The Use of Repetition

Langston Hughes’ poems have a lot of repetition. If the repetition is of a whole line, it usually repeats itself only once. In “Hard Daddy,” he also has a lot of repetition, especially of whole lines. In the first stanza, the girl reports to her father, “I have got the blues,” two times (Hughes 2-4). Although it may be that the line was repeated just for emphasis, her statement is simply waved off when her father replies, “Honey / Can’t you bring better news?” (Hughes 5-6). In the next stanza, the lines “…cried on his shoulder but / He turned his back on me” is repeated (Hughes 7-10). It could be that the girl tried two times and her father rejected her for both, but it also could be that it was a flashback, as to emphasize his action. Either way, it is true that the repeated lines are emphasized. In the last stanza, the lines “…wish I had wings to / Fly like de eagle flies” is repeated (Hughes 13-6). A lot of the readers may believe that the girl wants to be free of sorrows, soaring through the sky carelessly or some other ideas of flying and/or freedom. However, the poem ends with the surprising idea that she wants to “scratch out both his [i.e. her father] eyes” (Hughes 17-8). The emphasis that she wants wings before the last two lines helped build up the wrong images in my mind, which grabbed my heart with surprise. Langston Hughes’ use of repetition is very deep and there seems to be multiple reasons for them. It is a difficult item to decipher, but I find it one of the most interesting and intriguing elements of his poems.