Hughes and McKay

Langston Hughes and Claude McKay are two great poets who have both similarities and differences between their works. Structurally, McKay’s poems have more of a very defined arrangement of ten syllables per line. Hughes is trying to have his poems look Shakespearean, and trying to add more worth to his poems to show to the white men. Hughes’s poems don’t really have much of a structure, like take for example “Mulatto.” The writing seems somewhat scattered about the page, but it ends up working out in an odd way. Hughes’s writing seems more laid back, like in “Theme for English B.” The poem seems almost like a half-assed poem turned in for English class, but it ends up having a twist ending.
Twist endings are actually a major similarity between Hughes and McKay their poems also discuss important African American issues (which makes sense because they are both African American poets/writers) during the Harlem Renaissance. Both of them talk about the city Harlem itself, both in their own way.
In most of McKay’s writings such as “America,” “To the White Friends,” and “If We Must Die,” he discusses how Blacks need to fight and prove to the whites that they mean business and want to be a part of this country. In “If We Must Die,” he states, “If we die, O let us nobly die, So that our precious blood may not be shed In vain; then even the monsters we defy Shall be constrained to honor us through dead!” (1007) Hughes’s poems seem to disagree with McKay, and most of his pieces display the beauty of African race like in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and “The Weary Blues.” Hughes also discusses how they (the Blacks) should ask the whites how they could get along and succeed in arts. In “You are white- yet a part of me, as I am a pat of you. That’s American. Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you,? I guess you learn from me- although you’re older-and white- and somewhat more free.” (1310) Hughes is supporting the unity of the whites and blacks, and that is what he feels America is all founded on.