Me and the Mule

The diction, or word choice, of “Me and the Mule” represents of Hughes’s affiliation with Jazz poetry. Although the vocabulary used in the poem is simple, its combinations of sounds create a powerful rhythm and characterize the speaker through colloquialism, attaching him firmly to a specific time and place. Sometimes, the use of slang and dialect is a way to build connection—when the speaker describes his mule with the casual elision of “He's gota grin” (Line 2), he is conveying an amiability and warmth toward the animal that shows readers that the two are emotionally entangled even before the poem clarifies the connection. Later, when the speaker proclaims his newfound sense of sense: “—and don't give a damn!” (Line 6) the casual diction is a rejection of socially accepted racism and prejudice. Similarly, the loose grammatical construction of the poem’s order to readers—“You got to take me” (Line 7)—indicates that the speaker has accepted himself as he is, the very thing he is commanding his readers to do.

Hughes’s use of simple, clean diction and shortened grammatical forms also emphasize rhythm. The short, sometimes truncated words with occasional end-rhymes demonstrate the oral quality of Hughes’s work. Because many of Hughes’s poems were originally intended to be recited aloud or sung with musical accompaniment, many of the lines are written specifically to enhance sound within the poem.