"Cross" by Langston Hughes

What I like about “Cross” by Langston Hughes is the structure that he implies. There are three stanza Quatrain. What really makes the poem interesting is that in his first stanza the AB structure is not a rhyme but the same word. For example man with man but makes the rhyme with black and back. This pattern goes on in the next two stanzas with the second and forth line matching. The tone of the poem would have to be that of slavery. His old man is white and his old mother’s black. (Hughes pg. 689) I feel that in the first two stanzas that Langston Hughes feels that he is in a struggle between races. If he ever cursed his father he takes it back means that he loved his father and said the same thing about his mother but wishes he never said it. In the last stanza if feel that he is judging which way he is going to die. With having a white father who die in a big house and a black mother who died in a shack could mean that they got divorced and he doesn’t know if he will live the class of a white man or live the life of a black man in the end. By ending the poem saying “I wonder where I’m gonna die, Being neither white or black?” (Hughes pg. 689) I feel that he saying on how would society judge me than.

---Richard Liptak