This document contains a series of journal writing questions about analyzing poems and discussing their themes, tones, meanings, and implications. The questions prompt analyzing figures of speech, tones, perspectives, historical and cultural contexts, imagery, sounds, purposes, and ideas conveyed in several poems, including works by Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Wright.

1. Journal Writing Questions

2. 1. Explain the similes in lines 3, 4, 6, 8 and 10.
Why are these apt comparisons? What sorts
of human actions are implied in these
figures of speech?
2. What is the meaning of the metaphor in line
11? Why do you think Hughes shifted from
similes to a metaphor in this line?

3. 1. What is the tone of the speaker’s self-
assessment? What does the tone indicate
about his feelings toward the situation in the
class and at the Y?
2. What tone is implicit in the fact that the
speaker, in response to a theme (or essay)
assignment, has composed a poem instead?

4. What is the tone of lines 21-24, where the
speaker indicates what he likes? In what way
may the characteristics brought out in these
lines serve as an argument for social and
political equality?

5.  Read by Langston Hughes
 What kind of music is the blues? Does this
poem match your perception of the genre?
 Who is the speaker, and why does he respond
so intensely to the piano player’s “sad raggy
tune”?

6.  What does the speaker mean by stating that
his soul has grown deep like rivers? Does the
speaker refer to himself individually, or to his
race collectively, or to both?
 What is meant by the citation of the
Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the
Mississippi? To what civilizations does the
speaker refer? What idea about the history of
blacks is implied by these rivers?

7.  How do the images of this poem relate to
each other? How does the image of the
bleeding field rat and the “blood-stained”
blade heighten the impact?
 How does alliteration unify this poem? How
do the sounds help place you in the poem?

8.  What is a “primer”? How does this poem
function as one?
 Is the audience of this poem solely black
Americans? Who else could benefit from
reading it?

9.  What is the major idea of this poem? Who is
the speaker?
 How is the last sentence a climax? How is this
sentence consistent with the declarations in
lines 1-7?
 How is the poet’s attitude made clear?

10.  How might the speaker in “Primer for Blacks”
be similar to the speaker of “We Real Cool?”
How could (s)he be different?
 How do both of these poems define
blackness and youth? Are there similarities?
Differences?

11.  Claude McKay was a native black Jamaican
who as an adult lived in New York City. Why
does the speaker “hate” the city?
 Traditionally, sonnets are love poems. Why
might McKay have cast this poem in sonnet
form?
 How does the city feed the speaker with “vital
blood”?
 Why are the elements of the NYC landscape
described in the last line as “sweet like
wanton loves”?

12. If you were to develop a character to star in a
novel you were writing and you wanted that
character to be a composite sketch of people
you know or knew from your own life, who or
what would that character be? What would
his or her name be? What would he or she
look like? Why?

13. How much of Richard Wright’s life seems to be
reflected in this novel? Base your response on
your reading of the introduction, the novel, and
the presentations in class.