Cover Letter

My audience in this essay is my professor and classmates. To tailor specifically to this audience I used professional language and diction but kept my tone somewhat informal. I wrote the paper in a way in which I knew my classmates and instructor could understand the text. 

Throughout this phase I’ve learned to identify rhetorical strategies and devices and how they are used in almost every form of language whether it’s written or spoken. Learning more about ethos, pathos, and logos will help in the future to identify what type of rhetoric is being used and what effect it has. This is something I will continue to get better at in terms of incorporating it into my own writing. 

The audience and exigence have impacted me the most as these are terms I never thought of much before in my writing. The audience is always important but up until now I’ve only ever thought of writing an assignment with the instructor as the audience. It never really crossed my mind that I could switch up the audience to something completely different in my writing. I also never understood how important the exigence is in a text and how there can be many factors involved in a text including the reason it is being written, the setting, the background information, and etcetera.

In this phase of learning we were able to look at many different texts and how they were able to have rhetoric although they used different genres or media, such as ted talks. Learning outcome two, “Explore and analyze, in writing and reading, a variety of genres and rhetorical situations,” is what comes to mind when I think about how in a ted talk the presenter is on a stage speaking to the audience but still keeps in mind who exactly their audience is and hoe to use things like comic relief to connect with the audience. This realization stands out the most to me when I think of the different genres and rhetorical situations we’ve studied. 

Identity in America Society

Langston Hughes was an American playwright from Joplin Missouri who was also considered the leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He was also a famous novelist, social activist, and playwright. In addition, he was an early innovator of jazz poetry. His poem ‘Themes for English B,’ published in 1951, challenges the status quo on identity in America and the role of race. The narrator starts off with getting a writing assignment from his English professor with the prompt, “Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you- Then, it will be true.” He writes about going to school in Harlem and describes the location of City College. He uses his daily life to tell an anecdote that brings him closer to the reader. The text shows him having trouble fitting into a mostly white environment. He also thinks deeply about his personality and background, and whether or not this can be just another simple assignment for him. Starting in the first stanza the author uses a descriptive anecdote as a rhetorical device to hook the reader and connect with them through pathos early on. Later in the third stanza, the author repeats the word ‘like’ to emphasise his point on his hobbies being the same as the white people in his community.

The main idea throughout the text is the sophistication of identity in a racist society. Specifically, the narrator’s identity. The author’s immediate audience would have to be his professor and classmates as that’s who the assignment was written for. He also seems to directly address his white professor multiple times throughout the poem, which makes it feel like he wants to send a message to him. It could also be other people who could live in New York and are open minded and accepting of his type of story. There is also still an audience in today’s world. Although this was decades ago, a lot of the same societal problems still take place. The author uses descriptive imagery and anecdotes, rhetorical questions, and anaphora to build an emotional connection with the reader and to gain trust and credibility. 

The narrator often uses rhetorical questions and descriptive imagery to draw in the reader very early on in the poem. The anecdote and the imagery are especially what connect the reader to the story through emotion/pathos. The narrator proclaims in the first stanza, “I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here to this college on the hill above Harlem.  I am the only colored student in my class. The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,  through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,  Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,  the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator up to my room, sit down, and write this page”(Hughes 1).  He vividly describes the path he takes home to write this assignment which he can’t exactly come to terms with. It shows that it’s weighing on his mind as he travels home and has to consider what to actually write about. This imagery helps the reader be put in the narrator’s mind from the beginning. The reader gains the narrator’s trust and  it establishes an understanding of what he’s thinking and feeling. This further helps us to comprehend what he means at the end of the poem, and his struggles with his own identity. 

As he writes he struggles to find himself and realizes that their difference in skin color is a driving force between himself and his professor. The author uses anaphora and repetition to emphasize this. There is a part of the second stanza where the narrator lists his different hobbies in an effort to show that he is no different from his white counterparts. He exclaims, “Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love. I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.  I like a pipe for a Christmas present, or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach. I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like the same things other folks like who are of other races”(Hughes 1). This list details his confusion on what exactly makes him stand out in his community. The narrator also uses anaphora by repeating the word ‘like’ in the beginning of each line in line 17 and 18. This adds a lot of emphasis to the point he tries to make about his own identity/personality. It shows that he doesn’t understand why that part of his identity should change anything for him. If he can enjoy the same hobbies and activities as the white people in his community, why does there have to be such a rift between them? This also capitalizes on the reader’s emotion with the help of the rhetoric used in the first stanza. The reader can begin to share that frustration with him and understand why he’s upset. Towards the end of the poem he starts to come to terms with how his identity really differs from his classmates and instructor which sums up his response to the professor’s prompt. 

Overall, the author draws in the reader from the very beginning with the use of anecdotes and imagery. He then moves on to anaphora and rhetorical questions to add emphasis to the poem. The reader becomes more interested and gives the narrator more credibility. This helps put the reader in his shoes and really understand what’s going on in the text. The narrator uses these rhetorical devices to finally sum up the fact that he, as the only black student in the class, doesn’t feel connected to the professor although he is a fellow American. He does not feel treated as such because of their difference in skin color. Even in today’s world we still find this relevant as many students of color could feel the same way or relate to the poem. This is the main idea of the poem that is truly felt by every reader because of its delivery after gaining that trust and credibility from the reader. In today’s society, and even in New York City, racial bias still affects many people of color and is also a major problem in other institutions across the country. Although this poem was written several decades ago in a different time, it shows that there are still changes that need to be made and there is still something to be learned from this poem.

​​Hughes, Langston. “Theme for English B by Langston Hughes.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47880/theme-for-english-b.