I, Too

Food signifies two things in “I, Too.” First, food represents power. Food requires work to harvest and produce, and it requires a lot of money to buy and to serve to other people. People who rule over a table of food and who control who gets food and who doesn’t are powerful. They are economically powerful, but as the providers of sustenance, they also wield a power of life and death over those they provide for.

In “I, Too,” the people who control the food at the beginning are the oppressors. They control where and when the speaker eats, and Hughes suggests they provide the speaker with food. However, Hughes never actually says that these people own anything. In that sense, he implies that the ownership they’ve embodied is not actually theirs to take.

Food also means something specific to the speaker. To him, food is what he fuels his body with. It is what he consumes to give him the power to ultimately claim his freedom and equality. This means the food could be many things: actual food, education, money, land, opportunity. While the oppressors worry only about themselves and overlook the oppressed, the speaker betters himself with the knowledge that the future will be kinder to him.