To Portray American Dream
in the darkness of life but she still tries her best to climb to a better life. She motivates her son to keep trying and climbing for the best.
The writer only figures out multiple negations in this poem in the sentence Where there aint been no light and And life for me aint been no crystal stair.
These two sentences reflect the hardship of the perso na‟s life. She never achieve
prosperous life. She has to struggle a lot during the darkness and there is no path as crystal stair in her life. Hughes uses the multiple negations to emphasize the
hardship of the persona‟s life. The second poem is entitled
“Teacher”. It tells about the persona‟s opinion towards teacher that symbolized two things: stars and darkness. The persona
described his story as a struggling teacher yet he was neglected. He tries his best to teach in a more humble way yet he was not accepted because he is an African-
American. At that time, education was full of Whites, and African-Americans were seen as uneducated people. Furthermore, even when they graduated from
higher education, they were seen to be lacking of capability. The poem can be read in datum 102SD01.
The writer figures out three syntactic deviations which are inversion, adverb displacement and prepositional phrase displacement. The syntactic
deviations are used to show how hard the persona tried to live his life. First, inversion can be seen in the sentence More humbly did I teach. This sentence
shows how hard the persona tries to improve his way of teaching and he tries to teach more humbly.
The next syntactic deviation is adverb displacement. This can be found in the sentence Humbly I tried to learn. If previously the persona has tried to
improve his way of teaching, here the persona tries to improve his learning style. He tries his best to absorb the knowledge through studying. The third is the
prepositional phrase displacement. The prepositional phrase displacements can be seen in the sentence And in this narrow bed of earth No lights gleam and In this
narrow bed of earth Star-dust never scatters. These two displacements show the reality of life from the persona‟s point of view. After a long struggle to overcome
the hardship of life, he sees no brighter side of his life. The next poem is entitled
“Ballad of the Man who‟s Gone”. This is a story of a man who died because he is too poor. Even when he was about to be buried,
his wife have to ask for some pennies from people around. The poem can be read in datum 62SD03.
The poem describes that the man‟s funeral process cost much money for
burying and paying the minister ‟s preach. At the end of the poem, the author is
asking a question on how the price of the funeral is expensive . The man‟s death is
actually not the man‟s business, but why he has to pay such expensive funeral. Hughes wants to show this reality to the readers.
The writer only figures out multiple negations in this poem. It can be seen in the sentence A poor man aint got No business to die. This sentence implies an
unfair treatment of the African-American life. Hughes wants to emphasize the struggle of the man‟s life even after he passed away. Overall, multiple negations
are mostly found in the poems to show the African- American‟s struggle at that
time. Hughes uses multiple negations to emphasize how hard African-American people have put their best in their life, yet they still receive the unfair treatments.