Ballad of the Landlord Essay

Submitted By traceywhite29
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Tracey White
Dr. Soliz
ENGL 1102
Project 3
“Ballad of the Landlord” by Langston Hughes
Ballad of the Landlord is about a black tenant with white landlords whose apartment is falling apart and doesn't want to pay the rent until the landlord fixes the problems. The speaker in this poem is a poor African American tenant. He is angry that the landlord won't fix anything yet still wants him to pay the rent. I would only imagine that the speaker is someone who doesn't want to be cheated out of his money and wants to be treated fairly. In the poem Ballad of the Landlord by Langston Hughes is a poem that shows that people abuse their authority, meaning when people get power to be in control, they want to there is a hole on the roof of the house. The landlord has already been informed about it; the steps have been broken down, but when the landlord comes up he does not fall down. The landlord says that the tenant has to pay him ten dollars, but before the landlord repairs the house he will have got more than that. Will the landlord get orders from the court to expel the tenant and throw his furniture in the street? But he talks about high moral standards. If the tenant lands his fist on him he will not be able to say a word, then the landlord will inform the police and get the man arrested, saying that the man is challenging the law and order. The police will follow and arrest him; He will be taken to the police station and kept into a small room in the jail. The next day there will be the headlines in paper: Man threatens landlord, Tenant had no money, and Negro is sentenced 90 days in imprisonment.
The poem is trying to show the way social injustice in America. The tenant is threatened by the landlord and the police and the court help landlord to punish the tenant more, but the tenant gets help from nowhere, there are many ways the tenant can help the situation, What he can do is to use his own force. This is a protest poem meaning fighting for what u believe in and never going against what u think is right or wrong. By reading this poem it has a lot of racial things that’s happening like for example all the landlords are white and the tenant is black and they are gaining up on the tenant and punishing him for no reason just because he black, but one thing it does is
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