Essay Questions

What iconic poem by what iconic Harlem Renaissance figure does Hughes quote in its entirety to demonstrate its symbolic status in the African-American experience?

In a section of the book bearing a subtitle shared with the title of a novel by Carl Van Vechten featuring the “N” word, Hughes offers an analysis of the impact upon “colored people” of that particularly vicious term. The word becomes a metaphor which covers everything from slave beatings of the 1800’s to WHITES ONLY establishments in operation at the time the book was published. Out of all the poems written by African-American writers to that date—1940—it is “Incident” by Countee Cullen which Hughes chooses as the singularly most powerful poetic statement on the issue of what the “N” word really means to black society. The incident in Cullen’s very short verse is the recollection of a time he visited Baltimore as a child. The only thing he remembers clearly about that stay which lasted from May to December is the half-minute it took for his eyes to meet with a white boy around his age who stuck out his tongue called—with absolutely no instigating action on Cullen’s part—the “N” word.

What is the significance of Seventh Street?

Unlike many other writers of the Harlem Renaissance who came to New York informed by the experience of being black in the South, Hughes had lived in the Midwest before traveling east. As a result, he had never experienced the particularities of Dixie-style open racism. The closest he came by his early twenties was living in Washington, D.C. on Seventh Street. What informed his writing from the Seven Street experience, however, was not white on black racism, but the unusual lack of black on black racism which was quite the usual in north at the time. As Hughes explains, Seventh Street was a completely alien experience to what he’d known to date as a result of it being populated by “folks who draw no color line between mulattoes and deep dark-browns” where the entire spectrum of black America “ate watermelon, barbecue, and fish sandwiches, shot pool, told tall tales, look at the dome of the Capitol and laughed out loud.” The significance of that last action among a group of black Americans with diverse backgrounds gathered from around the country should not be underestimated.

What is the significance of the book’s epigraph?

The book begins with an epigraph:

“Life is a big sea

full of many fish.

I let down my nets

and pull.”

Through brief and thematically abstract, the meaning of the short bit of verse will be thoroughly explored as the book unfolds. “The big sea” of the title is the world itself and all the many varieties of life lived there. As a result, one aspect of the text almost verges into the territory of travel writing. The memoir opens with the image of the author dumping his collection of book accumulated while attending college into the sea from the deck of the S.S. Malone. It is an actual event from the writer’s life that is fueled with grand thematic significance: he is ready to stop reading about life and start experiencing.

That experience will eventually include stops in Mexico, Manhattan, Rotterdam, Paris, New Orleans, and much of the West Coast of Africa. It is while exploring this big sea that Hughes pulls up an equally extensive collection of fish: racists Texans, voodoo priestesses, pickpockets in Rome, the homes where great African-American writers who preceded him composed their works, and a monkey named Jocko who starts out by biting him and ends up a devoted companion.