Expository Comp Final
The American Dream is based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it is, above all, a matter of ambition. Many people are now immigrating to the United States to work and achieve the American Dream. But what is the American Dream? The idea of the American Dream is ever-changing depending on the person and the time of life that person is in. But to many of us, it is the right to pursue her own idea of happiness. The poem titled I, Too Am Beautiful by Langston Hughes and the short literary analysis Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin both had a similar view on American Society, and both had a lot to do with the American Dream.
The time of the poem I, Too, was written in the 1920s when the Harlem Renaissance movement was taking place in New York. The purpose of that movement was for African American writers and artists to gain control over the representation of black culture and their experiences. Throughout the poem, Hughes focuses a lot on African American identity within the dominant white culture of the United States during that time. In the poem, he speaks about the history of oppression of black people using slavery, the denial of rights, and inequality. By introducing the speaker in a house, it represents a metaphor that is being used to refer to the U.S. He states the issue of black rights in the personal domestic space of the American people. The short literary analysis of Sonny Blues took place in 1957, during a completely different time and during the Civil Rights movement, which was events in African American history that occurred from 1950 through 1959. The move was a struggle for social justice for blacks to gain equal rights under the law of the United States. In the story, during that time, African Americans were discriminated against and viewed as criminals and people with little potential. In the story, Sonny is stereotyped because of what he loves to do that doesn't go with his skin tone. He is viewed as a drug addict and is put in jail overall because of the color of his skin. Although both authors wrote at different times and their circumstances were by far other, their views on American Society were similar because both their themes had to do mainly with the sufferings of black people in America.
The poem I, Too is coming from an African American's point of view so that the thoughts and opinions expressed in his poem could be seen as those of any African American during the time. Hughes truly wanted and believed that people should not give up on anything associated with black identity, including writing in dialect. In lines 3-7, Hughes states, They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, and eat well, and grow strong. Sending the speaker to eat in the kitchen can be a symbolic way to represent segregation, but also of America's des...
