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Feminist Criticism:
To Artina
I will take your heart.
I will take your soul out of your body
As
though I were God.
I will not be satisfied
With the touch of your hand
Nor the sweet of your lips alone.
I will
take your heart for mine.
I will take your soul.
I will be God when it comes to you.
Feminist View
-A feminist theorizes the issues between genders in a society and takes the concern of gender equalities
between male and females.
-Reading through the poem with
a Feminist lens we can notice how the man in the poem treats the woman as if she is a material object taking whatever he wants
and calming her as his possession. Through the poem he uses “I” many times giving the reader a sense that he is
in control of the woman. Also twice throughout the poem he mentions that he is God, which clearly shows the inequalities between
man and woman.
Marxist Criticism:
Advertisement For The Waldorf-Astoria
Fine living . . . a la carte?
Come to the Waldorf-Astoria!
LISTEN
HUNGRY ONES!
Look! See what Vanity Fair says about the
new Waldorf-Astoria:
"All the luxuries of private home.
. . ."
Now, won't that be charming when the last flop-house
has turned you down this winter?
Furthermore:
"It
is far beyond anything hitherto attempted in the hotel
world. . . ." It cost twenty-eight million dollars. The fa-
mous
Oscar Tschirky is in charge of banqueting.
Alexandre Gastaud is chef. It will be a distinguished
background for society.
So
when you've no place else to go, homeless and hungry
ones, choose the Waldorf as a background for your rags--
(Or do
you still consider the subway after midnight good
enough?)
ROOMERS
Take a room at the new Waldorf, you down-and-outers--
sleepers
in charity's flop-houses where God pulls a
long face, and you have to pray to get a bed.
They serve swell board at the
Waldorf-Astoria. Look at the menu, will
you:
GUMBO CREOLE
CRABMEAT IN CASSOLETTE
BOILED BRISKET OF BEEF
SMALL
ONIONS IN CREAM
WATERCRESS SALAD
PEACH MELBA
Have luncheon there this afternoon, all you jobless.
Why not?
Dine
with some of the men and women who got rich off of
your labor, who clip coupons with clean white fingers
because your
hands dug coal, drilled stone, sewed gar-
ments, poured steel to let other people draw dividends
and live easy.
(Or
haven't you had enough yet of the soup-lines and the bit-
ter bread of charity?)
Walk through Peacock Alley tonight
before dinner, and get
warm, anyway. You've got nothing else to do.
Marxist View
-A Marxist has the concept of exploring literature and art through
its cultural, economic, and political context to show the relation between the artist and the society.
-This
poem is an advertisement that Langston Hughes wrote for the opening of a very rich and expensive hotel called The Waldorf-Astoria
during the time of the Depression. A Marxist would look at this poem as a great work of art or literature due to the fact
that Hughes wrote this advertisement to both social classes telling them to stay at the hotel. The advertisement had a sense
or feeling that it was mocking the rich and delivered a clear message to the poor and rich. The message that was sent was
that no matter what the poor people who helped build the hotel would never get a chance to stay at the hotel let alone dine
there while the rich were able to feed off of the great work that the poor had put into it.
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Biographical Criticism:
Let America be America
Again
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let
it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let
America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants
scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where
Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the
air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who
are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled
and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant
clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I
am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the
land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything
for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro,
servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O,
Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who
dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That
even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has
become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who
left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To
build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief
today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've
dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who
have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land
that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's,
Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow
in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom
does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O,
yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out
of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The
land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green
states--
And make America again!
Biographical View
-The biographical approach is the idea of trying to get the reader to gain a better understanding of the
author’s work through evaluating facts from the author’s life and getting a great understanding of the author
himself.
-Through the Biographical approach, we learn that Langston Hughes was a black man
growing up in poor time where life was really unfair and unequal to blacks. So in comparing his life to the poem it shows
how America was suppose to be a symbol/dream for all those who seek freedom but the only ones who seem to be free were the
whites while Hughes and all his fellow blacks weren’t. In doing so the message that he sends is that he wants America
to be the same place where Americans gain there independences so he can gain his.
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