18 pages • 36 minutes read
Langston HughesTired
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1931A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context
“Tired” was published in 1931, which means it appeared during the Harlem Renaissance, an intellectual and cultural revival of African American creative arts that generally dates from the 1920s until the mid-1930s. Although the poem doesn’t deal specifically with race, “Tired” adheres to the tenants of the Harlem Renaissance because it represents a confrontation with the ills of the world. One of the primary outcomes of the Harlem Renaissance was that Black writers felt empowered to confront the multiple injustices of society using an authentic voice. In “Tired,” Hughes directly addresses the world’s shortcomings in a distinctly melodious and plainspoken voice.
One can also analyze this poem within the literary context of Imagism. In the early-1900s, poets like Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Hilda Doolittle (H. D.), and William Carlos Williams began to write poems that, as the name suggests, zeroed in on images. Imagists sought to create precise and clear poems through vivid images. Lowell’s “Falling Snow” (1917) and Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” (1913) are two examples of Imagist poems. Both poets influenced Hughes, and their poetics are noticeable in “Tired.” In Lines 5-8, the image of cutting the world in half as if it is a fruit—and then evaluating the worms inside—continues the principles of Imagism.
Historical Context
The speaker's exasperation in “Tired” relates to the historical period of the poem. The poem came out in 1931 during the Great Depression. Due to unfettered speculation, the stock market crashed in October 1929. Almost immediately, America’s economy collapsed. Countless Americans lost their homes, jobs, and savings. By 1933, around 15 million Americans were jobless, and half of the country’s banks had failed. Thus, when thinking about what the worms eating away at the rind represent, the excesses of capitalism are one possibility.
At the time of the poem, America wasn’t the only part of the world that was not becoming beautiful or kind. In Europe during the 1930s, fascism was on the rise. A decade earlier, Benito Mussolini took control of Italy. Two years after the publication of “Tired,” Adolf Hitler became the prime minister of Germany, and, by the end of the 1930s, Francisco Franco was in charge of Spain. Oppression continued in the United States, with Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South. Whether it was racism in America, economic catastrophe across the globe, or fascism in Europe, at this point in history, Hughes had plenty to be tired of.
The historical developments compelled people to think of alternatives to capitalism and fascism. Many writers, artists, and ordinary people gravitated towards the ideas of Karl Marx—the 19th-century German philosopher who denounced the exploitative and unequal nature of capitalism and advocated replacing it with an economy based on sharing and community, or communism. New Masses provided a platform for people supportive of communism, socialism, and other anti-capitalist ideologies. Read in the context of the leftist magazine, the world could become a beautiful and kind place if it were not consumed by violent, manipulative, or hateful political and economic systems.
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By Langston Hughes
