Letting America Be
3 Pages 717 Words
Letting America Be
In the beginning of the poem, “Let America Be America Again,” Hughes writes about America as if it were once a country which people were able to “dream,” and be “free,” or never did “scheme.” However, our country was basically a place to take refuge from religious oppression and to make a lot of money for the country who supported us financially.
Letting American be what she intended to be, is the spirit Hughes is trying to convey. We need to revive “the dream that’s almost dead.” Without the dream we once had, our country would not be what she is today. The spark of hope that things will get better always kept the “blue-collared” crew of America going. The “sweat and blood” and “faith and pain” held our country by the threads. Through the rain and snow, our country was built from the bottom up, by the workers of America. The workers of America, who never had the “American dream” come to a reality knows freedom is a whimsy thought which one day might come true.
Our scheming country was hungry to find gold in the soil, to find riches in the soil through all means. “Tangled in that ancient endless chain” our country scurries around grabbing land and gold attempting to satisfy the need. To further increase our economy, minorities were shipped in to be bought and sold as slaves, or indentured servants. The price to come to America created indentured servants, working until they no longer owed any money. The many who came across “to build a ‘homeland of the free,’” and those who “sailed those early seas” came to America, searching for their means of a home. Where does the word free fit into a place such as that? I am sure people dreamed America to “be the dream the dreamers dreamed,” yet such disgraceful events took place.
America boasts proudly of her freedom and equality, yet she never had it. Equality was only in the air of white ...