The document analyzes how Langston Hughes uses white voices in his poems "The Weary Blues" and "Brass Spittoons" to discuss labor and oppression. In "The Weary Blues," the white narrator fades away to show the disconnect between white audiences and black performers. In "Brass Spittoons," an oppressive white supervisor interrupts the black speaker to represent the pressures faced by black laborers. Both poems employ white presences to make statements about the experiences of African Americans.

1. Sarah Lesikar
Dr. Daniels
American Literature
28 February 2016
The Purpose of the White Presence in “The Weary Blues” and “Brass Spittoons”
The poems “The Weary Blues” and “Brass Spittoons” by Langston Hughes are
both African American poems that feature a white voice. Both of these poems utilize the
white presence to make statements about labor and oppression, but to they do so in
different ways and with specific agendas. In “The Weary Blues” Langston Hughes writes
from the perspective of a white speaker who fades out of the poem in order to
demonstrate the disconnect of white audiences with the reality of black performers. In
contrast, “Brass Spittoons” features a white voice that infiltrates the poem of a black
speaker. Here, the white presence is utilized to create a statement about the oppressive
presence of white power in the lives of laborers.
“The Weary Blues” sets up the poem through the perspective of a white speaker
and is distorted accordingly. We can identify the speaker as white by using clues
provided in word choice and setting. The setting, Lennox Avenue, is a reference to the
road housing the Cotton Club. This was a jazz joint that featured wealthy, all-white
audiences listening to primarily black performers. The speaker likely belongs to one of
these two groups. Word choice where the speaker describes the musician “a Negro” and
“that Negro” places him in the former group. As emphasized by his own word choice, the
speaker’s race and social class places him very much outside of the musician’s world.

2. Our speaker’s understanding of the musician, and thus our own, is distorted by his white
perspective. Line four emphasizes this when it describes that our speaker sees the
musician “By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light”. The words “pale” and “pallor” are
related in that they both carry meanings of whiteness or lack of color. The white light that
allows our speaker to see the musician thus becomes a metaphor for the fact that his
understanding of the musician is distorted by his white race and background.
Hughes does not allow this white perspective to dominate the entire poem, but
instead chooses to have it fade away after the conclusion of stanza one. In stanza one the
“I” that identifies the presence of our speaker is found twice, once in line three and again
in line 18. The presence of the speaker is felt throughout this stanza, as the “I” is located
both towards its beginning and towards its end. Everything in these lines is thus distorted
by the speaker’s limited perspective. However, by the second stanza the distorting white
perspective fades from the poem, signified by an absence of the speaker’s “I”. Besides
the absence of the “I”, this is illustrated in the personification found in line 32, “the stars
went out and so did the moon.” This statement draws parallels to the previous “pallor of
an old gas light”, which was a metaphor for the filter of the white perspective. White light
once washed the musician out, made him loose his color. Now all the light, even the light
from the stars and the moon, has left. The white perspective is gone and finally, the
reader has the chance to see the musician as he really is.
Once the musician is in solitude, the poem can express the musician’s reality
without filter or distortion. With the speaker gone, and even the celestial bodies out of the
scene, the musician is utterly alone. Not only is there no one there to see him through a
distorted filter, he has no one for whom to filter his song. He can pour out his heartache,

3. despair, and exhaustion, unedited. The “Thump thump thump” that begins the second and
final stanza introduces this shift. This thumping sounds like the beating of a heart. It is as
if the musician, his very heartbeat, is entering into the poem. This beating is also written
to describe the beat of the musician’s song. As the song is connected to the heartbeat of
the musician, it is likely to express his heart’s true feelings.
The poem uses the shift in filter to demonstrate a disconnect between the
speaker’s ideas regarding the musician and the musician’s reality. One such disconnect
centers around the musician’s depression. In the first stanza the speaker recognizes the
sadness in the musician’s song but does not deeply sympathize with it. Here, the song is
described as “sad” and melancholy”. Sad is not a word that expresses depth of emotion.
Rather, it comes across flat. “Melancholy” is a formal word. When it is used to describe
the musician’s tone, the formality comes off with the edge of a reprimand. This
infiltrates the musician’s song, which he filters for his white audience when he sings “I’s
gwine to quit ma frownin’/ And put ma troubles on the shelf.” The heavy accent in the
song, not nearly as present in the song from the second stanza, is an indicator that this
song is being filtered for an audience. A wealthy white audience would expect the blues
singer to have broken grammar so he breaks it. They would want him to pick himself up
by his bootstraps so his song says he will. However, in the second stanza the speaker is
gone and the song changes to express a deep dark depression. “I ain’t happy no mo’/ and
I wish that I had died.” We go from a man who is sad but going to pull himself up by the
bootstraps, to a man that is hopelessly depressed. Not only does he wish that he was
dead, he wishes he had died a long time ago. His life is filled with a pain he wishes he
hasn’t had to endure. Without the white presence to restrain him, his sadness swells to the

