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Katelynn Ondek
AP Language/Composition
Mr. Quatrani
20 March 2009
Harlem Renaissance Poetry
The Harlem Renaissance was a literary movement that occurred in Harlem, New
York, in the 1920s and ‘30s. As African Americans began moving northward after
World War I, they converged in cities, and many black clubs and other organizations
began to spring up. African American expressed their feelings and frustrations through
poetry, and for the first time, mainstream publishers and critics began to accept it. Any
Human to Another by Countee Cullen and Dream Variation by Langston Hughes are two
examples of Harlem Renaissance poems geared towards white Americans, both pointing
out the imperfection of the current society and expressing a dream for a better future.
In Any Human to Another, Countee Cullen calls on all Americans (but more
specifically whites) to put aside their obvious differences and live in harmony, “diverse
yet single” (Cullen). The theme is the essentiality of being empathetic and caring about
others instead of remaining socially isolated. He is telling whites that they need to accept
blacks. Dream Variation is more about the blacks’ current situation, although it too
paints a picture of a more ideal life. Hughes does not so much tell his audience the way
something should be, he merely presents the way he wishes it were, saying “that is my
dream” (Hughes). His tone is more revelatory, exposing the truth about the lives of
African Americans, whereas Cullen’s is instructive, calling on America to change this
current status. Dream Variation also varies the tone between the two stanzas, with the
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first stanza being pleasant, calm, and fluid, and the second more hurried and staccato.
Any Human to Another maintains a fairly constant tone throughout the entirety of the
poem.
Cullen uses a wider range of rhetorical strategies to convey his theme, while
Hughes focuses mainly into contrasting diction. Any Human to Another uses similes
compares grief to destructive weapons such as an arrow and “blade shining and
unsheathed” (Cullen), and incorporates a metaphor about “a little tent pitched in a
meadow” (Cullen) to symbolize living life in one’s own little world. The poem is a
paradox explaining how unlike peoples can live in unity, and also a Biblical allusion to
Romans 12:15-18, a passage with the same theme. Hughes ends each of his stanzas with
a simile, calling night “dark like me” (stanza 1) and “black like me” (stanza 2), because
night was the time when blacks did not have to be under scrutiny of whites. For the most
part, though, Hughes communicates the difference between his dreams and reality
through slight changes to corresponding lines between stanzas with emphasis on altered
adjectives. In the dream, evening is described as “cool” (Hughes), suggesting a relaxed
and lovely night; in reality, however, cool is changed to “pale” (Hughes), which has an
uncomfortable and almost sickly connotation.
Although the themes, tones, and rhetorical strategies of Dream Variation and Any
Human to Another differ, they are very alike in style. Both use visible contrasts between
style to help support the theme: Cullen changes his meter each stanza to illustrate the
possibility of diverse things being brought together into one accord, and Hughes contrasts
his two stanzas to emphasize the stark gap between his ideals and actuality. Each of the
poets incorporates some motif of whites and blacks. Hughes uses adjectives and nouns
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like “white,” “pale,” and “day,” to contrast with “black,” “dark,” and “night” (Hughes).
Similarly, Cullen makes dichotomies between white and black Americans, representing
them which such opposite symbols as “sea and river” and “sun and shadow” (Cullen).
This motif is important to the theme of both poems because it accentuates the separation
of whites and blacks, and expresses the poets’ wish that things could be different.
Any Human to Another by Countee Cullen and Langston Hughe’s Dream
Variation diverge in tone, rhetorics, and somewhat theme, illustrating the literary variety
of the Harlem Renaissance, but they also contain similar elements, since the poets of the
movement did share much in common. The resemblance between the poems is natural,
due to related background, but differences are also quite understandable, since the poets
are unique individuals who express themselves through poetry in a way that will never be
identical to anyone else.