Ghana Calls
Read 'Ghana Calls' by 'W. E. B. Du Bois' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.
I was a little boy, at home with strangers.
I liked my playmates, and knew well,
Whence all their parents came;
From England, Scotland, royal France
From Germany and oft by chance
The humble Emerald Isle.
But my brown skin and close-curled hair
Was alien, and how it grew, none knew;
Few tried to say, some dropped a wonderful word or stray;
Some laughed and stared.
And then it came: I dreamed.
I placed together all I knew
All hints and slurs together drew.
I dreamed.
I made one picture of what nothing seemed
I shuddered in dumb terror
In silence screamed,
For now it seemed this I had dreamed;
How up from Hell, a land had leaped
A wretched land, all scorched and seamed
Covered with ashes, chained with pain
Streaming with blood, in horror lain
Its very air a shriek of death
And agony of hurt.
Anon I woke, but in one corner of my soul
I stayed asleep.
Forget I could not,
But never would I remember
That hell-hoist ghost
Of slavery and woe.
I lived and grew, I worked and hoped
I planned and wandered, gripped and coped
With every doubt but one that slept
Yet clamoured to awaken.
I became old; old, worn and gray;
Along my hard and weary way
Rolled war and pestilence, war again;
I looked on Poverty and foul Disease
I walked with Death and yet I knew
There stirred a doubt: Were all dreams true?
And what in truth was Africa?
One cloud-swept day a Seer appeared,
All closed and veiled as me he hailed
And bid me make three journeys to the world
Seeking all through their lengthened links
The endless Riddle of the Sphinx.
I went to Moscow; Ignorance grown wise taught me Wisdom;
I went to Peking: Poverty grown rich
Showed me the wealth of Work
I came to Accra.
Here at last, I looked back on my Dream;
I heard the Voice that loosed
The Long-looked dungeons of my soul
I sensed that Africa had come
Not up from Hell, but from the sum of Heaven’s glory.
I lifted up mine eyes to Ghana
And swept the hills with high Hosanna;
Above the sun my sight took flight
Till from that pinnacle of light
I saw dropped down this earth of crimson, green and gold
Roaring with color, drums and song.
Happy with dreams and deeds worth more than doing
Around me velvet faces loomed
Burnt by the kiss of everlasting suns
Under great stars of midnight glory
Trees danced, and foliage sang;
The lilies hallelujah rang
Where robed with rule on Golden Stool
The gold-crowned Priests with duty done
Pour high libations to the sun
And danced to gods.
Red blood flowed rare ’neath close-clung hair
While subtle perfume filled the air
And whirls and whirls of tiny curls
Crowned heads.
Yet Ghana shows its might and power
Not in its color nor its flower
But in its wondrous breadth of soul
Its Joy of Life
Its selfless role
Of giving.
School and clinic, home and hall
Road and garden bloom and call
Socialism blossoms bold
On Communism centuries old.
I lifted my last voice and cried
I cried to heaven as I died:
O turn me to the Golden Horde
Summon all western nations
Toward the Rising Sun.
From reeking West whose day is done,
Who stink and stagger in their dung
Toward Africa, China, India’s strand
Where Kenya and Himalaya stand
And Nile and Yang-tze roll:
Turn every yearning face of man.
Come with us, dark America:
The scum of Europe battened here
And drowned a dream
Made fetid swamp a refuge seem:
Enslaved the Black and killed the Red
And armed the Rich to loot the Dead;
Worshipped the whores of Hollywood
Where once the Virgin Mary stood
And lynched the Christ.
Awake, awake, O sleeping world
Honor the sun;
Worship the stars, those vaster suns
Who rule the night
Where black is bright
And all unselfish work is right
And Greed is Sin.
And Africa leads on:
Pan Africa!
Ghana Calls Summary and Analysis
The poem begins with a childhood memory of alienation: a boy surrounded by classmates whose families seem clearly rooted in Europe, while his own Blackness marks him as odd, unexplained, and scrutinized. From that early wound, the poem moves into a long inward and outward journey. The dream of Africa first appears as something distorted by colonial imagination, a place of suffering and historical violence, but that vision is later challenged by age, experience, and travel. The poem's movement is therefore not simple return but correction: the speaker must pass through hardship, ideology, and multiple countries before he can truly understand Africa and himself.
