Hughes' & Choplin's: Imagery

Langston Hughes and Kate Chopin use nature in several dimensions to demonstrate the powerful struggles and burdens of human life. Throughout Kate Chopin's The Awakening and several of Langston Hughes’ poems, the sweeping imagery of the beauty and power of nature demonstrates the struggles the characters confront, and their eventual freedom from those struggles. Nature and freedom coexist, and the characters eventually learn to find freedom from the confines of society, oneself, and finally freedom …

…examination reveals that they both represent the basic human struggle that plagues the characters/speakers in these works. In these works, the images of nature serve as a symbol of the freedom of the soul, yet simultaneously serving as a symbol for the burden of achieving that freedom, and the anguish of the struggle. Both Chopin and Hughes use nature in their works in the form of sweeping imagery, poignant metaphors, and precise, powerful symbolism.