What is the meaning poem 'The Negro Speak of Rivers'?

Answer 1

"The Negro Speaks of Rivers" by Langston Hughes explores the deep connection between African Americans and the ancient rivers of the world, symbolizing a sense of history, strength, and endurance. The poem celebrates the richness of African heritage and the resilience of the black community across time and place. Through the imagery of rivers, Hughes emphasizes the universality and timelessness of the black experience.

Answer 2

Lines 1 - 4

Speaking for the African race ("negro" was the preferred term in 1921), the "I" of this poem links people of African descent to an ancient, natural, life-giving force: rivers. By asserting that he has "known rivers ancient as the world," the speaker asserts that he, and people of African descent, have an understanding of elemental forces in nature that precede civilization. The repetition of "rivers" and "human" lends these lines a wise, resonant tone, like that found in Biblical passages. In the first two lines, the speaker refers to rivers as a natural force outside himself. Line 3 likens the human body to earth by comparing rivers to "human blood in human veins." Line 4 personalizes that comparison as the speaker compares the depth of his soul to the depth of rivers. In the space of four lines the speaker moves from historically and symbolically associating himself and his people with rivers to metaphorically imagining rivers as part of his blood and soul. Rather than one human relationship to rivers emerging as true or primary, each of these associations intertwine.

Lines 5 - 7

Line 5 lets the reader know that the "I" is no mortal human speaker, but the mythic, timeless voice of a race. To have "bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young," in prehistory, the speaker must be millions of years old. In lines 5 through 7, the speaker establishes the race's ties to great, culturally rich civilizations along famous rivers in the Middle East and Africa. The Euphrates River was the cradle of ancient Babylonia. It flows from Turkey through Syria and modern Iraq. The Congo originates in central Africa and flows into the Atlantic. The Nile, which runs from Lake Victoria in Uganda in Africa through Egypt to the Mediterranean, was the site of ancient Egyptian civilization. The speaker's actions show that he reveres the river and depends on it for multiple purposes. He bathes in the water, builds his hut next to it, listens to its music as he falls asleep, and is consoled or inspired by the river when, as a slave in Egypt, he builds the great pyramids.

These actions reinforce the notion (from lines 1-3) that peoples of African descent have ancient spiritual and physical ties to nature. When Hughes wrote this poem in 1921, ideas and images of primitive, tribal cultures were very chic in American art and literature. After Hughes visited Africa in 1923, he no longer viewed Africa as a mythic, exotic land where black identity was rooted, but instead as a land ravaged by Western imperialism, a symbol of lost roots. In his later writing, Hughes steered away from images of African primitivism, for he saw such depictions of African and African-American culture as impeding rather than advancing the cause of racial equality.

Lines 8 - 10

Here Hughes draws an analogy between the ancient rivers alongside which Africans founded civilizations, and the Mississippi, the river on which several American cities were built, including St. Louis (Hughes's birthplace) and New Orleans. Onwuchekwa Jemie, writing in Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry, notes that "the magical transformation of the Mississippi from mud to gold by the sun's radiance is mirrored in the transformation of slaves into free men by Lincoln's Proclamation." In The Life of Langston Hughes, Arnold Rampersad views this transformation as "the angle of a poet's vision, which turns mud into gold." The sun's transformation of muddy water to gold provides an image of change. The change may represent the improved status of African Americans after the Civil War, hope for future changes, or the power of the poet to transform reality through imaginative language. Line 8 personifies the river by giving it the human capacity to sing. The river's singing invokes both the slave spirituals and songs of celebration after the slaves were freed. Line 9 also personifies the river by endowing it with a "muddy bosom." The Mississippi river is known for its muddiness. The term "bosom" is associated with women and so connotes fertility and nurturing. Through this personification, Hughes associates the ceaselessness of the mighty river with the eternal, life-affirming endurance of Africans and African Americans.

Lines 11 - 13

The poem closes with the phrases that opened it. The speaker's language completes a cycle that mirrors the river's eternal cycling of waters around the earth and the African race's continuing role in human history. By enacting the circling of time and rivers, the speaker again associates himself with those elemental forces. The phrase "dusky rivers" refers literally to rivers that appear brown due to mud and cloudy skies. Figuratively, the phrase again likens rivers to peoples of African descent, whose skin is often called "dusky" or dark. The final line reaffirms the speaker's sense of racial pride, of continuity with ancient, advanced civilizations, and of connection to life-giving, enduring forces in nature.

Answer 3

its about the black people in the 80s