The Negro Speaks of Rivers (Themes)

Themes

Heritage

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes’ first published poem, introduces a theme which would recur in several other works throughout his career. Many critics have classified this group as the “heritage” poems. Amazingly, although it was composed very quickly when he was only seventeen, it is both polished and powerful. In fact, in Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry, Onwuchekwa Jemie labels it the most profound of this group.

The poem utilizes four of the world’s largest and most historically prominent rivers as a metaphor to present a view, almost a timeline in miniature, of the African-American experience throughout history. The opening lines of the poem introduce the ancient and powerful cultural history of Africa and West Asia, with the mention of the Euphrates and the dawn of time. Next the Congo, mother to Central Africa, lulls the speaker, to sleep. The world’s longest river, the powerful and complex Nile with its great pyramids, follows. Last, the poem moves to more recent times, with the introduction of the Mississippi. Even though the Mississippi and Congo both hold bitter connotations of the slave trade, each of the four has contributed to the depth of the speaker’s soul. The poem stresses triumph over adversity as the “muddy bosom” of the Mississippi turns golden.

The speaker clearly represents more than Langston Hughes, the individual. In fact, the “I” of the poem becomes even more than the embodiment of a racial identity. The poem describes, underlying that identity, an eternal spirit, existing before the dawn of time and present still in the twentieth century. The different sections of the poem emphasize this: the speaker actually functions on two levels. One is the human level. The first words of lines five through eight create a picture of the speaker’s ancestors: bathing, building, looking, hearing. However, the poem also discusses a spiritual level where the soul of the speaker has been and continues to be enriched by the spirit of the river, even before the creation of humanity. Thus, the second and third lines of the poem develop an eternal, or cosmic, dimension in the poem.

Wisdom and Strength

The poem’s cosmic dimension adds an additional theme making the poem more than a tribute to the heritage of the past. It honors the wisdom and strength which allowed African-Americans to survive and flourish in the face of all adversity, most particularly the last few centuries of slavery. Hughes associates this strength with the spirit of these rivers which Jemie describes in Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry as “transcendent essences so ancient as to appear timeless, predating human existence, longer than human memory.” Jemie continues by noting that as the black man drank of these essences, he became endowed with the strength, the power and the wisdom of the river spirit. Thus Hughes stresses the ancient cultural heritage of the African-American, the soul which existed even before the “dawns were young.” The poem then makes clear that through all of the centuries, the speaker — or in other words, the collective soul — has survived indomitable, like the rivers. The poem exalts the force of character, the wisdom and strength, which created this survival.

This tribute developed out of Hughes’ personal life. He describes the inspiration for the poem in his autobiography, The Big Sea. While he was crossing the Mississippi on a visit to his father, a man who baffled and frustrated Hughes because of his prejudice, he began “thinking about my father and his strange dislike of his own people.” Hughes contrasts this attitude with his own admiration for the “bravest people possible — the Negroes from the Southern ghettoes — facing tremendous odds.” The Mississippi suddenly seemed to be a graphic symbol of that bravery. He notes that being sold down the river literally meant being torn violently from one’s own family. Yet even after centuries of brutal inhumanity in bondage, the African-American spirit has emerged triumphant. This poem became Hughes’ tribute to the strength and the wisdom of his people.

Rivers

Rivers have been a powerful force throughout human history. Many early mythologies made the river — or the river god — a symbol of both life and death. It is easy to understand the reason for this since most of the great early civilizations grew up in river valleys. The Euphrates, which is the first of the rivers mentioned in the poem, helps to form Mesopotamia. Even today, world history textbooks refer to the area using the symbolic phrase, the cradle of civilization, because of the number of ancient kingdoms which flourished there: Ur, Sumer, Babylon. The Nile, too, played a central role in early civilization. It ensured Egyptian prosperity. Thus the river was worshipped as the god, Khnum, who made the earth fruitful. Central African tribes also believed in the powerful river spirits who were sources of life, wisdom, and purification. Even, today, Christian baptism, which originated when John the Baptist anointed Jesus Christ in the River Jordan, represents both a symbol of purification and the entrance to new life.

S. Okechukwu Mezu discusses the importance of rivers in both mythology and poetry in his study The Poetry of Leopold Sedar Senghor: “The river in most societies is considered a source of life, of new life in particular: a source of ablution and purification.” He then mentions several poets who absorb this view into their work, such as Hughes and Whitman, whose “personification of the river is not far removed from the anthropomorphism and pantheism that characterize certain elements in African traditional religion.”

Topics for Further Study

• Rivers were vital to early civilizations, yet today many suffer from a variety of types of pollution. Choose one of the rivers mentioned in the poem and report on its current condition.
• Research the importance of the Harlem Renaissance in giving voice to the soul of the African-American community.
• Investigate Abraham Lincoln’s role in abolishing slavery.
• Hughes connects the African-American soul with rivers. Write an extended metaphor connecting your spirit to some aspect of nature.