Poem That Can Be Read Through Multiple Critical Lenses

A common technique for analyzing literature (by which nosotros hateful poetry, fiction, and essays) is to apply a theory developed by a scholar or other expert to the source text under scrutiny. The theory may or may non accept been adult in the service literary scholarship.  One may employ, say, a Marxist theory of historical materialism to a novel, or a Freudian theory of personality development to a poem. In the hands of an annotator, some other's theory (in parts or whole) acts as a conceptual lens that when brought to the material brings certain elements into focus. The theory magnifies aspects of the text according to its special interests. The termtheory may sound rarified or abstruse, simply in reality a theory is but an argument that attempts to explicate something. Anytime you lot get to analyze literature—as y'all endeavour to explain its meanings—you are applying theory, whether you recognize its verbal dimensions or not. All analysis gain with sure interests, desires, and commitments (and not others) in listen. I way to ascertain the theory—implicit or explicit—that you bring to a text is to inquire yourself what assumptions (for instance, about how stories are told, near how linguistic communication operates aesthetically, or about the quality of characters' actions) guide your findings.

A theory is an statement that attempts to explain something.

Allow'southward turn once again to the insights most using theories to analyze literature provided in Joanna Wolfe's and Laura Wilder'sExcavation into Literature: Strategies for Reading, Assay, and Writing (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin'due south, 2016).

Hither'south a brief example of a writer using a theoretical text as a lens for reading the primary text:

In her book,The 2nd Sex, the feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir describes how many mothers initially feel indifferent toward and estranged from their new infants, asserting that though "the woman would similar to feel that the new baby is surely hers as is her own manus,. . . she does not recognize him because. . .she has experienced her pregnancy without him: she has no past in common with this little stranger" (507). Sylvia Plath'southward "Forenoon Song" exemplifies the indifference and estrangement that de Beauvoir describes. However, where de Beauvoir asserts that "a whole complex of economic and sentimental considerations makes the babe seem either a hindrance or a precious stone" (510), Plath's poem illustrates how a child can simultaneously be both hindrance and precious stone. Ultimately, "Forenoon Song" shows us how new mothers tin can overcome the conflicting emotions de Beauvoir describes.

Daniel DiGiacomo.From Mourning Song to "Morning Song": The Maturation of a Maternal Bond.

Notice that in this brief passage, the writer fairly represents de Beauvoir's theory nigh maternal feelings, and so goes on to utilise a portion of that theory to Plath'due south verse form, a focusing movement that establishes the writer's special interest in an attribute of Plath's text. In this instance, the application yields new insight about the not-universality of de Beauvoir's theory, which Plath's poem troubles.  The theory magnifies a portion of the primary text, and its application puts pressure on the soundness of the theory.

Applying a Theoretical Lens: Due west.E.B. Du Bois Applied to Langston Hughes

Experienced literary critics are familiar with a wide range of theoretical texts they can use to interpret a master text. As a less experienced educatee, your instructors volition likely suggest pairings of theoretical and primary texts.  We would similar y'all to consider the writerly workings of the theory-primary text application by examining a student's newspaper entitled "Double-consciousness in 'Theme for English B," an essay which uses Due west.E.B. Du Bois's theory (ofdouble-consciousness) to elucidate and interpret Langston Hughes'south verse form ("Theme for English B"). West.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was an American sociologist, civil rights activist, author, and editor. Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was an American poet, activist, editor, and guiding member of the group of artists at present known as the Harlem Renaissance.

But before you lot can make sense of that student'due south essay, we ask that you read both a synopsis of the theoretical text and the main text .

Primary Text

Theme for English B Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Become dwelling and write  a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you—

Then, it will be truthful.

I wonder if information technology'due south that simple?

I am a xx-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.

I went to schoolhouse there, and so Durham, then here

to this college on the loma above Harlem,

I am the only colored student in my class.

The steps from the loma lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,

Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,

the Harlem Branch Y, where I have the elevator

up to my room, site downwardly, and write this page:

It's not piece of cake to know what is true for you or me

at xx-two, my age. But I guess I'g what

I experience and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:

hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this folio.

(I hear New York, also.) Me—who?

Well, I similar to eat, slumber, drink, and be in dear.

