The Negro Mother & A Worn Path - Essay Example

In “The Negro Mother” and “A Worn Path”, however, there was some different air, one that points out to a lighter mood whose subject is the Negro woman. The two literary works mentioned earlier, though having the same subject about the strength, love and courage of the Negro Woman are differently presented in that, Langston Hughes’ thoughts were put into writing through the poem entitled “The Negro Mother” while Eudora Welty penned her imagination in a short story entitled “A Worn Path”.

The poet encouraged the Negro women, speaking in the first person impersonating the ‘Negro mother’ who bore all the Black children, or that would be the race who looks back to the Black history for three hundred years and mentions the struggle the race had gone through to obtain the freedom she so longed for. The story on the other hand is told by a third person who unravels the events through the enumeration of what the old Negro Woman goes through in her trip from her home to the town which have been a long way for her to walk.

The poem and the story also talk about the Black American dream. In the poem, the speaker is in good spirit, encouraging the Black children to go on and live the dream of the Negro Mother who sweated and sacrificed a lot for the freedom of her children. Having been in slavery for years, unable to read and write and enduring the pain of illiteracy and ignorance, the Negro dreamed of someday bringing her children to school so that through education, they could be able to compete and come out from their dungeons.

The Negro mother’s tone is joyful for what she sees is the beginning of the coming of a dream into reality, and still never failed to inspire them through her words that drive them to continue in their fight against slavery and poverty. The story on the other hand brings the old Negro woman to a representation of the Negro mother who has dreams for her children as well but the voice of the story is in contrast to that of the poem because it shows that the dream the Negro mother has is like a mirage, a beautiful dream that is seen but is limited to the Negro’s imagination only.

For instance, the story reveals that the ‘woman sees a young boy bringing her a plate with a slice of marble cake but when she reached to take it, there was just her hand in the air’ ( Welty). This is a symbolism the author used which perceives the Black American dream to be just another dream in the air, far from coming to pass. The woman is also presented as one suffering from dementia or even worst, Alzheimer’s disease who struggles to bring good things to his child whatever the cost it would be like when she tricked the hunter who dropped a coin from his pocket to go after a black dog for her to be able to pick the coin, feeling guilty afterwards but still continues in her journey.

When the nurse at the hospital gave her a nickel as her present for Christmas, she took the other coin the hunter dropped and decided to go buy his son a windmill made out of paper, which she thought will amaze him a lot for such a thing to exist. This is also a symbolism of the Negro’s dream, as the woman is very old, thought to be a hundred years by the hunter, her dreams are as old as her and in such age, the dream is still the same but then its possibility of coming to pass is fading with the mother’