The poem The Weary Blues was written by Langston Hughes; the author devoted his work to the description of the music theme highlighting the role of blues and the uniqueness of this genre. The idea of the work is to show the influence of music on the human soul and show the emotions it causes. The Weary Blues describes the process of blues music listening in Harlem describing all the peculiarities of the poem’s expressiveness and author’s mood.
The analysis of the poem allows evaluating the speaker’s attitude to the music style. The narrator of the story expresses feelings and emotions caused by the blues played by a musician. The author demonstrates blues as an impressive and evocative genre that can transform the feel of the musician to the whole community. The blues is usually characterized as the type of jazz containing ornate rhythmical and lazy melodies. The same issue was highlighted by the author in The Weary Blues. Constant repetition of lines and the usage of assonance provide the impression of deep sorrow feeling and rhythm at the same time.
“He did a lazy sway…. / He did a lazy sway…. / To the tune o’ those Weary Blues. / With his ebony hands on each ivory key / He made that poor piano moan with melody” (6-10)
The Weary Blues is considered to be filled with symbolic expressions; the author used the “raggy” to underline the blue’s close interconnection with the jazz music and its rhythm being characteristic for African American music of that period.
“He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. / Sweet Blues! /Coming from a black man’s soul. / O Blues!” (13-16)
The symbolism of the poem can be analyzed through the description of the street Lenox Avenue being the main part of Harlem. It is interesting to note that the author used the line “Down on Lenox Avenue” which demonstrates his belonging to the black nation. This fact can be explained by the status of African Americans in the period of 20-30s being described as the Renaissance epoch.
The author tried to express his thoughts through various literary means and devices such as consonance and onomatopoeia in the poem The Weary Blues to enable the readers to feel the power of blues music and the mood of the main character.
Discussion
The blues is illustrated through the dull and lyric images of the narrator’s mood to the music. The author showed blues as the way of communication between the narrator and the musician. The first lines of the poem form the mood of the whole work. The words “mellow croon” express the feelings of melancholy through melodic and lyrical music notes. The author demonstrated his attitude to the night playing of the musician through various symbols of sadness and frustrations. “Down on Lenox Avenue the other night / By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light” (4-5). Such words as “pale”, “dull”, “old light” underline the breakage of feelings and a deep sense of the melody played by the piano man. Throughout the whole poem the author described his associations with the melody through “troubles on the shelf”, “the stars went out” etc. It is necessary to underline the fact that Hughes inserted the lyrical mood to show the feelings of the narrator and attitude to the world through the music. At the end of the poem one can observe the expressions of complete dissatisfaction and loneliness “I got the Weary Blues/ And I can’t be satisfied./ Got the Weary Blues / I ain’t happy no mo” (25-29). The poem appeared to be the powerful reflection of blues influence on the human mind being described as the way of thought and feelings expression.
References
Hughes, Langston. The Weary Blues. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 9th Edition. W.W. Norton. 2006.
Langston Hughes. Norton Anthology of African-American Literature. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Norton, 1996. 1305-8.