It encompasses the entire spirit and moods of African American history, simply by using rivers as an allusion to the chronological history of African Americans. Langston Hughes uses the first person “I” to represent his race and eloquently takes the reader into many different depths of the story. Langston Hughes used the metaphor of rivers to show the passage of time and also that despite suffering, slavery and loss, the black race has triumphed over all adversity. “Just as rivers have been flowing since the dawn of time, the black American soul has survived everything” (Moore). What began as the beginning of civilization in the Euphrates, then gradually moved to the Nile, ended with the same intuitive peoples chained together and forced to remove their culture. Hughes does not offer a solution to the discrimination, but points out that although his people suffered, it matured them, hence the final phrase "my soul became deep as rivers" (line