This is my page for African-American Literature.

In a lapse of originality, I've taken up Mr. Mitchell's suggestion on my first post to continue the streak of comparing poetry to the books we discuss. The two pieces in question this time: Invisible Man and "Theme for English B." 

I'll start by trying to unpack Theme first, then base the comparisons between the pieces on what we find in the poem. (It would be way too ambitious to do it the other way around and unpack everything in Invisible Man.) 

The premise for Theme for English B is pretty straightforward — our boi Langston explained it himself at the beginning:

"The instructor said,

    Go home and write

    a page tonight.

    And let that page come out of you—

    Then, it will be true."

Then, Hughes spends the rest of the poem responding to the stated prompt. Simple enough, right? Well...

 

"I wonder if it's that simple?" 

 

Based on the prompt, Hughes could have written just about anything, but he tackles a hard question everyone must ask themselves at some point or other: "Who am I?" First we get a very brief synopsis of his location throughout his life, seemingly answering "How did I get here?" He infuses the stanza with two other foci: education and race. The first thing we learn after his age: his race. The first thing we learn after his birthplace: his education there. He continues to mention his educational journey and points out that he is "the only colored student in my class." Now, what might all this mean? Does he mention these things, education and race, because they're important to him, or important for the reader to identify him? It's probably both, although we'll never know with what proportions, and it also serves to set up the rest of the poem.

 

So about halfway through, we already see that education and race are important to Langston Hughes, from an outsider's perspective and/or his own. We then have another angle of self-identification:

 

"Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.

I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach."

 

Anyone could write that, right? But Hughes puts this information in the context of race, solidifying race as the central topic of the poem. When Hughes writes "will my page be colored that I write? / Being me, it will not be white," it brings me back to the first self-reflective line in which he begins, "I am twenty-two, colored," immediately allowing all sorts of assumptions and pigeonholing to take place because he has mentioned his race. In that sense his page is not white not because of him, but because of how everyone else automatically sees him after that line. Thus, I can't say if Hughes is really focusing on race himself, or whether the poem naturally writes itself that way once he mentions his race. As the only person of color in his English class, it almost feels like he is immediately burdened with the task of giving insight into his experience as a black person once he so much as begins talking about himself.

 

Then we get into this funky business with people and things being parts of other people and vice versa. I interpreted that as an extension of all races in America sharing in American culture and an American experience (despite all the diversity that entails). If Langston Hughes likes this and that, which is part of American culture, and everyone in America has a piece of American culture inside them, doesn't that make Hughes a part of the instructor? And the same logic should apply in the other direction. Regardless of American culture, this also reminds of the concept that every person is a mosaic of everyone they've ever met. 

 

So we've got some interesting material on identity, especially a particular identity - that of Langston Hughes, at this point a young, educated black American. 

 

Hmmm, what other young, educated black Americans can we fill the word count with? (As if I haven't surpassed whatever word count there may be.)

 

OMG u guessed it!!!1!1!1!!!!1! The narrator of Invisible Man. Trying to figure himself out? Check. College on the hill with pretentious vibes? Check. Complicated ruminations about identity? Check. But I find one thing to be quite the opposite between the novel and the poem: invisibility versus seeing. If I had to look at the content of Hughes's poem through the invisibility metaphor, I'd have to admit that Hughes is actively trying to see the instructor and allow the instructor to see him, rather than claim that they're invisible to each other. As they're each a part of each other, they should certainly be able see the shared parts of their identity (I'm imagining Hughes and his instructor forming a human Venn diagram). Furthermore, that Hughes and the instructor may each not WANT to be a part of the other suggests to me that they see, rather painfully, the gap in their perspectives and experiences and the tension and discomfort that causes.

 

I could see an argument to suggest that Theme supports the invisibility metaphor, though - what do y'all think?