The Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman Connection

My project oversaw the connection between the trajectory of Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman’s work. In class we specifically talked about Whitman’s influence on African American writers, so with my project I wanted to take this idea a step further and explore not only Whitman’s influence over the black poet, but how their works are very similar. Both authors early works revolve around American idealism. While Whitman boldly asserts that America is an ideal nation for everyone, Hughes uses this arguably imagined idealism to fight for the rights of his fellow African Americans. Hughes’s earlier work like “I Too” and “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” most obviously follows Whitman’s poetic style and form because Hughes looked to Whitman as a leader in American poetry and truly believed in his democratic ideals.

Because this project was meant to be lengthy, I decided to further my analysis by also looking at each of the authors later works as well, which also coincide with one another. After the Civil War, Whitman was forced to face the idea that maybe his America was not completely ideal. His war poems reflect the horrific trauma he himself actually witnessed during this time. Similarly, Hughes’s own America shifted after World War 2, which enhanced blacks will to fight for equal rights in our country. Hence, with Hughes’s later works we see a darker version of the city of Harlem, where he like Whitman, began to confront the idea that maybe America will never be the egalitarian society African Americans were hoping for.

Overall, this project only furthered the idea that Walt Whitman truly has the power to expand time and space. There appears to be no end to his influence over not only writers of the past, like Hughes, but also writers of the present and no doubt the future. His power appears so great that he is able to connect with not only white male poets like Whitman himself, but also the likes of African American writers, female poets, and even young American society as a whole as seen through the Levis commercial we were introduced to on the very first day of class.