Literary Renaissance 1915-1931 - Essay Example

His region was always New England only, and never America as a whole. His poetry often suggests deeper meaning than it seems at first reading it. "The Road Not Taken" reveals the figurative meaning of picking the road "less travelled by" as a description of one's personal difficult choice when travelling the road of life. Sometimes we make wrong decisions, but once we have taken the wrong path on a crossroad, we know we'll never go that same way again, but then, it might be too late for regrets and recreating what's done: "Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back" (Frost, Robert, "The Road Not Taken", The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fourth edition, vol.

2, ISBN 0-393-96462-0, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, p.1102). Edward Estlin Cummings used innovative verse with unusual spacing and indentation in the layout of his poems for the visual effect on the readers. He used much humour, grace, words that characterized his style in standing up for the individual against society, celebrating loners, lovers, etc. In "Buffalo Bill's" Cummings invites us to try and find the answer to the question that bothers everybody, i.e. how does "Mister Death" pick those who are to die, by their beauty, handsomeness, other virtues or vices, maybe "and what I want to know is / how do you like your blue-eyed boy / Mister Death" (Cummings, E.E., "Buffalo Bill's", The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fourth edition, vol.

2, ISBN 0-393-96462-0, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, p.1451). Langston Hughes as an African-American, who experienced early XX century America's racism, naturally writes about love for all races, raising his voice to unite all peoples. As a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, in his poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" written at the age of 18, Hughes reminds us we are all linked by blood as children of God through his symbolism of the Mississippi River - the human blood of all races.

He also reminds us of the process of emancipation of slaves by mentioning Abe Lincoln " I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln / went down to New Orleans" (Hughes, Langston, "The Negro Speaks of Rivers", The Norton Anthology of American Literature, fourth edition, vol.2, ISBN 0-393-96462-0, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, p.1717).Whereas poets between the wars wrote turning to modernism, imagism, etc., prose writers wrote more realistically. Faulkner used fictional points of view, imaginative landscape and interconnections of generations of families in his works.

Although white, Faulkner also wrote about various races, and African-Americans as part of the southern tradition were brilliantly depicted in his works. He managed to reveal the oppression and racial injustice Blacks had endured in the white South through Nancy, the protagonist of "That Evening Sun", while the white characters (the Compson family and others) are examples of the moral and spiritual decline during the period of the white Southern racism. Black characters are presented as Christ-like figures (Nancy’s suicide and her “hands holding to the window bars” symbolizing the cross and crucifixion).