Week 4: Keagan Tice

In Langston Hughes's poem "The Weary Blues" the persona uses repetition to create a drowsy or weary effect on the audience. This is true from the first line, "Droning a drowsy syncopated tune." Here Hughes uses two words that have a weary effect, "Droning" and "drowsy," to emphasis the title's meaning. It works, too. Right away the audience feels the effects used from the simple repetition of two similar words, and it doesn’t stop there. In line seven Hughes repeats line six: “He did a lazy sway . . .” The repetition here is actually quite genius because the lines reflect what they convey. To sway is to move listlessly from side to side and that is what lines six and seven do; they sway from side to side then again from side to side. This direct repetition adds to the overall effect of weariness that is consistently repeated throughout the poem.

The next instance that the persona uses repetition is in lines ten and seventeen where the persona personifies the piano's noise, when played, as a "moan." In line ten the persona says, "He made that poor piano moan with melody." This gives the image that the piano is being played softly. In line seventeen the piano again moans, "I heard that negro sing, that old piano moan--," here the auditory image is repeated for emphasis. Lines eighteen and nineteen use anaphora, "Ain't got nobody in all this world, Ain't got nobody but ma self." Repeating verses can be in itself tiring, when a lazy word such as "Ain't is used it contributes to the weariness that is construed from the anaphora.

In the final section of the poem the persona repeats three words in line twenty two, "Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor." Here the onomatopoeia of the thump, a lazy one at that, reinforces the weary tune on which this poem is built upon. In lines twenty four through twenty seven, lines twenty four and five are repeated but not to the letter. "I got the Weary Blues, And I can’t be satisfied. Got the Weary Blues, And can’t be satisfied--." The lines that are repeated are without the pronoun "I"; perhaps the persona was lax in repeating the lines so he or she simply left them out. The repetition in this poem creates an effect of weariness that not only affects the audience but the persona as well.