I similar to work, read, learn, and empathize life.

I like a piping for a Christmas nowadays,

or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.

I gauge being colored doesn't make me non like

the same things other folks like who are other races.

So volition my page exist colored that I write?

Being me, it volition not exist white.

But it will be  a part of you, instructor.

Y'all are white—

yet a part of me, equally I am a part of you.

That'due south American.

Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a function of me.

Nor do I ofttimes want to be a role of you.

Only we are, that's true!

As I learn from you,

I estimate y'all learn from me—

although yous're older—and white—

and somewhat more costless.

This is my folio for English B.

Theoretical Text

Of Our Spiritual Strivings

West.E.B. Du Bois

Of Our Spiritual Strivings

O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,

All night long crying with a mournful cry,

Every bit I lie and listen, and cannot understand

The vocalization of my centre in my side or the phonation of the sea.

O water, crying for balance, is it I, is it I?

All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting h2o, there shall never exist rest

Till the terminal moon drop and the last tide autumn,

And the fire of the end brainstorm to burn down in the w;

And the middle shall be weary and wonder and weep like the sea,

All life long crying without avail

Equally the h2o all about long is crying to me.

                    —Arthur Symons

Between me and the other globe at that place is an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, however, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and and so, instead of saying straight, How does information technology feel to be a trouble? they say, I know an fantabulous colored man in my town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or Practise not these Southern outrages make your claret eddy? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the existent question, How does it experience to be a problem? I answer seldom a give-and-take.

And yet, being a trouble is a strange experience—peculiar even for one who has never been annihilation else, salvage perchance in childhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a twenty-four hour period, as it were. I call up well when the shadow swept beyond me. I was a petty matter, away up in the hills of New England, where the nighttime Housatonic winds betwixt Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden school, something put information technology into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—10 cents a package—and commutation. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then information technology dawned upon me with a certain sadness that I was dissimilar from the others; or, like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, merely shut out from their world equally by a vast veil. I had thereafter no want to tear down that veil, to pitter-patter through; I held all beyond information technology in common antipathy, and lived higher up information technology in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could trounce my mates at examination time, or beat them at a footrace, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the hears all this fine contempt began to fade; for the worlds I long for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, non mine. Only they should not go along these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Only how I would do it I could never determine: past reading police, by healing the ill, past telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head—some style. With other black boys the strife was non so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world almost them and mocking distrust of everything white, or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God brand me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed circular nearly united states of america all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, just relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms confronting the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, scout the streak of blue above.

Later on the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with 2nd-sight in this American world, a globe which yields him no true self-consciousness, but just lets him run across himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of ever looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring ane'due south soul by the record of a world that looks on in amused antipathy and pity. One always feels his tw0-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one night trunk, whose indomitable strengths alone keeps it from being torn disconnected.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain cocky-conscious manhood, to merge his double cocky into a amend and truer cocky. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would non Africanize America, for America has as well much to teach the earth and Africa. He would non bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro claret has a message for the earth. He just wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

This, then, is the end of his striving: To be a coworker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both decease and isolation, to husband and employ his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of trunk and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a might Negro past flits through the tale of Federal democratic republic of ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single black men wink here and there like falling stars, and dice sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Hither in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man'due south turning here and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very force to loos effectiveness, to seem like absenteeism of power, like weakness.  And yet information technology is non weakness—it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the i hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other mitt to plough and blast and dig for a poverty-stricken horde—could only upshot in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart either cause. Past the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro government minister or dr. was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and past the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that fabricated him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be blackness savant was confronted by the paradox that the noesis his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate beloved of harmony and dazzler that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised only confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the dazzler revealed to him was the soul-dazzler of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the bulletin of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy 2 unreconciled ethics, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of x yard k people—has sent them often wooing faux gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has fifty-fifty seemed most to make them ashamed of themselves.

Abroad dorsum in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all incertitude and thwarting; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faither as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far equally he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the crusade of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised country of sweeter beauty than e'er stretched earlier the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Freedom; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At final it came—suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild funfair of blood and passion came the bulletin in his own plaintive cadences:—

"Shout, O children!

Shout, y'all're free!

For God has bought your freedom!"

