s poem, I found that the explication process worked best. I periodically went through the entire poem focusing on perhaps one line and what that meant, and then moving to a different line. I continued this process until I had enough of it solved to unravel the whole. I chose this approach because it worked well with the poem. The poem seemed to read like a story and this made it easy to interpret one line, and then to pick up and move to a different line.I would start explaining my interpretation of Hughes poem by saying that it is full of metaphors and similes. In several places Hughes refers to the rivers as being old. In line two he uses the word ancient to describe them and again in line twelve. I originally thought that the rivers represented time but I now believe that they represent the speakers soul. My interpretation of this poem is a narrative sprinkled with similes that repeatedly make this comparison of the rivers and the speakers soul. The narrative begins when the speaker says that he bathed in the Euphrates river when dawns were young. This could represent his birth or a time when he was young or young at heart. Bathing is often associated with baptism and this usually occurs at birth. Next he comments, I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I believe this could be a memory of his early manhood, probably at a time when he is living in Africa and is still asleep (or not aware of) the institution of slavery. Then he states, I looked upon the Nile and raised the Pyramids above it. It seems to me that he is a slave at this point, looking at his finished work that rises above the Nile. In truth, slaves actually were the people who built the great Pyramids and this fact can be used to substantiate my claim. Lastly, when he comments, I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and Ive seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset I think the speaker is s...
