This first stanza sets the scene for the poem, introduces its primary characters, and elaborates on the information already provided for us in the poem’s title. Here, Hughes tells us what the occasion for the “theme” and the poem will be—an apparently simple assignment, just a page to be written that somehow characterizes the writer. “Let that page come out of you,” the instructor commands, a necessity, he explains, if what is written is to be “true.” The equation here is that if one writes out of the self, then it will be a sincere and accurate representation of that self. But the speaker of the poem, after quoting the teacher’s description of the assignment, complicates this equation: “I wonder if it’s that simple?” Hughes therefore, at once, introduces the situation for this expression as well as the problem of its very existence. Is telling who we imagine ourselves to be enough to adequately represent the self? Can we possibly be “true” simply by expressing who we believe ourselves to be?
Lines 7-10
In these four lines, Hughes’s student speaker actually seems to begin the assignment (although it could easily be argued that in fact the assignment begins right away, when the speaker names this occasion for writing and qualifies its possible problems) by informing the reader of the most basic autobiographical details of the writer’s life. After explaining how old he is (we can infer that the speaker is male because we find out later that he lives at the YMCA rather than the YWCA), where he was born, and his educational history, the speaker adds one final, yet crucial, detail: “I am the only colored student in my class.” This detail “colors” the description in line 9 of Columbia University as “this college on the hill above Harlem”; while this is certainly accurate geographically, it acquires additional significance once we learn that the speaker is black and an inhabitant of Harlem. The location of Columbia “above Harlem” mirrors its social, political, and economic position within the larger culture as a university composed primarily of white students and faculty, citizens socially considered “above” the inhabitants of Harlem.
Lines 11-15
Here the speaker takes the reader on a tour of his own path home where the “page” will be written. The speaker descends from the university sitting high on its hill into Harlem in the way the gods of classical mythology descended into the world of mortal men from their elevated posts on Mount Olympus. He crosses a park and several streets to arrive at his home at the Y, short for YMCA, itself short for the Young Men’s Christian Association, where rooms are cheaply rented. This information adds to our sketch of the student writer by showing us that he lives by himself, away from home, and probably doesn’t have much extra money. It is ironic that the speaker tells us that we have finally arrived at the “place” where the page will be written, since we are already deep into that writing.
Lines 16-20
In lines 16 and 17, the student speaker directly questions the nature of the assignment and its seeming simplicity: “It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me / at twenty-two, my age.” He then attempts to explain, in his own deceptively simplistic way, what he believes composes himself or any self: “I guess I’m what / I feel and see and hear.” The line break between lines 17 and 18 emphasizes, in line 18, the fact that the speaker is a repository of sensual experience, feeling, seeing, and hearing such as any human with those sensual capabilities would be. But this expression is itself complicated by the speaker’s pronouncement that part of what he hears is Harlem. In line 19, Hughes uses commands to further develop this “theme,” commands that, despite their simple rhymes, encapsulate far from simple ideas: “hear you, hear me—we two—you, me talk on this page.” To whom “you” refers in line 19 becomes muddled: is “you” Harlem, as line 18 suggests, or New York (as he parenthetically adds he also hears in line 20), or perhaps the reader who, given what we’ve been told about the poem thus far, must be the speaker’s white professor? But if the speaker “is” what—and, one would presume, “who”—he feels, sees, and hears, then “who” he might be is hardly a simple thing.
This first stanza sets the scene for the poem, introduces its primary characters, and elaborates on the information already provided for us in the poem’s title. Here, Hughes tells us what the occasion for the “theme” and the poem will be—an apparently simple assignment, just a page to be written that somehow characterizes the writer. “Let that page come out of you,” the instructor commands, a necessity, he explains, if what is written is to be “true.” The equation here is that if one writes out of the self, then it will be a sincere and accurate representation of that self. But the speaker of the poem, after quoting the teacher’s description of the assignment, complicates this equation: “I wonder if it’s that simple?” Hughes therefore, at once, introduces the situation for this expression as well as the problem of its very existence. Is telling who we imagine ourselves to be enough to adequately represent the self? Can we possibly be “true” simply by expressing who we believe ourselves to be?
Lines 7-10
In these four lines, Hughes’s student speaker actually seems to begin the assignment (although it could easily be argued that in fact the assignment begins right away, when the speaker names this occasion for writing and qualifies its possible problems) by informing the reader of the most basic autobiographical details of the writer’s life. After explaining how old he is (we can infer that the speaker is male because we find out later that he lives at the YMCA rather than the YWCA), where he was born, and his educational history, the speaker adds one final, yet crucial, detail: “I am the only colored student in my class.” This detail “colors” the description in line 9 of Columbia University as “this college on the hill above Harlem”; while this is certainly accurate geographically, it acquires additional significance once we learn that the speaker is black and an inhabitant of Harlem. The location of Columbia “above Harlem” mirrors its social, political, and economic position within the larger culture as a university composed primarily of white students and faculty, citizens socially considered “above” the inhabitants of Harlem.
Lines 11-15
Here the speaker takes the reader on a tour of his own path home where the “page” will be written. The speaker descends from the university sitting high on its hill into Harlem in the way the gods of classical mythology descended into the world of mortal men from their elevated posts on Mount Olympus. He crosses a park and several streets to arrive at his home at the Y, short for YMCA, itself short for the Young Men’s Christian Association, where rooms are cheaply rented. This information adds to our sketch of the student writer by showing us that he lives by himself, away from home, and probably doesn’t have much extra money. It is ironic that the speaker tells us that we have finally arrived at the “place” where the page will be written, since we are already deep into that writing.
Lines 16-20
In lines 16 and 17, the student speaker directly questions the nature of the assignment and its seeming simplicity: “It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me / at twenty-two, my age.” He then attempts to explain, in his own deceptively simplistic way, what he believes composes himself or any self: “I guess I’m what / I feel and see and hear.” The line break between lines 17 and 18 emphasizes, in line 18, the fact that the speaker is a repository of sensual experience, feeling, seeing, and hearing such as any human with those sensual capabilities would be. But this expression is itself complicated by the speaker’s pronouncement that part of what he hears is Harlem. In line 19, Hughes uses commands to further develop this “theme,” commands that, despite their simple rhymes, encapsulate far from simple ideas: “hear you, hear me—we two—you, me talk on this page.” To whom “you” refers in line 19 becomes muddled: is “you” Harlem, as line 18 suggests, or New York (as he parenthetically adds he also hears in line 20), or perhaps the reader who, given what we’ve been told about the poem thus far, must be the speaker’s white professor? But if the speaker “is” what—and, one would presume, “who”—he feels, sees, and hears, then “who” he might be is hardly a simple thing.
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