It encapsulates the entire spirit and mood 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” as a way to represent his race and eloquently took the reader into 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 Negro race has triumphed over all adversities. “Just as rivers still flow, since the dawn of time, so too has the black American soul survived it all” (Moore). What began as the beginning of civilization in the Euphrates, then progressively moved towards the Nile River, ended with the same intuitive people chained and forced to withdraw their culture. Hughes does not offer a solution to the discrimination, but emphasizes that although his people have suffered, it has matured them, hence the closing line "my soul has grown as deep as the rivers" (line