As Vast as the Ocean

    Corporate control and exploitation in “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage is reflective of Donald Trump’s rise and fall as a president. Just like Tracey, Trump believes that Latinos in America are stealing jobs and are, in turn, harming Americans by making them lose jobs and money. The irony of the situation is that he has created jobs for the same people that he is allegedly trying to get rid of them for by using their same cheap labor. This not only went against the very racist promise he made when running for president, but also harmed Mexican and American workers alike. Tracey tells Oscar that the “gibberish” (47) on the Oldstead’s flyer was the reason she and the other fieldworkers would lose their jobs because “they gonna be laying people off” (59) for cheaper labor in Mexico. This is a place paying their fieldworkers even worse than America, shown when Cynthia retorts that “a [Mexican] woman like you will stand for sixteen hours and be happy making a fraction of what they’re pa...

          “Daybreak in Alabama” - Langston Hughes In the poem “Daybreak in Alabama,” Langston Hughes uses repetition and allusions to nature to describe the theme that just like nature, people can live in harmony even with their differences. In the title and twice more in the piece, Hughes describes his dream of “daybreak in Alabama.” “Daybreak” can mean the sun rising, and this signals new beginnings. The setting of Alabama in the time period of the Harlem Renaissance, a place with many black people, was deliberate in creating the idea that he wants new beginnings for black people in America. With his allusions to nature in phrases such as “poppy colored faces,” “field daisy eyes,” and “red clay earth hands,” Hughes draws the comparison to people and nature. Just as nature is pure, he argues that people’s relations should be as well; it should be “natural” for people to come together despite their differences. Just like “field daisies” and “poppies” are di...