Langston Hughes' "Democracy"
A number of ideas are expressed -- and buried -- in Langston Hughes' 1949 poem "Democracy." The poem is composed in open form and appears to take its cues from the musical jazz movement of the time period. Its lines are short, often punctuated by abbreviated verses and sudden rhymes that indicate a sense of urgency and immediacy, while vibrating with a strong and insistent timbre and tone. The content of the poem is also structured like that of a piece of jazz music, with various layers of meaning coming together all at once through symbol, metaphor, assonance and suggestion. This paper will analyze the meaning of Hughes' "Democracy" by examining its use of various poetic devices as well as the ideas that the poem's language helps to convey both literally and figuratively.
The poem begins with the line "Democracy will not come," which is full of hard sounds "d," "ck," "m" and "n" as well as the assonant "o" sound, used to convey an emptiness and hollowness at the heart of the poem in general and of this stanza in particular. The sounds support the meaning of the line which conveys a hard truth: the type of government that Americans believe they have is not really in the works. Buried in the line is the beginning of a connection, however. If one looks at the whole of the poem, democracy is being connected to the idea of Freedom. Freedom is the word that is used in the final two stanzas of the poem -- not democracy. In fact, the term "democracy" only occurs once in the entire poem of five stanzas (if one excludes its usage in the title, of course), while the term "freedom" occurs three times. The hard and hollow sounds in the first stanza emphasize this connection by phonetically illustrating the idea of democracy as like a big, empty chest, rumored to be full of promises but in actuality never opening up or paying off.
It is important to note that Hughes is using the term "democracy" as a metaphor for freedom, connecting the idea of democracy, which begins the poem, to the idea of freedom, which ends it. When he writes that "democracy will not come" in the first line, he is implying something figurative and literal. It may be said that Hughes literally shows how democracy will never show up again by discarding the term completely and dropping it entirely from the poem. He implies a figurative meaning at the same time, by metaphorically using the term democracy: It is freedom that Hughes really desires; democracy, or the term "democracy" is simply a means of achieving freedom. Since it is clear that "freedom" is what he lacks, he attacks the idea of "democracy" as a means of achieving that "freedom." Yet the fact that democracy, or majority rule, is equated to freedom should strike the reader as an odd equation and compel one to ask what liberty has to do with government by the people (which so often translates into mob rule, corrupt politics, and lobby-bought politicians)? If democracy is a symbol of freedom, it is a deceptive symbol, for Hughes suggests that it cannot, does not, or will not deliver what its proponents profess it will. In other words, democracy is a frustrated end, a dead-end alleyway, and at best an empty promise.
The emptiness of the idea of "democracy" is echoed in the following two lines, which together comprise seven syllables total. Line 2 of the poem is made of two iambs, "Today, this year," and the iambic meter continues into Line 3, "Nor ever" which has, however, a weak (or feminine) ending.
Packed into these two brief lines are many powerful concepts. The first thing these lines illustrate is the enormity of time that will pass before democracy ever shows itself as a fully functioning, operating system of government. The lines go from the expectation that it will not appear or be erected overnight (or in a single day) to in a single year to at all. Hughes flashes at light-speed through a momentary struggle (the struggle for democracy) to a kind of eternal longing that touches briefly on immortality ("Nor ever") before recoiling back at the recognition that no matter how long the struggle is taken up, it will never pay off. Thus, by virtually leaping outside of time and foreseeing the end of the present state of democracy, Hughes evokes a second powerful concept, which is the notion of despair. The feeling...
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