The Negro Speaks Of Rivers

 Today in class we read the 1920s poem The Negro speaks of rivers by Langston Hughes. At first glance the poem looked like a very simple poem. After reading the Poem over you could tell there was many underlying meanings of this poem. I also noticed a lot of literary elements packed into such a small poem. One think that really stuck to me was when he talked about the flow of blood in a human body stopping but a river never stops flowing. “When dawns were young” is a metaphor Hughes used to demonstrate that rivers had been flowing from the beginning of time and will continue to flow to the end of it. But my takeaway from the poem is that even after we die, normal life goes on without us and the rivers never stop flowing.