural identity in a racist world. Some of his many works include “The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry and Prose (1973), The Dialectic Poetry of Claude McKay (1972), Selected Poems (1953), Harlem Shadows (1922), Constab Ballads (1912), and Songs of Jamaica (1912)” (Poetry Foundation, 2021, para. 1).

Langston Hughes

In the case of the second poet, “James Mercer Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri” (Academy of American Poets, 2021, para. 1). His father left the family during his early childhood, and he was mostly raised by his grandmother until he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, where he started to write poetry. He graduated from high school and continued his study at Columbia University in NYC. Although Hughes’s works depicted an insightful illustration of African Americans, he did not differentiate the common experience from his personal one (Academy of American Poets, 2021). The author’s theme was more diverse, with an emphasis on both positive and negative aspects of the Black experience. The speaker used serious humor, which was widely successful due to the immense popularity of his works.

One of the major symbols of Langston Hughes is the four rivers in his poem The Negro Speaks of Rivers. Euphrates, Congo, and Nile represent the ancestral homeland of African Americans, whereas Mississippi revolves around the recent history and future of the community (Hughes, 1921). The author’s first book of poetry was The Weary Blues, and his first novel was Not Without Laughter. His “Simple” books include “Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Stakes a Claim, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple’s Uncle Sam” (Academy of American Poets, 2021, para. 4). His works were designed to appeal to a larger audience of readers because he used simplistic methods of humor, laughter, and suffering to illustrate challenges among African Americans.