Interpretation: The Negro Speaks of Rivers
...ntributed to the appeal of the title and the message the author wanted to send to his readers. Hughes used his words and ideas carefully to elaborate his poem, but the way he simplified thousands of years of history in only ten lines of poem was the most significant attribute to his work. This simplification was clear in lines six and seven where I could see the transition of times from the ancient Egypt (approximately 2000 – 3000 B.C) to America in the mid 1800’s. These two lines gave me a brief idea of the social and cultural changes that the Negro underwent, but Hughes didn’t have setup the poem in a formal manner nor describe the transition to capture the reader’s attention. Another interesting characteristic about the poem is that it doesn’t have only one speaker; it has millions. Hughes surprised the reader once again with another simplification. This time he combined the voices of millions of individuals from the different societies in one single voice telling a story. This story captured the different moments in history lived by each society. The first societies described their freedom and innocence when they said, “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.” Then, a new society described its moments of glory when it ruled the world; “I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.” The new generation, however, didn’t tell a beautiful story as the others did. But the outcome was one of hope, “I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to/ New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.” This particular line described the fall to slavery and the new freedom achieved with the Emancipation Proclamation, by Abraham Lincoln, on April 16th, 1862. The pronoun “I” in each sentence to represented each society as a whole, not as individuals. Again, the careful use of simple words in the poem was effective to describe to the reader what Hughes wanted to express in the voices of each society. The poem has given me a new perspective towards the Negro and its culture, as well as the difficulties that they have endured for centuries. The author’s intention was to create the same reaction in the readers. He wanted the readers to understand the circumstances that led to the fall of the ancient societies who ruled the world at one point, and visualize the new perspective born with the new generations born with the Emancipation Proclamation. “I’ve known rivers:/ Ancient, dusky rivers.,” is the ...