I, Too: Key Poetic Devices

Allusion

An allusion (uh-LOO-zhun) is a reference to something that exists outside of a text. That reference could be explicit or veiled, and it could refer to any number of things: an idea, an event, an object, a historical figure, or even another text. In “I, Too,” Hughes makes a fairly evident allusion to a famous poem written by the nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman. The title of that poem is, “I Hear American Singing,” which Whitman first published in the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman’s poem opens with the line, “I hear America singing,” then proceeds to describe the “song” sung by different laborers whose work keeps America running. The speaker of Whitman’s poem celebrates mechanics, carpenters, masons, and woodcutters, among others. When Hughes opens his poem with the line, “I, too, sing America,” he is alluding directly to Whitman’s poem. Significantly, the speaker of Hughes’s poem wants to expand the limited vision of America presented in Whitman’s poem. As a Black servant in the home of a wealthy white family, the speaker of “I, Too” claims a right to have his voice heard, for he is just as American as the laborers celebrated by Whitman.

Extended Metaphor

An ordinary metaphor makes a direct association between two things, without using words such as “like” or “as” to assert the comparison. An extended metaphor functions in the same way, but it’s characterized by a longer, more sustained development. Whereas an ordinary metaphor may be mentioned in passing, an extended metaphor unfolds and develops over the course of many lines. Throughout the entirety of “I, Too,” the speaker develops an extended metaphor that compares his professional status in his workplace to his social and political status in America. In both cases, the speaker is seen as inferior because he is Black. When the speaker announces his desire for a seat at the dinner table when company comes, he’s using a metaphor to describe his desire for social and political equality. Having a (metaphorical) seat at the table would reflect the fact that he has a (real) voice in the destiny of his country. The simple fact that this conceit of the dinner table plays out across the poem’s three middle stanzas makes it an extended metaphor.

Refrain

In poetry, the term refrain refers to any word, phrase, line, or group of lines that gets repeated over the course of a poem. A clear example of refrain appears in the second and third stanzas of “I, Too,” each of which features an identical line: “When company comes” (lines 4 and 10). The words “company” and “comes” share the same first syllable, which makes their pairing conspicuous, especially in a poem that otherwise avoids obviously musical language. The evident musicality of this phrase indicates its significance within the poem. In the second stanza (lines 3–4), the arrival of company for dinner sparks a drama of inclusion and exclusion. That is, the members of the white family convene for the meal while the Black servant is confined to the kitchen:

They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes.

In the third stanza (lines 8–10), however, the speaker imagines a different outcome:

Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.

The speaker repeats the line to insist on the possibility—perhaps even the inevitability—of his getting a seat at the table “when company comes.”

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