This line, coming from a poem written by Langston Hughes, has more to offer than what is on the outside. This week, Cross was our poem of the week, and I have to say it was my favorite poem thus far. There are so many things it could mean. You have the literal, (he had a black mom and a white dad, both who died in different places, and he's trying to figure out where he will die someday) and then you have so many other possible meanings (his dad was a slave owner, his mom was the slave; the dad represents heaven, the mom represents hell; etc.)
My own interpretation of the poem was that his father was a white slave owner and his mother was a black slave. He was the illegitimate child of the two, and is now trying to discover which path he will take and whose steps he will follow in. I really enjoyed this poem because there were many different interpretations you could have and conclusions you could draw. You could take it from the literal stance, or you could look deeper and attempt to take different translations. I can see this poem being about the "cross" between black and white, the "cross" between different places of death, the "cross" between different lifestyles, or even the "cross" between good and evil. Depending on how you read into things, this poem could be about anything.
One view that I thought was interesting was one that a classmate had about the cross between good and evil. They had interpreted the poem as the white father represented God, or a higher power, and the black mother represented the devil. After reading the poem with this perspective in mind I found it very interesting. The father's nice big house could represent heaven and the mother's lowly shack could represent hell.
There are many forms of interpretation and I think that this week's poem represented that truth very well. Almost every group came up with something different for what they thought the poem was about.