Life is fine by Langston Hughes is a poem that describes the action the narrator takes when life is going bad for him. The author uses the stylistic elements of end stops, repetition, and metaphor to help readers understand how a man was able to turn his life away from suicide and was able to discover that he had a reason for living.In the first stanza the use of end stops to help you see the action taken by the character when he first decides to commit suicide.
“ I tried to think but I couldn’t,/ So I jumped in and sank.”(line 3-4), this is example shows how the end stops help display how the character tried to think of an alternative way to solve his problem but just gave up and decided to jump into the river and commit suicide instead. The use of end stop also appears in this example, ‘So since I’m still here livin’, / I guess I will live on” (line 19-20), which shows the turning point in the characters life when he decides not to continue committing suicide. This is where the character notices that all his tries of suicide is not successful, and decide to just to continue living his life.Repetition is also used throughout the poem to show how the character came to the point in which he decided to move on with his life.
One example of this is, “I came up” (line 5&6) which was repeated twice in the stanza. This line shows how despite the character’s attempts of drowning himself in the river, his attempts were unsuccessful because he continued to come up from the water. The lines, “I stood there” (line 14&15) were also repeated twice in the fourth stanza, after his attempt of jumping off a building. This lines has basically shows how despite his decision of committing suicide, he wasn’t able to do it; he just stood there and cried. The use of repetition is lastly used in the lines “Life is Fine” (line 27)at the end of the poem.
This line represents the character finally realizes that his life is fine and that there’s no need for suicide.At the end of the poem the poet uses metaphor to demonstrate the feeling the character has now towards life after he discovered that suicide isn’t always the answer too his problems. The metaphor is used in the line, “Life is Fine! Fine As wine!”(line 27) where the author compares life to wine. Wine can be described as an alcoholic beverage that is sweet and that provides a certain type of bliss to people who drink it. So when the author compares life to wine, he is saying that life for the character has become sweet, and joyful. This shows that the problems the character had in the past doesn’t bother him now because he found the goodness in life and his reason for living.
This poem overall, refers to the common solution have about when life is going bad. When times are hard and everything seems so overwhelming for most people, they believe that suicide is the only option. However, this poem helps people realize that suicide is not the only option left and that we can overcome the difficulties in our lives. Just like suicide is a solution for many people with problems, this poem is also a solution because it help leads people with problem into self-enlightenment just as the character
