Langston Hughes and his Masterpiece - Literature review Example

Not Without Laughter is a novel written by Langston Hughes in 1930. It is about the colored protagonist, Sandy Williams, and his experiences living with the whites’ racial discrimination as well as bourgeois black American African discrimination. The thesis states that Sandy’s rites of initiation into the racial context of his society successfully provide him with a smooth transition into the real world. His newly forged identity empowers him to pursue education as the route to freedom and liberation from the traditional economic woes of the American African heritage. Sandy’s rites of initiation include inauguration into the blacks’ class hierarchies. He learns that the lighter skinned blacks occupy a higher hierarchy. Buster and Jimboy are light complexioned colored people and they are easily forgiven for their trespasses on account of their favorable lighter skins. (Hughes 11). Sandy’s older Aunt Tempy has climbed up the social ladder for the blacks and hardly disguises her disgust for her lowly family roots. Sandy’s refusal to accept her expensive Christmas present shows his resistance to her hypocritical attempt at Christian charity during Christmas. Sandy’s independent expression is his social commentary on the rising class differences in the black community. Tempy’s longstanding behavior is part of Sandy’s rites of initiation into the class prejudices. He is mature enough to express rejection of Tempy because she embodies antagonism towards the lower economic and social black classes. (Wintz & Finkelman 918). Sandy matures with the accompaniment of the blues pop culture. Hager reflects the whites’ ideology that wishes to suppress the black culture. She objects to Jimboy playing and singing the blues because she is still living under the oppression of white dominance. Jimboy and Harriet support the blues and the black culture because they want to be the resistance and make a difference for their race. Tracy, a literary scholar, records Hughes’ as saying that; ‘The Blues always impressed me as being very sad, sadder even than the Spirituals, because their sadness is not softened with tears, but hardened with laughter, the absurd, incongruous laughter of a sadness without even a god to appeal to.’ (Tracy 115). The intra-racial resistance is part of the efforts to reconstruct and redefine black identity in post-Emancipation. Hughes makes Harriet a successful blues singer to show how aesthetics and class is a powerful combination that can aid instead of hinder the individual. The evolution of ethnic arts into a unique identity is part of the Harlem Resistance movement that accompanies the newly mature American African into the transitional phase of an independent person in society. (Wintz & Finkelman 918). Sandy’s initiation into the racial class prejudices occurs in this episode when he turns up at Mrs. Rice’s kitchen to help Annjee. The fact that Sandy is there to help does not matter to Mrs. Rice, who is so selfish to spare Sandy the crumbs that she takes out her anger at Annjee. The narration says; ‘Sandy felt ashamed for the white woman to see him eating a left-over pudding from her table, so he put the spoon down.’ (Hughes 47). She throws her temper at Annjee partly to show her displeasure at Sandy and partly to humiliate her in front of her son. Annjee does not react to the slight because she has little education, needs to keep her precious job and cannot bear to offend Mrs. Rice. Sandy has been protected by his colored folks and feels hurt that his mother is badly treated. The narrative says; ‘Mrs. Rice went out again through the swinging door, but Sandy stood near the sink with a burning face and eyes that had suddenly filled with angry tears. He couldn’t help it – hearing his sweating mother reprimanded by this tall white woman in the flowered dress. Black, hard-working Annjee answered: ‘Yes, ma’ am, and that was all – but Sandy cried.’ (Hughes 47). Sandy is innocent. He is old enough to understand the racial slur directed towards Annjee but he is not too old to cry. He cannot control his emotions that well yet to hold back his tears of frustration. Sandy is coming of age but not yet reaching there because he is innocent enough to display his emotions. Sandy knows that race matters in interpersonal relationships. He receives good treatment from his uneducated, colored folks. Although he does not know Maudel well, she is generous to him on account that he is her friend Harriet’s nephew. The narration says; ‘She (Maudel) was a large good-natured brown-skinned girl who walked hippishly and used too much rouge on her lips. But she always gave Sandy a dime, and she was always laughing.’ (Hughes 63). Sandy is very happy and proud to be treated like a grown man who is responsible for buying his own drink. (Hughes 64). Even the stranger thinks nothing of bestowing freely a nickel on him. (Hughes 65). The generosity of the colored people towards Sandy contrasts with the mean attitudes of the educated whites like Mrs. Rice. His older Aunt Tempy, who moves in a higher social circle, pretends to be educated and high class while exhibiting unchristian-like behavior towards her own family. Some education might have helped Tempy but she is truly uneducated in her ingratitude towards her family. Tempy belongs to the middle class women that Hughes criticizes about in his poem entitled The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain. The uneducated blacks respect the lighter colors in their bid to imitate the whites’ supremacy. Sandy witnesses that their ignorance causes intra-racial tension. When the bandleader Benbow took to the dance floor, somebody in the audience says; ‘High yellers, draw nigh! Brown-skins, come near!” somebody squalled. ‘But black girls stay where you are!” ’ (Hughes 66). This comment was enough to change the mood of the atmosphere. The band’s music seems changed. It supports the colored people who have lighter complexions and alienates the darker skinned colored people. The narrative says that; ‘The four black men in Benbow’s wandering band were exploring depths to which mere sound had no business to.’ (Hughes 66). Sandy’s rites of initiation into the color prejudice influences his choice of girlfriend as he professes that he likes the brown skinned Pansetta Young. However, His friend, Jimmy Lane, impresses upon him that Pansetta has loose morals. Sandy’s rite of initiation into adolescent love suffers an epiphany. The latent message is that the myth of the fair skinned coloreds being superior has no justification. When Sandy enters the non-segregated fifth grade, he feels the humiliation of the hypocritical enforced segregation by his new teacher, Miss Abigail Minter. He is given a seat right at the back of the classroom. His rite of initiation into the real world of unofficial color discrimination begins in earnest. The narration says; ‘But Sandy felt like crying. And he was beginning to be ashamed of crying because he was no longer a small boy. But the teacher’s putting the colored children in the back of the room made him feel like crying.’ (Hughes 93). However, he hears the bad stories about the Negroes too from the colored people themselves like from his grandmother and her friend, Sister Johnson. Sister Johnson complains that the whites accuse the coloreds of being lazy and smelly. She says that the whites are the ones guilty of sloth and dirtiness. (Hughes 99). Sandy is exposed to these stories of hypocrisy about the whites. Even the uneducated Negroes are not ignorant of the whites’ hypocrisy. Sandy’s initiation into the real world of color prejudice is unofficial as he assimilates the value system of the hierarchies based on color. The whites subjugate the blacks and suppress them to keep them oppressed under a poor economy by paying them measly wages. Believing in the Christian religion was not helpful because Jesus is white and the blacks still suffer the injustices; disregarding of whether they are Christians or heathens. Sandy’s aunt Harriet has impressed upon him her hatred for the whites. Sandy assumes her attitude in disrespect towards God, mentioning God’s name in vain, partly because he is growing up and wants to act cool by out-doing his friends in using profanity. (Hughes 127). He argues that the black Reverend Braswell is proof that ‘God didn’t care if people were black.’ (Hughes 128). Sandy has many questions about race and religion. He thinks that his African ancestors looked ugly. He wonders why Buster is colored but looks like a white boy. It seems that society is more forgiving when a transgression has been committed by a light complexioned colored person. For instance, Buster cut his mother’s flowers to give to the white Senator Marlow’s daughter, Dorothy. His mother says; ‘Don’t you know they hang colored boys for things like that?’ (Hughes 124). However, Buster does not receive any punishment. Sandy envies Buster’s light skin because people favor him over this although they know that Buster is colored. Sandy desires to be white too. The narration says that; ‘He wondered sometimes whether if he washed and washed his face and hands, he would ever be white.’ (Hughes 127). Sandy questions why he is born colored while Buster is luckier than him because he looks white although officially, he has colored parents. Hager tries to nullify Sandy’s negative impressions of the whites. She tells him a positive story of her old friendship with a white woman named Miss Jeanne. She says that no matter how good or bad the white folks have treated her, she still loves them. She reasons that; ‘ But I’s been sorry fo’ white folks, fo’ I knows something inside must be aggravatin’ de po’ souls. An’ I’s kept a room in ma heart fo’ ‘em, ‘cause white folks needs us, honey, even if they don’t know it. ’(Hughes 134). Hager feels self-gratified when she is needed to do work for the white folks. Hager teaches Sandy to love the whites and blacks alike because hate damages the heart. Hughes writes about the blacks’ camaraderie as a social commentary to contrast against the intra-racial tensions wrought by the class divisions. Mr. Logan recommends Sandy for a job at the local colored barber’s shop. Sandy feels close to the colored people. He does not mind being teased about his sand colored hair. Although the black and colored customers suspected that Sandy has mixed parentage due to his light colored hair, they are sensitive enough not to mention this racial issue outright in the open. (Hughes 138). One Saturday night, the barber shop’s customers discuss about who to vote for as the prettiest colored girl in town. Harrietta Williams is mentioned but a customer interrupts further talk by pointing out the sensitivity of Sandy being her nephew and working in the shop too. Sandy is mature enough to understand that the implicit references to Aunt Harriet are in ‘ less popular connections’ and he pretends not to hear about them. (Hughes 139). Sandy succeeds in his initiation into the adult world of racial discrimination when he exhibits nonchalance at the whites’ segregation ban on colored children at the new amusement park. He finds out that the newspaper advertisement lied about giving ‘Free Admittance to Every Child in Stanton’ at the opening of the new amusement park. The other children are crying, looking sullen or cursing but Sandy remained calm and accepting of the injustice. His white friend and classmate, Earl, asks him why he is not entering the park but Sandy prefers to keep his pride intact by avoiding talk of the racial slur. He even has the generosity of heart to give Earl his newspaper coupons since he is deprived of the joy of using them. However, the omniscient narrator says that; ‘But not even watermelon and the long letter could drive away his sick feeling about the park.’ (Hughes 148). In the privacy of home, Sandy reveals to Hager his realization that his State of Kansas exercises more racial discrimination against the blacks and colored people. Sandy’s rites of initiation are successful as he enters the transitional phase of responsible pre-adulthood. He shares the same affirmation with Hager, Harriet and Tempy; that education is the key out of the economic and ignorance problems that the black race faces in America. Sandy has come of age as a new Negro, who fights assertively for his education, in opposition to the old Negroes, who accommodate to black intra-racial tension as well as to white ideologies of race discrimination. James “Sandy” Williams is a truly liberated American African in his new identity. The end. Works Cited. Hughes, Langston. Not Without Laughter. Great Britain: Payback Press, 1988. The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain by Langston Hughes. 16 Mar 2000. BRCNEWS: Black Radical Congress General News Articles/Reports. 10 June 2007. . Tracy, Steven. Langston Hughes and the Blues. USA: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Wintz, Cary & Finkelman, Paul. Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. USA: Routledge, 2004. Read More