Years accept passed away since then—10, twenty, 40; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy scepter sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's banquet. In vain do we weep to this our vastest social trouble:—

"Accept any shape simply that, and my firm fretfulness

Shall never tremble!"

The Nation has not still establish peace from its since; the freedman has not yet plant in liberty his promised land. Whatever of good may have come up in these years of modify, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained platonic was unbounded save by the elementary ignorance of a lowly people.

The first decade was just a prolongation of the vain search for liberty, the benefaction that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp—like a tantalizing will-o-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku Klux Klan, the lies of carpetbaggers, the disorganization of manufacture, and the contradictory communication of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the erstwhile cry for liberty. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new thought. The platonic of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon every bit a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had non votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was annihilation impossible to a power that had done all this? A 1000000 blackness men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. And then the decade flew abroad, the revolution of 1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wondering, but all the same inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the post-obit years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political ability—a powerful movement, the ascent of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire past night later a clouded solar day. Information technology was the ideal of "book-learning": the marvel, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and examination the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway to Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, simply direct, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.

Upward the new path the accelerate baby-sit toiled, slowly, heavily, adamantly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the wearisome understandings, of the nighttime pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to acquire. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted besides where here and in that location a pes had slipped or someone fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever nighttime, the mists were frequently cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, still, the vistas disclosed as nonetheless no goal, no resting place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and cocky-test; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning cocky-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect. In those somber forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself—darkly as through a veil; and even so he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the beginning time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that deadweight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To exist a poor man is hard, simply to be a poor race in a country of dollars is the very lesser of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,—not simply of letters, only of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and clumsiness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The crimson stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not just the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro abode.

A people thus handicapped ought non to be asked to race with the globe, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social bug. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men telephone call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence force of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity confronting offense, the "college" against the lower races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to such much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the contemptuous ignoring of the improve and the bouncy welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything b lack, from Toussaint to the devil—before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save the black host to whom "discouragement" is an unwritten word.

Merely the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable cocky-questioning, self-disparagement, and lowering of ideals which e'er accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of antipathy and hate. Whisperings and portents came borne upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what nosotros need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this cocky-criticism, maxim: Be content to be servants, and zip more; what need of college culture for half-men? Away with the blackness homo's ballot, past force or fraud—and behold the suicide or a race! Yet, out of the evil came something of skilful—the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes' social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.

So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: tempest and stress today rocks out little gunkhole on the mad waters of the world-sea; there is within and without the audio of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration strives without uncertainty, and religion with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the by—concrete freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands—all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong—all false? No, not that, just each alone was oversimple and incomplete—the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other earth which does not know and does not want to know our ability. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need today more than e'er—the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher civilisation of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self-defense—else what shall relieve us from a second slavery? Liberty, also, the long-sought, nosotros nevertheless seek—the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty—all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gamed through the unifying ideal of Race; the thought of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, non in opposition to or contempt for other race, but rather in big conformity to the greater ethics of the American Commonwealth, in order that someday on American soil 2 world races may give each to each those characteristics both and so sadly lack. We the darker ones come up even now not altogether empty-handed: there are today no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is not true American music just the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, nosotros black men seem the sole oasis of simple organized religion and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will American be poorer if she replace her brutal bitchy unmeant with light-hearted simply determined Negro humility? of her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial practiced-humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?

Merely a physical examination of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen'southward sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, only who conduct information technology in the name of an historic race, in the proper name of this the land of their fathers' fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.

And now what I accept briefly sketched in large outline permit me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper item, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.

Using a Theoretical Lens to Write Persuasively

Applying a theoretical lens to poetry, fiction, plays, or essays is a standard bookish move, just theories are also frequently practical to real-world cases, hypothetical cases, and other non-fiction texts in disciplines such as Philosophy, Sociology, Education, Anthropology, History, or Political Science. Sometimes, the theoretical lens analysis is called areading, as in a "Kantian reading of an ethical dilemma," or a "Marxist reading of an historical episode." At other times, the application of a theory is known as anapproach, every bit in a "Platonic approach to the question of beauty."

