Langston Hughes’s “Let America be America Again”

Context

“Let America be America Again” was first published in 1935 in Esquire magazine. The poem is a crying out, a passionate plea for America to re-establish the Dream on which it was based - freedom and equality for all. It is a kind of personal hymn, a lyrical speech, to freedom and equality.

Hughes wrote the poem while riding a train from New York City to Ohio and reflecting on his life as a struggling writer during the Great Depression. In the poem, Hughes describes his own disillusionment with the American Dream and suggests that the United States has failed to fulfill its promise of freedom and equality for all people.

The poem initially follows a traditional rhyme scheme before giving way to free verse and delving into the speaker's unconventional attitudes towards the American Dream.

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

Look at the structure of the first stanza: it is a simple quatrain with a simple ABAB rhyme scheme. How might this simplicity and traditional poetic form also reflect the American Dream?

What impact does the anaphora have on the poem’s message, repeating the lines “let it be...”? To whom is the speaker addressing?

In using the word “again”, what is the speaker implying?

How might the highlighted terms form a semantic field in relation to America? What might these words allude to?

In this line, the speaker affirms that the image of America in the first stanza does not exist for him; why might it be important that this line is in parentheses? Consider its relation to the themes and Black speaker? Also, what is significant about swapping to the past tense for this line, instead of the present participle “be”?)

What effect does the alliteration of the  /d/ sound have? What about the repetition of “dream” in one form or another? What might this word emphasize?

Consider the open line ending with a dash; what might this punctuation signify?

What image of America does this metaphor evoke? How is this metaphor ironic in the context of the poem and its history?

Also, consider the juxtaposing language in this stanza; what is important about this?

The final lines of this stanza allude to the ideals on which America was built; in particular, it was a nation founded as a result of King George of England’s tyranny, from which the American people wanted freedom. It was also “One nation under God,” as the final line alludes to.

This line is a refrain: a repeated line in poetry.

The opening “O,...” of this stanza might allude to patriotic hymns sung of America.

The liquid sound of the /l/ is alliterated a lot; what effect might this liquid and light sounds have in relation to talking about the American Dream?

Enjambment is a literary technique where a sentence or clause continues onto the next line, breaking it. What effect might this have in the context of this sentence?

This imagery does have some religious connotations, being crowned with a wreath, to Jesus.

How might this final metaphor also juxtapose the rest of the poem and become ironic in its context?

The speaker then addresses, in parentheses, that this has not existed for him. He also reports speech about the nation, arguing that this line is not true for him.

This stanza, in italics, is a sort of call and response technique with the speaker of this italicized stanza representing those with power in American society.

This stanza starts with an imperative; what is achieved via this?

What is meant by this metaphor? A veil is a covering whilst the stars are bright; what do you think is implied?

By using the lexical choice “mumbles”, how does the speaker of this stanza depict the main speaker of the poem?

What is the effect of the use of anaphora with the declarative “I am” being repeated?

In this stanza, Hughes uses metaphor to say he is these peoples, such as poor white people, Black people, native American people, and other immigrants. What does he mean by this?

What is the effect of the sibilance? Moreover, this is a metaphor, as he does not bear real scars; what does he mean?

What is emphasized via the diction of “clutching”?

Via the lexical choice of “stupid”, what tone towards America’s reality is achieved?

What is inferred by this common idiomatic phrase? What is he implying about the reality of America?

How does the speaker positively depict Americans, even though they are in bondage to the reality of American life?

What is implied through this metaphor? What is evoked via this imagery?

What effect does the anaphora, repeating “of” followed by images of taking have?

What effect does the alliteration of either the plosive /p/ sound or the /g/ sound? Are these sounds harsh or softer? Is this sound similar to its context? Does it help to achieve a particular tone?

What effect does the imagery and semantic field of taking have?

What effect does the repetition of exclamation points have?

What about the rhyming couplets of “satisfying need” and “one’s own greed”?

Do the highlighted lexical choices all have similar denotations or connotations? What semantic field is created?

Rhyming “machine” and “mean” connects these two things; what is implied?

Also, what is meant by this metaphor? What is the speaker referring to?

What effect does the alliteration of the /h/ sound have?

What about the alliteration of the /d/ sound?

Again, this “O,...” has connotations with patriotic hymns; additionally, the diction of “Pioneers” and the exclamation point have a more optimistic connotation and emphasis which is ironic in the context of the stanza.

Here, Old World refers to Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, when America was referred to as the New World, as it was a place where Europeans thought they could go and settle, by taking land.

In Medieval Europe, serfdom was a condition in which a tenant farmer was bound to a hereditary plot of land and to the will of his landlord; in other words, you had to farm your landlord’s land, did not own it, and were basically paid in being able to live there and live off the food. Everything that was grown was technically the landlord’s. It’s basically a form of slavery.

What is the effect of the tricolon? What about the repetition of “so”?

What is the speaker’s attitude towards the original dream, not its reality?

What is achieved via this parallelism? What is implied through the metaphor?

What could be read from the juxtaposition between immigrants from White European countries “[leaving]” and those from Africa being “torn”?

Again, there is this single stanza with a sort of call-and-response technique.

The next stanza begins with a succession of rhetorical questions? What effect does this have?

When the speaker uses the phrase “on relief”, they are referring to social aid for the poor, such an unemployment pay by the government.

What effect does the anaphora, repeating “the millions”, have?

Look at this example of parallelism; what do you see? Does the repetition of “all” have a specific effect? What about the repetition of “we”? Consider the terms “dreams”, “songs” “hopes”, and “flags”. What do these all have in common?

What does the metaphor “almost dead today”, in relation to the American Dream, mean? What about the diction of “almost”? How does this impact the tone?

Again, use of “O, …” makes the poem feel like a patriotic hymn, yet it subverts this genre by not being thoughtlessly patriotic and is instead critical of the nation.

What is implied by this line, between two dashes? What does it mean?

Italicizing this word provides emphasis. What is the purpose of this in relation to the poem?

What could you say about the use of em-dashes in the middle of lines like this?

What effect does capitalizing this word have?

What does this metaphor imply? It is a metaphor because the speaker did not physically “make” America.

Look at the rhyme scheme with “pain”, “rain”, and “again”. These words are now connected. Think about the significance here: the pain, to build something, the effect of rain, and denotation of again.

What do these words have in common? What might be significant about this.

What is the effect of using this pronoun “our”?

What tone towards the future is achieved here?

How does this stanza’s beginning have a slightly different tone?

What does this metaphor mean?

What is meant by this simile?

Does the alliteration of the /l/ sound have any effect here?

What is the tone of this line? What about the use of the modal “must” or the exclamation point? Consider the pronoun “our” in relation to America. Who does he mean by “our”?

What does the consonance of the liquid /r/ sound have in this stanza?

What do the highlighted words evoke? Do they create a semantic field?

What effect does the polysyndeton have?

This line is an allusion to the US Constitution; "We the People" is the opening phrase of the Preamble to the United States Constitution. What effect does including this have?

What impact does the use of imagery have here?

Consider the use of asyndeton in discussing the more natural world or laboring world, especially in juxtaposition the polysyndeton describing those in power; what effect does this have?

What effect does the alliteration of the /gr/ sound have?