By the end, Ghana becomes the place where that correction arrives in force. The speaker sees Africa not as a site of despair but as a source of vitality, dignity, communal labor, and political possibility. The poem links beauty and power, tradition and modern development, while also pushing toward a broader global vision in which Africa stands as a moral alternative to a corrupt West. At the same time, the poem holds a tension between celebration and political urgency: its joy is inseparable from protest, and its praise of Black Africa is sharpened by fierce condemnation of racism, imperialism, and greed.
Tone in Ghana Calls
Du Bois's tone is lyrical, prophetic, and increasingly triumphant, moving from wounded reflection to public proclamation. The mood for the reader begins in alienation and unease, passes through dread and historical sorrow, and finally opens into exhilaration, pride, and moral urgency. Even in its celebratory passages, the poem keeps a stern edge, so the atmosphere remains charged rather than purely festive.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in Ghana Calls
- Reclaiming African identity - The poem traces a movement from confusion and estrangement toward a proud, self-possessed vision of Africa as ancestral home and living presence.
- From distortion to knowledge - The speaker's understanding of Africa changes over time, showing how inherited ideas, dreams, and distant impressions can be overturned by lived experience.
- Pan-African solidarity - Ghana becomes a symbol of wider Black and anti-colonial belonging, linking Africa, the Americas, and other regions in a shared future.
- Historical memory of slavery and racism - The poem carries the burden of enslavement, racial exclusion, and Western violence, making memory central to its emotional force.
- Political renewal - Africa is imagined not only as beautiful but as socially inventive, offering models of collective welfare, labor, and justice.
- Critique of the West - The poem sharply contrasts African possibility with the moral decay of the Western world, especially greed, exploitation, and racial hypocrisy.
Literary Devices in Ghana Calls
- Free verse - The flexible lineation suits the poem's wandering, visionary movement and allows the argument to unfold like a sequence of memories, dreams, and revelations.
- Repetition - Repeated phrases such as the insistence on dreaming and awakening emphasize the poem's struggle between illusion and insight.
- Imagery - Powerful visual and sensory images of blood, color, song, sun, and movement transform Africa into a vivid moral and emotional landscape.
- Contrast - The poem repeatedly sets suffering against joy, Europe against Africa, death against life, and blindness against vision to sharpen its message.
- Metaphor - Africa is first figured as a hellish ghost and later as a radiant source of glory, showing how metaphor tracks the speaker's changing consciousness.
- Allusion - References to the Sphinx, Moscow, Peking, and Ghana widen the poem's scope and connect African identity to world history and politics.
- Apostrophe - Direct address in the closing sections intensifies the poem's urgency and turns the final appeal into a public call rather than a private reflection.
Symbolism in Ghana Calls
- Brown skin and close-curled hair - These features symbolize racial difference as it is socially marked and misunderstood, especially in the speaker's childhood world.
- The dream - The dream represents the inherited and internalized image of Africa, first shaped by pain and confusion, then revised by experience.
- Hell - Hell symbolizes the degrading historical story imposed on Africa through slavery, suffering, and colonial interpretation.
- Ghana - Ghana stands for a reborn African future, combining national pride, cultural richness, and political possibility.
- Golden Stool - This emblem suggests continuity of tradition, authority, and sacred cultural legitimacy.
- Sun and stars - These celestial images symbolize guidance, truth, and a value system rooted in dignity rather than greed.
Historical Context of Ghana Calls
The poem belongs to the tradition of Black internationalist and anti-colonial writing, in which Africa is presented not as a European invention but as a source of cultural and political authority. Its concerns reflect the twentieth-century struggle against racial segregation, colonial rule, and the lingering effects of slavery, while also engaging the era's debates about socialism, modernization, and Black self-determination.
Du Bois was one of the major voices of Pan-African thought, and the poem's global sweep fits that intellectual world: Africa is imagined alongside Asia, the Caribbean, and Black America as part of a shared challenge to Western domination. The language of liberation, collective duty, and moral renewal places the poem within a broader movement of African and diasporic political poetry.
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