The basic writerly moves to using a theoretical lens include:

• proper noun and cite the theoretical text and accurately summarize this text's argument. Commonly this short summary appears in one or two paragraphs at the beginning of the essay. You will want to be sure your summary includes the key concepts yous use in your paper to clarify the chief literary text.

• utilise the surface/depth strategy to testify how deeper meanings in the primary text can exist explained by concepts from the theoretical text. Yous might think about this as creating a "match argument" between the primary and theoretical text (or example nether consideration). Take important points fabricated in the theoretical argument and match them to particular events or descriptions in the primary text. For instance, y'all could argue Langston Hughes's lineAnd so volition my page exist colored as I write? (27) matches Du Bois'southward statement that the veil prevents Whites from seeing Black's individuality. Such a match argument can grade an organizing structure for the essay equally you develop whole paragraphs to back up different points of connectedness between the theoretical and principal texts. You may be able to devote an entire paragraph to the merits that Du Bois'south concept of "the veil" can help us understand Hughes's clarification of the challenges his speaker faces in asking his instructor to see him on his own terms.

• support your surface/depth claims linking the primary and theoretical texts with textual evidence from the main text . If you merits that a particular passage exemplifies a detail theory, you need to provide evidence in the grade of quotations or paraphrases to support this interpretation. This evidence will most certainly need to be provided from the primary text you are analyzing merely peradventure likewise occasionally from the theoretical text, too, especially if you connect the primary text to a small detail in the theoretical text or if the wording of the theoreticl text helps you explain something in the principal text. Use the patterns strategy to provide multiple examples from the primary text supporting your claims that information technology matches elements of the theoretical text.

• reveal something circuitous and unexpected about the main text. The goal of the theoretical lens strategy—similar all strategies of literary analysis—should exist to show that the text you are analyzing is complex and tin be understood on multiple levels.

• challenge, extend, or reevaluate the theoretical text (for more sophisticated analyses). The most sophisticated uses of the theoretical lens strategy not only help y'all better understand the primary text only also help yous better sympathise—and reveal complexities in—the theoretical text. When you showtime beginning applying this strategy, it may be sufficient to contend how the theoretical text helps you sympathize the primary text, merely as you accelerate, you should endeavor the second part of this strategy and employ the primary text to extend or claiming the theoretical statement. Such arguments may serve every bit starting points for yous to contribute to literary (or philosophical, or sociological, or historical) theory as a theorist yourself. These arguments are often fabricated in the terminal paragraphs of analyses using the theoretical lens strategy.

Common Words and Phrases Associated with Theoretical Lens

A Sample Pupil Essay

Championship: Double-consciousness in "Theme for English B"

Paragraph 1

The postal service-slavery history of African-Americans in the United States has been one of struggle for recognition. This struggle continued through the ceremonious rights motion in the 1970s and '80s. Due west.E.B. Du Bois, one of the most influential African-American leaders of the early twentieth century, described the complicated furnishings racism had on African-American selfhood. In his treatiseThe Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois introduces the term "double-consciousness" to depict African-Americans's struggle for self-recognition. Double-consciousness is the sense of "e'er looking at 1's self through the optics of others" (8). It ways that an African-American "[e]ver feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, 2 unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one night trunk" (eight). According to Du Bois, double-consciousness means that African-Americas are always judging themselves through a veil of racism, experiencing how others estimate and define them rather than how they might ascertain and express themselves.

Paragraph 2

Langston Hughes's poem "Theme for English B," written well-nigh l years later Du Bois's essay, depicts one African-American's connected struggle with double-consciousness. All the same, where Du Bois sees double-consciousness as a painful condition he hopes will one day disappear, Hughes seems to take a more positive view, suggesting that mainstream Americans should also accept an opportunity to experience this condition. Instead of eradicating double-consciousness, Hughes seeks to universalize it. His poem suggests that true equality will be possible when all cultures are able to feel and appreciate double-consciousness.

Paragraph 3

We see the poem'southward speaker struggling with double-consciousness when he expresses difficulty articulating what is "true" for himself. Hughes writes:

It's not easy to know what is true for you and me

at xx-two, my historic period. But I judge I'm what

I feel and meet and hear. Harlem, I hear y'all:

hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.

