Dream Variations
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black Like Me.
-Langston Hughes
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Langston Hughes' poem "Dream Variations" is the inspiration for both the title and the epigraph of Black Like Me. We're going to guess that Griffin was really into Hughes, since he uses him twice instead of finding another literary source for his title and epigraph. The epigraph is the last four lines of Hughes' poem, and the title is the very last line. Normally, titles and epigraphs come from different places so we're going to guess that Griffin felt that Hughes' poem was very important to his story.
Hughes' narrator wants to quit his day job. He wants to dance until the "white day is done," and rest in the evening. Sounds like a pretty good dream to us.
The phrase "white day" tells us that the narrator sees their day job as controlled by white people. But nighttime is "dark" or "Black like me." While the daytime is spent serving white people, the narrator can do whatever he wants at nighttime. The nighttime is not only literally black and dark, but is also the time for black people to relax and feel comfortable in their own skin.
It's the last four lines of the poem that we really want to dwell on, because these are the lines used both in the epigraph and in the title. In contrast to the "white day" the dark night is "tender" and welcoming, perhaps because it is the same color as the narrator. This suggests something that Griffin examines in his book: that in the 1950s South it was impossible to achieve "tenderness" between races: there was too much hatred.
The last line, when used in the context of Griffin's title, is provocative. Griffin is Caucasian, even though he spent six weeks living as a black man… isn't he? Race is a fixed condition; it's literally "black" or "white"… isn't it? Uh oh, we're getting into some deep philosophical and sociological territory here.
Griffin's title suggests that maybe blackness (or whiteness) isn't predetermined, or easily classifiable, or the natural order of things. He basically takes the mentality of 1950s Southerners (Black people and white people are just so different) and turns it on its racist little head. He does this in the book's title… and he definitely does it in the body of the book.