o him: “I do not think that they will sing to me (line 125).” This passage and poem ends with Prufock falling out of his fantasy world and back into reality: “Till human voices wake us, and we drown (line 131).” 3b. Extra CreditThe Weary BluesLangston Hughes 1932 The Weary Blues is a poem about black musician as narrated by a white man. The story of the poem is the narrator watching this black man perform the blues. You can tell the narrator is white by the language used: “I heard a Negro play (line 3).” The narrator finds entertainment in the black musician but does not realize that his melody and words speak a certain truth: “Got de Weary Blues, And can’t be satisfied—I ain’t happy no mo,’ And I wish that I had died (lines 27-30).” There is an insinuation in the poem that the man did kill himself that night after he went home from the performance: “While the Weary Blues echoes through his head, He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead (lines 34-35).” It is hard to say exactly what Hughes meant by that last line. It could be read that the man just slept so sound that it was as if he was dead. It also could be read that the man slept because he was dead. Another question of the poem is what was the man troubled over. Hughes wrote a lot on black oppression, so the man could be unhappy because he is tired of being black in a white society. The narrator makes some insinuations of oppression when he refers to the man as Negro and his comment on such good music coming from a black man: “He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet Blues! Coming from a black man’s soul (lines 12-14).” This poem might be about an old black man who is just sad with life and finds his escape through music. Either way it is important to note that the narrator did not know that the entertainment he enjoying was anoth...
