ballad of the landLORD
Okay so i think i need to take what i said before back, not all poetry is the devils work and is out to brainwash people … only most of it. If we include ballads as poetry i could read and listen to them all the time, and that is why i choose to pick The ballad of the landlord as the poem to do my blog over.
Well believe it or not this ballad has song like qualities … who would have guessed. There is also a very easy to spot rhyme scheme. We can also see a dialect difference between the two men. The poem follows the short story of a black man and his landlord. The black man’s house has problems and is asking the white landlord to fix them but to no avail. Soon the police are called and while the black man does nothing wrong he in the end of the ballad it at fault and is sent to jail. This was a big fear for blacks at the time because of the intense amount of racism in certain areas and just one small upset in a normal day could leave you homeless, jobless, in jail , or all of the above.
This poem is a desperate way to show the harsh treatment of blacks during the times and the hardships they were forced through for no reason. This poem sends a very powerful message in just a few RHYMING lines. Mr. Langston Hughes has a unique way of writing but for some reason i like it, it might be because most of his meanings are straightforward.