What is Freedom?

In his poems Langston Hughes questions freedom and the American dream. Out of all the poems that we read my favorites were "Let America Be America Again" and "Open Letter to the South".

In "Let America Be America Again" Hughes discussed that the America dream has disappeared. The America that was living in was not the America that him and his anc

estors came to. He entered this country with high hopes. He thought of America as a place where "opportunity is real, and life is free

" a place where "Equality is in the air we breathe". He found out that these things do not exist. Hughes wants "America [to] be America again", he wants the people "whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain" made this country to be free again and for their "mighty dreams" to be restored.

In "Open Letter to the South" Hughes proposed that blacks and the working class white men unite because they are essentially equals. I think he was right, the population was composed of primarily the working class, who like blacks were treated unfairly at the time. If these two social groups could have united against the rich white population they could have had a strong union and gained their rights back.

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