The first lockdown was an experience none of us could have foreseen or imagined. However, there were benefits. Driving, university assignments, family gatherings and just about anything else that was causing me anxiety suddenly no longer was a concern. I think I read twenty books in two months, something I haven't done since I was 13, and watched the entirety of the Disney Plus catalogue. My friends and I would arrange regular quiz evenings, bringing us closer together despite our physical distances. My parents, who work all day everyday at the convenience store they run, were able to close their shop two hours earlier every single day and spend time with us. It was the most relaxed I'd seen them in a decade. And selfishly, I wasn't really sad at all.
Until May happened. I try and stay away from the news because I'm empathetic to the point of not being able to put myself in someone's shoes when they express their pain and grievances. I don't say this for sympathy or praise, it's maddeningly tiresome to feel every emotion on the spectrum so intensely. The death of George Floyd and the understandable outcry that occurred around the world afterwards was impossible to miss. I felt so tired out with the state of the world and scrolling through Twitter trends wasn't making it any better. A man was wrongly killed, and people had it in them to turn around and say it was justified. I spent several evenings reading Internet arguments between those who argued that black lives matter and those who argued that all lives mattered. It was infuriating, no one said that all lives didn't matter. It was the implication that all lives are equally in danger, when they are not, that was and still is the problem.
I looked through my readings lists for my third year of University and immersed myself in the works of the black writers. I became particularly infatuated with the works of Langston Hughes. The title of Hughes’ book-length collection of poems, Montage of a Dream Deferred, refers to the aspirations and lifestyles of the African American inhabitants of Harlem and how their ambitions faced delay and ridicule by the white Americans. After the end of the second World War, several black Americans were left unable to participate in the country’s post-war prosperity and success. Hughes illustrates their struggle through his poetry, particularly in the likes of ‘Ballad of the Landlord’, and ‘Not a Movie’, where two unnamed black males face mistreatment. With it being Black History Month, I thought it would only be right to dedicate a post to my interpretations of Hughes' poetry.
Hughes writes ‘Ballad of the Landlord’ from the point of view of a black man who is disappointed with the condition of the home his white landlord is renting to him. Notably, the poem’s title refers to that of the landlord as opposed to the tenant and refers to a ‘ballad’, a traditionally sentimental song. The title alone evokes pathos for the landlord; Hughes writes this poem to demonstrate the nation’s systematic racism and preference amongst landlords for white tenants. The home’s ‘roof has sprung a leak’ and ‘steps’ have ‘broken down’ and despite the landlord being informed, no repairs have been made. Regardless, the landlord demands a payment of ‘Ten Bucks’, which the tenant incredulously tells him is ‘Ten Bucks more’n I’ll pay you till you fix this house up new’. Here the struggles of African American’s can be inferred; a white landlord demands remittance despite failing to complete a job, a job that would even prevent him from ‘falling down’ when he came to visit as the tenant politely says. A misconception from the early 1900’s that Hughes illustrates is black tenants damaging their rented properties when in reality, they were used as scapegoats for white landlord’s inabilities to maintain hazard-free premises. The landlord’s demand of a settlement is symbolic of his power and foreshadows his capacity to ‘cut off (the tenant’s) heat’ and ‘take (the tenant’s) furniture and throw it in the street’.
African American’s inability to engage in America’s post-war triumph is reflected by Hughes when the tenant threatens to ‘land (the tenant’s) fist on (the landlord’). The speaker of the poem then changes to the landlord, who calls ‘Police! Police’. The tenant’s autonomy immediately ends when he threatens violence; we no longer read his dialogue and Hughes terminates the ABCB rhyme scheme, reflective of the tenant’s loss of control and demeanour. The landlord accuses him of attempting to ‘ruin the government’ and ‘overturn the land!’, hyperbolic and false accusations, however, the tenant is jailed without bail. I interpret the landlord’s false allegations as an attempt on Hughes’ part to emphasise the fear surrounding African Americans; the tenant has to protect himself when he is wronged, whilst the landlord feels the need to contact the police when he is merely threatened. We learn of the tenant’s fate through newspaper headlines - Hughes makes the decision to finish the poem in free verse, a choice that insinuates the landlord’s political power over the tenant. We are reduced to reading ‘man threatens landlord’ and ‘tenant held no bail’ to be enlightened. The ending of the poem also juxtaposes the tenant’s initial ‘central and defining form’, as Karen J. Ford writes in These Old Writing Paper Blues: The Blues Stanza and Literary Poetry, for the tenant fails to override his landlord.
‘Not a Movie’ is similar to ‘Ballad of the Landlord’ in that Hughes writes of another African American who comes to harm at the hands of white Americans. I argue that the described violence in the poem, which sees a black man beaten in the South, is too graphic and precise to have ever made the pictures, hence the poem’s title denying any production. In ‘Not a Movie’, the terrorised is ‘rocked with road-apples because he tried to vote’; Hughes illustrates an African American who is assaulted by members of the KKK for exercising the right to participate in an election. In doing so, he emphasises the same fear surrounding black Americans that he demonstrates in ‘Ballad of the Landlord’; there was trepidation amongst white Americans seeing black Americans receiving basic human rights, be that with living or the right to vote. In ‘Not a Movie’, the KKK ‘whipped (the victim's) head with clubs’ and notably receive no detainment for their actions. This is comparable to the tenant who is forced to spend ’90 days in country jail’ for physically threatening his landlord after he is faced with possibility of eviction. Hughes writes that the man ‘crawled on his knees to his house and got the midnight train’; being reduced to travelling on his hands and knees suggests the constant mercy African Americans felt the need to seek, his journey encapsulating an African American’s need to escape from racial violence.
There are only two rhyming lines in ‘Not a Movie’; Hughes mentions ‘six knots was on his head but, thank God, he wasn’t dead!’. The exclamation mark simultaneously elicits both violent and optimistic connotations. Whilst the poem's only couplet entails the most graphic lines in the poem, ‘knots’ suggesting severe bruises that would indefinitely lead to concussion, buoyancy and relief is inferred with the rhyming of ‘head’ and ‘dead!’. Despite the attack, the black man survived and successfully made his way to ‘113rd’, a street in Harlem where he can seek refuge away from the ‘Ku Klux’.
I find both poems insightful; ‘Not a Movie’ possesses the more satisfactory ending, however. The likes of John Lowney in Langston Hughes and the “Nonsense” of Bepop writes that Hughes’ repeated reference to ‘113rd’, which was known as the ‘original swing street’ and allowed freedom surrounding literature, music, and speech, ensures a reader that the victim is in safer hands. The same cannot be said for the tenant in ‘Ballad of the Landlord’, whose loses all autonomy by the end of the poem. His fate is decided by a judge and we learn of it through headlines.
Thank you so much for reading - I hope you have the best week!
I had the loveliest birthday, thank you for all the messages 🧡
Lots of love, Karisma xx