Tired

Langston Hughes’s lyric poem “Tired” begins with two literary devices: repetition and hyperbole. The speaker isn’t “kind of tired” or “somewhat tired”—the speaker repeats the title in the first line to emphasize that he is “so tired of waiting.” The speaker is intentionally not presenting a moderate opinion, nor is the speaker open to a different take. In Line 2, the speaker brings in the reader or the person listening to the poem: “Aren’t you”? asks the speaker. With the second-person pronoun “you,” the speaker ushers the audience into his world, asking whether the audience agrees with him. Next, the speaker reveals the somewhat abstract idea that has exhausted him: He is so tired of waiting for “the world to become good / And beautiful and kind” (Lines 3-4). These lines provide some clarity, but they also lead to additional questions. A reader might wonder what the speaker means by “good,” “beautiful,” and “kind.”

In The Big Sea, Langston Hughes discusses his summer vacations during high school. He would read books by Friedrich Nietzsche and other authors until he fell asleep each night. The 19th-century German philosopher Nietzsche famously argued that good and evil were constructs, with “good” merely being whatever the dominant group at the time said was good. The same goes for “beautiful” and “kind.” Ask any poet, philosopher, or ordinary person, and they’ll likely give a unique definition of these words. While it’s important to note the scope of the words listed in Lines 3-4, a fair number of readers won’t need to analyze the multiple dimensions of the terms. Setting aside philosophical and linguistic considerations, in general, a “good,” “beautiful,” and “kind” world is a world that is just and merciful, and, thus, attractive to live in and be a part of. The speaker voices his frustration when he realizes that this is not the world in which he is living, and the “you” implicates the reader in the speaker’s dissatisfaction.

In the first part of “Tired” (Lines 1-4), the mood is passive. The speaker and, potentially, the reader are simply waiting for the world to become a good, beautiful, and kind place. However, in Line 5, the mood of the poem shifts with an aggressive call to action. Once again, the speaker’s diction implicates the audience as he says, “Let us take a knife” (Line 5). The speaker and audience are now in control of a weapon they will use to “cut the world in two” (Line 6). Once the world is split open, they can “see what worms are eating / At the rind” (Lines 7-8). This image is grotesque as it depicts worms gnawing away at the world's skin.

Instead of the word “skin,” the speaker uses the word “rind,” which transforms the final two lines into a metaphor. The speaker compares the wickedness of the world to rotten fruit. Just as worms can take over and compromise a piece of fruit (like an apple), bad actors can take over and corrupt the fabric of society. Thus, in the final two lines, the speaker portrays the world as a fruit. The speaker wants to cut the world in half (as is commonly done with an applicable piece of fruit), to see what's fouling its layers, skin, or "rind."