(Bloody) Red Roses

 

Roses are often used as an expression of romanticism, hope and harmony. Through the symbol of these flowers, Langston Hughes uses naive and hopeful word choice to display the illusion of purity in world of grim in his poem "Red Roses". Hughes begins by glorifying the season of warmth as the "sweet, sweet springtime", a noticeable manner which you might see in a young child. He says sweet not once, but twice to emphasize its innocent atmosphere dissociative with the rest of the hopeless world. In contrast, winter is a bleak period affiliated with death. The narrator even pleads, "Lawd" at the mere thought of being buried under the cold, cold snow which certainly doesn't provide the "sweet, sweet" feeling as the spring does. He builds this tone of hope, constantly "waitin'" for the springtime as if the red of the roses would color the black and white of the somber, loneliness of the world. Instead, Hughes plainly, and in fact naively states that the roses are a "nice coverin'" of the dead, revealing that the glamour of the roses ultimately conceal a dark truth; nothing is truly ever pure, and nothing seemingly pure can eliminate the tainted. As he hopelessly repeated earlier, "what would I do", he simply seeks comfort at the notion of hope. He doesn't fear death; he brushes it off as "bad enough", but he fears the dull, lifeless atmosphere that will affirm his demise. Whether it be in the "sweet, sweet" spring, or the "freezin'" winter, death, or any sort of unfortunate event will inevitably come (without knocking) though the door. The only difference is the presence of a stained veil that hides, not erases, impurities, which the red roses offer.