My old time daddy
Came back home last night.
His face was pale and
His eyes didn’t look just right.
He says, “Mary, I’m
Comin’ home to you
So sick and lonesome
I don’t know what to do.”
Oh, men treats women
Just like a pair o’ shoes
You kicks ‘em round and
Does ‘em like you choose.
I looked at my daddy
Lawd! And I wanted to cry.
He looked so thin
Lawd! And I wanted to cry.
But the devil told me:
Damn a lover
Come home to die!
I. THE POEM
It was written in 1931 just after the Great Migration.
It belongs to the section “After hours” = time passing, loss of time. It’s a story of two persons. She’s waiting for a man, maybe for a day, for a week-end, for a month, for a year. The story of a woman waiting for her “beloved” man.
II. THE TITLE
Return means a coming back, a movement from South/North. It’s gonna be a positive coming-back: a woman has been waiting for her lover and at least, he is back. But in fact, this poem isn’t positive. Langston Hughes is recalling the experience of his own parent’s separation.
Lover = woman who is waiting for a man.
III. TIME AND SETTING
- Childhood
- Setting : Langston’s home (l.2), (l.6), maybe in Harlem
- Dirty, dark, cold flat
IV. THE SPEAKER
- Langston is talking about his parents
- A woman is talking to us (readers)/women/her lover
- A man “the lover” = woman
- The devil
V. STRUCTURE
- 4 structured stanzas: 1-2-3 -> same as of lines
4 -> longer
- Rhymes : “night” (l.2) and “right” (l.4), “you” (l.6) and “do” (l.8), “shoes” (l.10) and “choose” (l.12)
Stanza 1:
- Physical description : the face and the eyes (l.3-4) : the eyes are the reflexion of the soul, the face because we see expressions, pale means death
- His soul is sick too
- “Old” (l.1) = time passing
- “Daddy” (l.1)= expression of affection
- He looks like at the age of the death
- He’s suffering loneliness
Stanza 2:
- “Mary” (l.5) = biblical reference, the virgin
- He is really sick and alone
- (l.8) : he’s like a child asking to his mother for help
- Woman is the home = permanent, what remains, stable, reference
- It’s an interior monologue, she expresses her feelings, she’s aware
Stanza 3:
- “Oh” (l.9) = an apostrophy
- “like” (l.10) = a simile, women are compared to a pair of shoes, men usually change their shoes like they change women. We put our shoes when we go outside, when we make a movement so shoes are compared to a movement, this simile is ironically because women don’t move, they stay at home and that’s all. They are an object like shoes
Stanza 4:
- This stanza is very symetrical: repetition: “Lawd! And I wanted to cry” (l.14) and (l.16)
- “Lawd” (l.16) = Lord, it’s a kind of gospel
- She has a pact with the devil and if her lover comes back home, he dies, she’s gonna reject him at the end