Poverty
Economic inequality is the most immediate cause of the uneven power dynamic between the tenant and the landlord. Because he knows that his tenant is not rich enough to own a home or rent a better one, the landlord is able to essentially hold his tenant hostage, forcing him to choose between abysmal conditions and homelessness. The tenant refuses to pay his landlord, and while righteous anger may guide his choice, he also appears to have little cash to spare. The landlord, refusing to part with any money of his own, is clearly wealthier than the tenant—but even he appears to live in the same hardscrabble world, suggesting that the two are in a sense both victims of poverty or at least of economic struggle. At the same time, the landlord's greed worsens the tenant's situation: he prefers to do all he can to stay above the very bottom of the economic ladder, even if it means hurting someone worse off than himself.
Race
While the class difference between the two characters may be the most direct cause of the tenant's woes, Hughes implies that racism is both the root cause of their unequal situations and the most potent force exacerbating it. The tenant is Black, a fact explicitly stated at the end of the poem, but also made evident throughout because of his use of African American Vernacular English (for instance, the use of the conjugation "is" rather than "are" in the sentence "these steps is broken down"). Meanwhile, context clues suggest that the landlord is white, not only because he is in a position of power but because of his style of speaking. Each of the tenant's problems, from unequal housing to punitive police and courts, are connected to deeply rooted racial issues in America, so that no matter how strategic the speaker tries to be about approaching his landlord, he can't avoid the consequences of racism. By the poem's end, the newspaper headline identifies the speaker only by his race, omitting any other element of his personhood. This final line suggests that, in the eyes of society, the only thing that matters about the tenant is his Blackness.
Art and Injustice
Hughes plays with meter and rhyme here, juxtaposing snappy, musical sound elements with a gritty and upsetting story. In doing so, he comments upon and celebrates the ways in which Black people in America have used the arts, including poetry and music, to cope with hardship. At times, Hughes's stanzas even nod towards blues music and poetry, a genre known for rueful, thoughtful discussions of sad topics. Even while acknowledging that artistic history, however, Hughes's technique is loaded with irony. He suggests that it is difficult and even absurd to capture violence, inequality, and injustice in pleasant-sounding words. While Hughes does dispense with some of the poem's more melodic elements for a time, he brings them back at the poem's end, creating an even stronger sense of contrast and making the ironic juxtaposition all the harder to ignore. Furthermore, Hughes portrays his landlord character speaking with the same meter and rhyme patterns that his tenant has established, as if copying the tenant in order to hurt him. Thus, the poem suggests, linguistic beauty can be a force for good or it can be laughably futile. But it can also be used for ill in the wrong hands, making evil sentiments and actions seem more palatable.
