Trumpet Player

Scansion and Analysis

Langston Hughes in his poem ‘Trumpet Player’ explains how music can be used to ease the sufferings endured during hardships but cannot easily fade away the memories during those hardships. The poem showed out how many African Americans suffered in the era of slavery even after it was abolished. They used music to ease the memories they endured during that time even though music would not fade away the awful memories.  The poem is made up of four eight line stanzas and then followed by two six line stanzas. The poem only adheres to the two dashes as the only punctuation marks used. The poem uses capitalization appropriately since they are heavily seen on the first stanza and less on the other stanzas. The poem is a narrative type of poem since it narrates what African Americans endured during slavery.

Explication

The main idea of the poem is describing how African Americans used music to ease the pain and memories they endured during slavery. The themes addressed in the poem include discrimination and music. Discrimination is used to show how African Americans were discriminated and are still discriminated since even the poet calls them Negroes. Music is used to show how people use different ideas in easing their daily pains and trying to fade away awful memories. The poet uses stylistic devices in his poem such as symbols, metaphors and personification. For instance he uses the word Negro to describe the African Americans. The speaker of the poem is a hopeful person who sees hopes in the music used to ease the pain. The African American faces discrimination and is still hopefully that eventually things will work out. The poem lacks a relevant rhyme scheme. The speaker of the poem is a talented trumpet player since he describes the act of playing the trumpet well. The tone of the poem is sympathetic where one sympathizes with the African American who faces discrimination and is still hopeful.

Work cited

https://allpoetry.com/Trumpet-Player