Langston Hughes

Wake

Wake - meaning Summary

Mourning in Red

A speaker addresses their mourners with blunt, defiant instructions: mourn in red rather than black because death makes no sense to them. The short poem rejects conventional somber rituals and suggests a celebratory, even rebellious, response to mortality. Its tone mixes irony and refusal, turning funeral expectation into a statement about life’s absurdity and the desire for vivid remembrance instead of solemn silence.

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Tell all my mourners To mourn in red -- Cause there ain't no sense In my bein' dead.

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