Within the first stanza, the author imagines back to a time when he had dreamt of a land so beautiful and caring in which he could start over and is free to live his life as he wishes. The author though, has already realized his false hope since reaching the place in his dreams, America. It has turned out to be nothing like he had anticipated or hoped for. H

Looking past the text in the poem and glimpsing on its structure, there are a lot unpredictable and erratic patterns. In the beginning, Hughes seems to have fairly regular quatrains with a refrain in between the three of them. This was purposely done to set a mood and to let the readers full attention reflect on his plead. After each convincing stanza, there was his disheartening refrain, to let you ponder whether or not America is what you want it to be. Then the question is announced, and irregular stanzas set in. He now would like you to forget about what he has talked about before, and now put yourself in the lives of these men who worked so hard for America. He asks you to realize why America isn't what it should be. Through four irregular stanzas the refrains stop to allow you to grasp their sence of hope and courage, and not to include his solitude. After these stanzas the refrain reappears, showing his incomprehension of where things went wrong. The second to last stanza seems to stand out from the rest since there aren't many words per line. He wrote these lines very plainly and even announces just that. It shows what he asks and writes about is not difficult to understand or complicated in any way, but so easy to correct.

Alliteration and assonance played an important role throughout the poem. The author played around a lot with different words that sounded similar or used a vowel or consonant to attach words. This occurred within the phrases such as "pushed-apart", "slavery's scars", and "Poland's plain". Although there seems to be no particular rhyme scheme he does play around with slant rhyme while also using exact or no rhyme as he chooses. He used many words and phrases over and over, sometimes even in the same sentence, seemingly to

Some common words found in the essay are:
America America, America Looking, America Hughes, England America, america america, Poetry Taking, people suffered, throughout poem, america dreamed, irregular stanzas,
Approximate Word count = 1200
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)