(I hear New York, too.) Me—who? (16-20)

In this passage, which concludes with a question about who he is, the speaker expresses a divided self. At offset, he seems to identify with Harlem, an African-American neighborhood in New York, where he is currently sitting and writing. Notwithstanding, this identification becomes troubled by his acquittance that Harlem does not completely define him. When the speaker writes "hear you, hear me—nosotros ii" (19), he suggests that "you" (referring to Harlem) and "me" (referring to himself) are intimately related by non identical. They are two voices that, while both present in his poem, nonetheless "talk" (19) to one some other. The fact that these voices antipodal, rather than speak every bit one, indicates they are not completely merged.

Paragraph 4

This sense of a divided self is further reinforced by the claim "(I hear New York, too.)" (20). This aside is interesting considering it establishes Harlem as both dissever from and connected to the larger metropolis. This sectionalisation reflects what Du Bois calls the "two-ness [of existence] an Amercan [and] a Negro" (8). Past placing New York in parentheses, the speaker may be suggesting that the American part of himself represented past New York plays a weaker office in his identity than the African-American self represented by Harlem. Like Du Bois, the speaker in "Theme for English B" experiences inner conflict when he tries to reconcile the different parts of himself.

Paragraph five

We further run into show of the speaker's conflict when he writes that he likes "Bessie, bop, or Bach" (24). "Bessie" refrs to the pop blues vocaliser Bessie Smith, an African-American woman who sang a very African-American style of music. At the other end of the spectrum is "Bach," which refers to the classical European composer J.S. Bach and represents a traditionally White form of music. In the middle is "bop," which refers to "bebop," a form of jazz made pop in the 1940s that inspired a particular course of trip the light fantastic near practiced by White teenagers at the time. In proverb that he likes all of these forms of music, the speaker indicates that he is a mix of both African and European identities—similar Du Bois, he feels both traditional White and traditional African-American culture calling him.

Paragraph half-dozen

The "page" that the poem'due south speak has been asked to write as well reflects the 2-ness of being African-American. An essay can exist thought of equally black ink on white paper, which in the context of the poem represents Black identity articulated against a White groundwork. The speaker refers to this disharmonize of identities when he writes, "So will my page be colored that I write? / Beingness me, information technology will non be white" (27-28). These lines suggest that the speaker is worried that his teacher will simply come across him as a representative Black pupil. It shows how the speaker is caught in a double bind: when the teacher asks the class to write something "true" (5), he will expect this detail educatee (who in the starting time stanza tells usa he is the only Black student in the class) to write in a way consistent with his obvious Black heritage. But the student is enlightened that his White teacher doesn't really know what it means to be Blackness. Thus, if he writes in a mode that fulfills his instructor's expectations, he volition write a page that seems to a White instructor to be an authentic depiction of what it means to exist Black—in other words, a White representation of Black. This dilemma illuminates what Du Bois refers to as "e'er looking at one's self thorugh the eyes of others" (8). Because the speaker in the verse form is so aware of what his teacher (and possibly the other students in the form) already thinks of him, he is having difficulty articulating just who he actually is.

Paragraph 7

At the finish of the poem, however, instead of calling for the eradication of double-consciousness as Du Bois does when he longs for the day that African-Americans will exist able to "merge his double-self into a better and truer self" (9), Hughes seems to advise that instead his instructor needs to feel the double-identity that he feels and then strongly. Thus, he writes "You are white— / yet a part of me, as I am a function of you" (31-32) and "Every bit I learn from you, / I estimate you acquire from me—" (36-37). These lines indicate that the White instructor needs to accept, African-American identity as part of his ain culture, just as the speaker has needed to run into both parts of his identity calling him. This power to feel and exist multiple perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds at one time is labeled "American" in the second stanza. Hughes seems to exist suggesting that even though the"2-ness" he feels is oft difficult and painful, it needs to be seen every bit primal to American—and not just African-American—identity. When he states at the cease of the poem, "I estimate you acquire from me" (38), he is turning the tables on the teacher, and on Whites in general, by suggesting that they have every bit much to learn from exploring Blackness culture every bit Blacks have to learn by studying classic White culture.

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Source: https://davidsonwriter.davidson.edu/literary-analysis-applying-a-theoretical-lens/