Tupac and Langston Hughes: Death

1) Ghetto Gospel
Gospel is a written account of the life and death of Jesus. Tupac Shakur used Ghetto Gospel to give a vivid account of life in the ghetto. He highlighted the life that underprivileged people are experiencing living in the ghetto. People are literally living far below the poverty line; people are hungry and even homeless. Ghetto Gospel revealed the elements of crime and violence in the ghetto. People from the lower strata of the society are virtually ignored. His objective in Ghetto Gospel was to draw attention to the issues in the ghetto.

2) Poetry uses few words to create images. The images created in this poem are vivid and striking; and sometimes shocking. Let us look at the quote ‘We got some many crooks, so many grannies’ getting shook.” Needless to say that there are a lot of senior citizens that are being rob and beaten. This is just an example of the criminal elements that exist. The poem used lyrics to capture the attention of a listening audience. While the video is designed to gain the attention of visual audience. A picture is worth a thousand words. Take for example the scene where he was shot. The video portray how easy is for one to be a victim of drive by shooting. There was a crowd and his mother holding him while she was crying.


3) “We out of the project / Jump into another form of slavery”. This could mean that the people living in the projects are taken out of chains and shackles because it would not be globally acceptable. But instead place in another form of bondage that is more palatable to modern society. One may have freedom, but there are not given the tools to cultivate a better way of life for themselves. Therefore unless something positive happens, the cycle will pass on from one generation to the next.


4) The approach to death remains the same in Hughes and Topic’s description. The elements of sorrow and grief are used to characterize each poem. For example Tupac made reference to “wipe away the last tear from my eyes”; while Hughes employ “shine like a tear”. The tears suggested a moment of mourning. Both poems drew a picture of bereavement and sadness.

5) “Blues: A style of music that evolved from southern African-American secular songs and is usually distinguished by a strong 4/4 rhythm, flatted thirds and sevenths, a 12-bar structure, and lyrics in a three-line stanza in which the second line repeats the first: “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation” (B.B. King)”. Hughes’s poem had an element of sadness through out his composition. Interestingly, he used some ending rhymes such as stool and fool in his poem to express his low spirited feelings.