The Negro Speaks of Rivers: Motifs

“I” / “My”

All but one of the lines in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” begins with one of two words: “I” or “my.” The repetition of these two words throughout the poem creates an overall sense that the speaker possesses a strong sense of self. With each line, the speaker elaborates another aspect of a personal experience that has provided the knowledge that has, in turn, added depth to his or her “soul.” The speaker is therefore self-possessed and self-assured. The repetition of first-person pronouns in the poem also draws attention to the speaker in a way that links to speakers of traditional lyric poems. In a traditional lyric, a first-person speaker describes thoughts and feelings as they unfold in real time. In this poem, however, it quickly becomes clear that the speaker isn’t describing the ordinary thoughts and feelings of just one individual. Rather, the speaker is tracing the spiritual development of an entire race across time and space. In this way, the speaker’s “I” means something different from the conventional lyric “I.” It is giving voice to the experience not of one, but of many.

“Rivers”

In Hughes’s poem, rivers function as a complex symbol for spiritual and cultural development. This symbolic function largely derives from the specific rivers the speaker names in the long third stanza: the Euphrates, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. However, it’s noteworthy that in addition to these named rivers, the speaker also uses the more general word “rivers” frequently throughout the short poem: six times in just 10 lines. In this way, the very word “rivers” becomes a meaningful motif that Hughes deploys to varying effect. For one thing, this word is central to the two refrains that repeat in the poem: “I’ve known rivers” (lines 1, 2, and 8), and “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” (lines 3 and 10). The repetition of these refrains accounts for five of the six uses of “rivers” in the poem. The final use appears near the poem’s end, where “rivers” also forms a triple rhyme (lines 8–10):

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

This type of rhyme, in which a single word is made to rhyme with itself, is known as identical rhyme. Here, Hughes repeats the word in a way that drives home the symbolic significance of rivers while also creating a powerful sonic effect.