Langston Hughes & Claude Mckay Compare/contrast the conventions of form and language in Hughess and McKays poetry. Compare/contrast how these...

In
the 1920s, the lives of African-Americans were strongly effected by racial prejudice emboldened
by groups that advocated extreme points of view including enforced sterilization of minority
ethnic groups. Langston Hughes wrote during this era. One poem he wrote in 1923 is "The
Weary Blues." The first four lines

Droning a drowsy
syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro
play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

conflate the identities of the narrator and the musician, in fact it is not till the
third line that we have any idea there are two individuals represented. By doing this, Hughes
associates the narrator with the feelings and experience of the musician. Thus, when in the last
lines the narrator says,

"And I wish that I had
died."
[...]
He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

he is speaking of
the musician and for himself. This can be
taken one step further by...