4. full, and he releases the depths of his mourning. The perspective of the speaker was thus
very inadequate.
Another disconnect between the speaker and the singer is the speaker’s idea of the
musician’s laziness, as opposed to the performers soul deep exhaustion. In stanza one the
speaker chooses words like “droning”, “drowsy”, “lazy” and “swaying” to describe the
musician and his music. These are words for a person at ease, or perhaps in need of a nap.
They do not convey the sense of exhaustion and emptiness that permeates the second
stanza. The second stanza describes that the musician saying “And far into the night he
crooned that tune/ the stars went out and so did the moon”. The line recognizes how long
the musician was at work, so long that event he stars and the moon went to away. He
would be utterly exhausted. The case for the presence of deep exhaustion is further
supported by the detail that describes the end of his evening, “[he] stopped playing and
went to bed”. He didn’t go to family or friends, but to the rest of a bed. He does not
have the energy for anything else. However, that rest is not glorified. Instead the blues
“echoed” through his head. Echoes only happen in hollow places. The musician’s labors
have emptied him, and he is left hallow inside. The sleepy laziness described in the first
stanza is a far cry from this soul deep exhaustion.
While “The Weary Blues” uses a white speaker to addresses these issues the
misunderstood and mistreated black performer, “Brass Spittoons” uses a white voice that
infiltrates the poem of a black speaker in order to address the issues facing the oppressed
physical laborer. We can assume that the voice shouting in “Brass Spittoons” belongs to
a white hotel supervisor once we examine the roles and setting described within the lines.
“Clean the spittoons, boy/…The slime in hotel spittoons/ Part of my life.” The poem

5. indicates that the setting is a hotel, and that our speaker’s role is to clean the spittoons in
that hotel. Since the voice is issuing a command regarding work, it likely belongs to a
hotel manger, or a supervisor. This type of job would belong to a white male, because it
is a position of authority.
In this poem, the white voice’s word choice characterizes it as an oppressive
presence. The white supervisor consistently addresses the speaker using the pronoun
“boy”. He does not use the speaker’s name, but instead chooses a word meant to describe
a child. This is clearly both demeaning and insulting to the speaker. The voice also uses
the command, “Com’mere”. This is a command, not a request, and there are no polite
niceties like “please” to soften the blow. This contributes to the sense of oppression
associated with the voice of the white supervisor. “Com’mere” also denotes a lack of
respect and esteem because it is slang. This is similarly expressed in the causal “Hey”
that makes appearances throughout the poem.
The poem makes this oppressive voice repetitive, ultimately casting it as the
driving force behind the insufferable routine of life. The voice repeats “Hey, boy!” four
times in addition to the commands “Clean the spittoons, boy” and “Com’mere boy”
which open and close the piece. Besides being repetitive in its appearance within the
poem, the poet also has the voice initiate repetitive lists, such as in lines 1-5, and 11-20.
At first these lists are orderly and routine, “A nickel, /A dime, /A dollar.” The command
and its oppressive force can even become lost amidst that routine, “Two dollars a day/
Hey, boy!/ A nickel/ A dime …” Eventually however, these lists get out of control, such
as in lines 21-30 where the speaker cries out to God amidst a never ending list of do’s and
must’s. The speaker is overwhelmed by money and family problems and responsibilities

6. that never seem to end, one chasing after the other. By placing the voice’s command at
the beginning of these lists, the voice becomes the catalyst for it all. The voice of the
supervisor is not only oppressive in and of itself, it is also suddenly to blame for the
oppression of life’s insufferable routine.
The oppressive white voice not only drives insufferable routine, its interruptions
within the poem work to disrupt the speaker’s upward grasps at religious contemplation.
As demonstrated in lines 30-32, “And house rent to pay/ Hey, boy!/ a bright bowl of
brass”, the white voice tends to disrupt and derail trains of thought. It pays no regard to
the speaker’s internal world, but minds only its own needs and commands. The voice is
especially disruptive when it interrupts the religious commentary in lines 32-39. Here,
the speaker is desperately trying to find meaning amidst insufferable routine, increasing
demands, and an oppressive environment. He turns his eyes to God and tries to find
meaning there. Even then, the white voice breaks in with interruption “Hey, boy!”. The
voice tries to steal the attention of the speaker away from holy contemplation, back to the
slime of work.
So effective at what it does, this tiny voice possibly infiltrates into that very
religious commentary, seeking its own end. The speaker’s cry “My God!” parallels the
“Hey, boy” we hear from the supervisor. The cry enters into the poem around the time the
voice’s call would be expected to interrupt. This draws a parallel between the white voice
and discussion of God. As an additional parallel, while the speaker cleans spittoons at the
command of his manager, in his religious thought he is cleaning spittoons in order to
“please” the Lord. The result is the same, cleaning buckets of slimy spit for the benefit of
a higher power. Furthermore, in the speaker’s religious metaphor, “like the cymbals/Of

7. King David’s dancers”, the spittoon is the cymbal and the speaker is the dancer. Even in
his own commentary he is not compared to King David, but someone who serves him.
The white presence has utilized religion as another means to keep the African American
laborer in his place.
This poem was not written to discuss an isolated situation, but to make a
statement about the oppression experienced by laborers all across America. The poem
begins with a list of cities “Detroit, /Chicago, / Atlantic City, / Palm Beach. / Clean the
Spittoons.” These cities are diverse in their cultural flavor and their geographic location.
The author is pointing out that in cities all across America, even though the setting is
different, the laborers are experiencing the same situation. In each of these cities laborers
hear the same oppressive command, “Clean the spittoons”. In the lines that describe “The
steam in hotel kitchens,/ And the smoke in hotel lobbies/ And the slime in hotel
spittoons”, the author continues to universalize his message. These lines list different
settings that would employ different varieties of labor. And yet, the author joins these
experiences together in a list. They are linked together because their underlying
experience is the same, the experience of the oppressed laborer.
Both of these poems thus utilize the white presence to make statements about
labor and oppression. While “The Weary Blues” chooses a white speaker that fades
away, “Brass Spittoons” writes in a white voice that interrupts a laboring speaker. “The
Weary Blues” use the voice as a tool to address the disconnect between black performers
and their audiences. “Brass Spittoons”, on the other hand, addresses the oppression of the
black laborer.