Part 1

Your goal is not to critique or evaluate the text(s) or strategies. Instead, your task is to briefly review and reflect on the rhetorical situation. That is, your task is to introduce the text in which you have observed an interesting rhetorical strategy ~50 words); name and describe the rhetorical strategy you found of interest (~100 words); and explain what you found interesting about the rhetorical strategy (~100 words). As you explain what you found interesting, discuss what you suspect the author was trying to accomplish with this strategy. What was the purpose? Who is the intended audience and how did the author attempt to appeal to them? How might have the text/genre or context influenced the author’s choices?

Langston Hughes – Them For English B

Langston Hughes in this poem is illustrating the relationship between black and white Americans from the perspective of a college student living in Harlem New York. He questions if the page that he writes will be colored much like him, which I think is a reference to the feeling that as a black person you cannot escape the perception others have on you consequently.

I think this poem is mostly based on Pathos because the character Langston is portraying is questioning himself and the way in which the color of his skin forever impacts the path of his life. This poem also deals with Logos one example of this is when he states that sometimes blacks and whites get frustrated with coexistence, but in the same respect they learn from each other and therefore they are apart of each other. 

What I found interesting about Langston Hughes rhetorical strategies of classification and a narration, is that with them he created the illustration of a yin and Yang relationship between black and white Americans. First he shows the reader where he’s coming from and then shows where he fits within this relationship. I think the author was attempting to humanize the common experience shared by many black people. I think the intended audience was black and white New Yorkers and he appealed to this demographic by mentioning geographical details within New York in order to make the reader feel as if they were there themselves. The genre of poetry most likely made Langston Hughes want to touch the reader more personally.