18 pages • 36 minutes read
Langston HughesTheme for English B
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Sensory Experience
The speaker defines himself as what his kinetic (touch), visual, and auditory senses perceive daily, which is Harlem. He writes, “I guess I’m what / I feel and see and hear” (Lines 17-18) to answer what is “true” (Line 16). Then, he focuses on his aural sense; “hear” is repeated four more times in Lines 18-20. The speaker hears “Harlem” (Line 18) and “New York” (Line 20), and Harlem hears him. The sense of sound is shared between the Black speaker and his predominately Black borough. Furthermore, Hughes and his speaker listen to music. This motif of sensory experience reflects the poem’s jazz inspiration. The word “motif” is also used in music theory terminology to describe a short, repeated musical fragment.
The Page
Throughout the poem, “page” functions to describe the speaker’s homework assignment, but it also symbolizes writing and education. When the word “page” appears in Lines 3, 15, and 41, it is part of the writing prompt and bookends the assignment itself. In other words, these three occurrences of the “page” are stated by the instructor and the student to describe the contents of Stanza 4.
When the word “page” appears within Stanza 4, as part of the assignment, it takes on symbolic meanings. In Line 19, the “page” (Line 19) is where Harlem and the speaker “talk” (Line 19). Here, the page expands in meaning, becoming a symbol of how the act of writing can explore the relationship between a person and their location. Next, the color of the “page” is explored in Lines 27 and 28. The speaker says his page “will not be white” (Line 28) because it contains a description of himself, and he is Black. This develops another meaning for the page—it now also symbolizes education and experience. The speaker does not mean that the page will literally change colors, but rather that the content of the page is not about the white experience of education.
Cartography/Mapping
The inclusion of specific street names in “Theme for English B” is a mapping, or cartography, motif. Hughes lists “Eighth Avenue, Seventh” (Line 13) as part of the directions to the Harlem Branch YMCA. In Harlem, Eighth Avenue is also named Frederick Douglass Boulevard, and Seventh is also called Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. A 21st-century reader can look on a map and still see the YMCA and City College of New York where Hughes’s directions indicate them. This specificity of location is a poetic motif in traditional white, English poetry. For instance, Hughes transforms William Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” to the urban map of Harlem in “Theme for English B.”
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