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civilizations, and the Mississippi, the river on
which several American cities were built, includ-
ing St. Louis (Hughes’s birthplace) and New Or-
leans. Onwuchekwa Jemie, writing in Langston
Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry,notes that
“the magical transformation of the Mississippi from
mud to gold by the sun’s radiance is mirrored in
the transformation of slaves into free men by Lin-
coln’s Proclamation.” In The Life of Langston
Hughes,Arnold Rampersad views this transforma-
tion as “the angle of a poet’s vision, which turns
mud into gold.” The sun’s transformation of muddy
water to gold provides an image of change. The
change may represent the improved status of
African Americans after the Civil War, hope for fu-
ture changes, or the power of the poet to transform
reality through imaginative language. Line 8 per-
sonifies the river by giving it the human capacity
to sing. The river’s singing invokes both the slave
spirituals and songs of celebration after the slaves
were freed. Line 9 also personifies the river by en-
dowing it with a “muddy bosom.” The Mississippi
river is known for its muddiness. The term “bo-
som” is associated with women and so connotes
fertility and nurturing. Through this personifica-
tion, Hughes associates the ceaselessness of the
mighty river with the eternal, life-affirming en-
durance of Africans and African Americans.
Lines 11–13:
The poem closes with the phrases that opened
it. The speaker’s language completes a cycle that
mirrors the river’s eternal cycling of waters around
the earth and the African race’s continuing role in
human history. By enacting the circling of time and
rivers, the speaker again associates himself with
those elemental forces. The phrase “dusky rivers”
refers literally to rivers that appear brown due to
mud and cloudy skies. Figuratively, the phrase
again likens rivers to peoples of African descent,
whose skin is often called “dusky” or dark. The fi-
nal line reaffirms the speaker’s sense of racial
pride, of continuity with ancient, advanced civi-
lizations, and of connection to life-giving, endur-
ing forces in nature.
Themes
Heritage
“The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Hughes’ first
published poem, introduces a theme which would
recur in several other works throughout his career.
Many critics have classified this group as the “her-
itage” poems. Amazingly, although it was com-
posed very quickly when he was only seventeen, it
is both polished and powerful. In fact, in Langston
Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry, On-
wuchekwa Jemie labels it the most profound of this
group.
The poem utilizes four of the world’s largest
and most historically prominent rivers as a
metaphor to present a view, almost a timeline in
miniature, of the African-American experience
throughout history. The opening lines of the poem
introduce the ancient and powerful cultural history
of Africa and West Asia, with the mention of the
Euphrates and the dawn of time. Next the Congo,
mother to Central Africa, lulls the speaker, to sleep.
The world’s longest river, the powerful and com-
plex Nile with its great pyramids, follows. Last, the
poem moves to more recent times, with the intro-
duction of the Mississippi. Even though the Mis-
sissippi and Congo both hold bitter connotations of
the slave trade, each of the four has contributed to
the depth of the speaker’s soul. The poem stresses
triumph over adversity as the “muddy bosom” of
the Mississippi turns golden.
The speaker clearly represents more than
Langston Hughes, the individual. In fact, the “I” of
the poem becomes even more than the embodiment
of a racial identity. The poem describes, underly-
ing that identity, an eternal spirit, existing before
the dawn of time and present still in the twentieth
century. The different sections of the poem em-
phasize this: the speaker actually functions on two
levels. One is the human level. The first words of
lines five through eight create a picture of the
speaker’s ancestors: bathing, building, looking,
hearing. However, the poem also discusses a spir-
itual level where the soul of the speaker has been
and continues to be enriched by the spirit of the
river, even before the creation of humanity. Thus,
the second and third lines of the poem develop an
eternal, or cosmic, dimension in the poem.Wisdom and Strength
The poem’s cosmic dimension adds an addi-
tional theme making the poem more than a tribute
to the heritage of the past. It honors the wisdom and
strength which allowed African-Americans to sur-
vive and flourish in the face of all adversity, most
particularly the last few centuries of slavery. Hughes
associates this strength with the spirit of these rivers
which Jemie describes in Langston Hughes: An In-
troduction to the Poetryas “transcendent essencesThe Negro Speaks of Rivers