This is such a powerful line within this particular piece. Being proud of who you are, how you look, and where you come from, no matter who you are, is so necessary to produce meaningful and beautiful art. It's also necessary to develop healthy views of the "self" and to show others how to do so. This is still a lesson that is being taught today to children and adults alike, especially for African Americans, making this line stand out more.

In our society mixed schools is seen as a positive thing, where children can be shown different people and lives and experiences while receiving an education but Hughes seems to be making the point that it isn't good.This is especially true if the child's home-life only solidifies what the child may learn in a school during this time, that white people are better. It's interesting to see the "Negro" family desperate to fit into white society and teach their child to conform, when he probably isn't fully aware of why he's being taught this in the first place.

The separation between being Negro and being American is interesting here, especially when the mountain is being used to signify that separation. Hughes is using America in two ways here, to represent the country and white America, which is a necessary distinction to make, while also creating three different experiences. It creates the experience of the land and society itself, white society, and then Negro society, and it's the attempts to cross into these societies that is harming the work created by "Negros". I wonder if this mountain of "conformity" can't be avoided entirely by looking to exist by that third America.

This section is a complete opposite to the rest of the poem. The dryness of the rocks and mountain are connected to death and the inability to think while the narrator practically begs for water. It appears that here water is meant to represent life and maybe even hope, considering how desperate the narrator is.

It's interesting here that the "wet" motif includes not just water, but oil and tar. With the personification of the river sweating, it can be viewed as the river laboring and its products are pollution that are harming most likely harming everything around it.

Once again we see "wet" in the form of the river used in a negative light as the season changes. The leaves falling from trees are clearly dying and sinking, representing death and an end to something positive.

While this stanza uses negative imagery and words to describe wet things, the imagery and description for "dry" things is quite positive. Nightingale songs are lively and considered beautiful, making the dry desert seem better or nicer than the "wet" section.

In this section liquid or "wet" appears to be something negative once again. It dulls senses and creates concern. The use of the word "synthetic" also suggests it is fake or produces falsehood in a way. All of these different aspects come together to produce a strange and worrying image.

After more than half a stanza in English, one single German line is introduced. What was it about this line in particular that needed to be in German? How does this line in German about the narrator's identity connect with the seasonal descriptions?

This is very strong imagery that stood out to me, placing kings and poets on the same level of people who are either scholars or actual clerks, as both are possible in this case. I wonder why they are being connected to "alnage" in this poem.

This is really interesting word choice to describe understanding large concepts like "good", "evil", "true", and "false". It seems to be saying that no one can understand one without having to understand the other and that all definitions are subjective to each person. In connection with the literature mentioned prior to the ending lines, I take this to mean that the knowledge in those books don't offer the understanding a person needs for these concepts. Instead, people must use what's around them as well as their own ideas to understand the world.

This poem is interesting in that it continues to list things that are somewhat related four at a time. The first time are things related to poetry, next are contents of plays and adjectives relating to tales of heroes.

Both this narrator and the narrator in "The Souls of Black Folk" use shadows as motifs. They both have shadows following them representing a darker part of their lives. For this narrator, it represents the woman in the wallpaper, which she is slowly believes she is becoming, and for Du Bois, the shadow represents an alternative thinking to protect his own mind.

Just like the narrator in "The Virgin and the Dynamo" the narrator here is determined to reach a conclusion, an explanation to help her make sense of the world around her. It is a desperation that drives both of them based on their own emotions and understandings about what they perceive as being the most important.

In this story, John is not spiritual in the slightest and relies only on facts and figures, obvious, clear-cut science that can be explained. This is a direct opposite to Adam in "The Virgin and the Dynamo", who steps away from science and math and facts, downright rejecting them, in exchange for stepping fully into faith. This difference in characteristics showcases the narrator's issues and actually leads to them worsening over time.

The energies he is speaking of here are the energies or "forces" of the past; the Virgin and the steam engine. This conclusion he is drawing is an odd one. He is essentially saying that both energies are forces and his conclusion is that these forces are measured by their effect on humans? Is he saying the effect religion and previous invention had on humans is the effect this new force is having on him? This effect cannot even be properly measured. It's just as abstract as whatever "force" he has decided to worship.

I'm a little confused by this concept. Where did the idea of rays come in? Adams seems to be using different words for this new "force" that one can assume is from the dynamos or is the dynamos. This is further backed by Langley saying he didn't like the direction these "forces" were leading science but Adams also mentions the solar spectrum. So will the dynamos and the future of science also be referred to as "rays" and "forces" for the rest of the chapter? If that's the case, then what's the point of using different words?

This obsession with force seems to take on a new meaning here as the narrator directly compares it to a supernatural and divine force like the Cross, especially since that Cross supposedly helped Constantine in the battle that occurred afterwards. Is the narrator saying that this force, whatever it is, will prepare him for some "battle" he may face in the future? For instance, the battle for knowledge or understanding in regards to this force. Is that why he calls this personal discovery of force a "revolution"?

What is the difference between this narrator's "white sins" and other "regular" sins?

Are these three lines summaries of the first four stanzas or are they simply callbacks to them?

Why is the point of view changed to first person in the last stanza?

Lions are animals native to Africa.