Me and the Mule

Langston Hughes’s “Me and the Mule” makes a powerful statement in few words. With the intense focus on rhythm and sound that Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance poets are known for, “Me and Mule” comments on the dehumanization inherent in racism and the importance of having pride in one’s racial identity and insisting on one’s dignity in the face of mistreatment or societal prejudice. “Me and the Mule” uses the figure of the mule, a common symbol associated with enslaved people, poor people, and laborers, to address Racial Inequality and call for Racial Pride.

The poem opens with the speaker’s smiling beast of burden: “My old mule, / He's gota grin on his face” (Lines 1-2). The image is immediately striking because of its anthropomorphism (giving human characteristics to nonhuman objects or animals). Mules are domesticated for heavy labor, and are typically thought of as stubborn and intellectually limited. Thus, it is surprising that the speaker’s mule grins—we don’t know why this creature is capable of human expression. One reading of the image of the mule is that it stands for an unintellectual Black laborer only capable of hard physical labor; in this interpretation, the grinning mule is a dehumanizing comparison to a Black worker.