Sample Essay

Below is a sample essay which you may wish to review while working on your essays. The spacing shows the modifed MLA format that you should use for electronic submission. Pay special attention to the spacing and punctuation of both the internal documentation and the "Works Cited" entries.

Joe Student
Professor Foll
ENGL 1302
15 January 2000

The American Dream

In the poem "Let America Be America Again," Langston Hughes paints a vivid word picture of a depressed America in the 1930's. To many living in America, the idealism presented as the American Dream had escaped their grasp. In this poetic expression, a speaker is allowed to voice the unsung Americans' concern of how America was intended to be, had become to them, and could aspire to be again.

Using a conversational style, the author allows the speaker and listener to interact with each other. The issue addressed is that America is not the democratic ideal of all of its people. The original speaker begins in a fairly common quatrain stanza; however, when the listener is allowed to respond, the stanzas become irregular indicating the passion felt as well as the urgency of the message. The listener's response contains the main idea of the piece, comparing the democratic ideal to the conditions of those who are victims because of race, age, or economic status. The author's careful use of alliteration in phrases such as "pushed apart" (19) and "slavery's scars" (20) emphasizes the struggles and alienation experienced by less fortunate Americans.

The speaker begins the narration by making a statement that America should return to the idealistic way it used to be: "Let it be the dream it used to be" (2). Then the narrator continues to relate nostalgically the longing for an America built on freedom and equality for all. This could be the dream of the author himself. Wagner states of the author, "Like his first masters Whitman and Sandburg, like his fellow black Toomer, and like so many other American poets of the period, Langston Hughes never tires of proclaiming the absolute necessity for all to do what they can to save the democratic ideal" (371).

The speaker actually asks the listener, interjecting the understated stanzas, to identify who they are with the question, "Say who are you that mumbles in the dark'?" (17). Now, the listener is free to speak of the many people living in this country who are not free and who are not equal. The respondent passionately expounds who they are: the poor white, the Negro, the red man, the immigrant, the young man, as well as those farmers, factory workers, and servants who built this country. Yet in spite of their many contributions to this land, they still view America as, "A dream-- / Still beckoning to me!" (52-53).

The author allows us to infer that he is among those from the African-American heritage by the specific language used to describe the various types of people. The author is careful to use neutral wording; however, when referring to the Negro, the use of oppressive terminology suggests that the listener responding is especially sympathetic to the plight of the blacks. It is phrases such as, "I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars" (20) and "torn from Black Africa's strand I came" (49), which enable us to perceive the speaker's special affinity with the African people. By using a more specific designation when referring to the Negro, it is natural to assume that the speaker is also a Negro. 'The speaker subtly interjects the continuing oppression of the African American and establishes a hierarchy even among the poor and downtrodden by exclaiming the Negro as "servant to you all" (33).

Once the underprivileged Americans have been identified, the narrator may then rejoin the original concept of the poem in a climactic depiction of what America could be if, in fact, the dreams of all people could be realized. He concludes that, "We, the people, must redeem / Our land, the mines, the plants, the rivers, / The mountains and the endless plain- / All, all that the stretch of these great green states-- / And make America again!" (77-81). The author allows the poem to crescendo to a resounding climax: an America offering hope that all may realize the dreams in their hearts.

Although the author could have used this narration to speak for one race of people, he develops it into "an anthem for a nation in Depression" (Ramperstad 371). Commenting on this poem and its author, Langston Hughes, Ramperstad observes, "Perhaps his finest poem of the thirties combined his will to revolution with his Whitman-like nostalgia for a vanishing America." Hughes gives us a richer insight of American idealism, American realism, and what, "America will be!" (73).

Works Cited

Hughes, Langston. "Let America Be America Again." _Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing_. 4th ed. Eds. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1995. 723-24.

Rampersad, Arnold. "Langston Hughes." _Voices & Visions: the Poet in America_. Ed. Helen Vendler. New York: Random House, 1987. 352-93.

Wagner, Jean. "Langston Hughes." _Black Poets of the United States_. Trans. Kenneth Douglas. Chicago: U of Illinois P, 1973, 385-474.