Repeating Themes and Metaphors in the Works of Langston Hughes - Research Paper Example

 Repeating Themes, Symbols and Metaphors in the Works of Langston Hughes In the works of Langston Hughes one could easily discern the voice of sanity and reason trying to make out some sense out of the Jim Crow America of his times. In most of his works, Hughes tends to use similar and repetitive symbols, themes and metaphors to extend voice and expression to varied black aspirations, frustrations and hopes. The repetitive elements in the settings plot and cast of Hughes work bring to life a systematic and organized system of repression, exploitation and hatred that was not superficial and skin deep, but rather seeped into the bones and marrow of a society bent upon putting barriers between one man and the other on the basis of the color of one’s skin. In the last work by Langston Hughes that is I, too were identified varied themes, symbols and metaphors. This paper intends to unravel the commonality of those themes, symbols and metaphors in the two short stories by the author, which are Father and Son and Cora Unashamed. As was traced in the poem I, too by Langston Hughes, the short story Father and Son by the same writer delineates the atrociousness and brutality of the Jim Crow rules, but in a more detailed and intricate manner. Father and Son is a story about a Georgia white man Colonel Thomas Norwood who keeps a black woman Nora for a mistress and fathers five children by her. The story reveals the psychological and social might of the Jim Crow laws. In the story, Colonel Tom is showed to harbor feelings of constrained affection and liking for his sons from Cora, as is natural for any man. However, his allegiance to the Jim Crow system is evinced to be more doughty and mightier than his commitment to the voice of human feelings within him. He not only tends to publically deny his children from his black maid Cora, but considers an open profession of affection by his son Brat to be a mark of dishonor and disgrace. As in I, too, in Father and Son, Hughes exposes the absurdity and fickleness of Jim Crow laws, which allow a white man to get into the most intimate of relationships with a black girl and to father sons by her, yet, do not allow one to socially and legally recognize the relationships that such intimacies and acts entail. As in other works of Hughes, the register attributed to the black characters further exposes the bestial and subhuman level to which the blacks character are supposed to stoop in Jim Crow America, replete with invectives like nigger, darkie and yard-nigger. In Father and Son, Hughes elaborately shows the decorum and mannerisms which the black dependants were expected to follow in subservience to Jim Crow norms that he alludes to in I, too. The black slaves owned by Colonel Tom are never allowed to enter his home from the front door or to roam about in his inner chambers, irrespective of their long service to him or their relationship to him. The blacks were always to approach his home from the backdoor and allowed to gather only in the kitchen. Like a dog, they were expected to maintain a respectable distance from and decorum with their white master. The story also reinforces the social status attributed to black characters in Hughes’ other works. All the black characters are shown to be serving in menial positions. Colonel Tom do tries to be good to his children by extending to them educational and other opportunities and facilities. However, the magnanimity of his concern for his children never dares to cross the boundaries marked by Jim Crow laws. The story also reveals the fear of marginalization of the whites, as in Hughes’ other works. When Brat, the youngest son of Colonel tries to rebel against the constraints of segregation and reclaim his relationship with his father, the system comes crashing down on him and his brother. Cora Unashamed is one of the masterpieces of Langston Hughes. Though the writer predominantly repeats the themes, symbols and metaphors in the story with which he deals with in his other works, yet Cora Unashamed brings out an unexplored aspect of the emotional dynamics between the blacks and the whites in his times. As the spirit of the story is essentially feminine and it analysis the human relationships in a feminine context, so the ramifications of the emotional dynamics are not sad and gloomy as in I, too, or macabre and ruthless as in Father and Son, but rather tinged with the spirit of empathy, sensitivity and bonding. The story shows the Jim Crow world from a female perspective, though with the repetition of similar themes, language, symbols and metaphors. The story is about a black woman Cora who works as a maid for the Studevant family. The social background in which Hughes’ places Cora is same as that in the last story Father and Son. She is shown to be poor, uneducated, deprive and wretched as the other black characters in Hughes’ works. In a predominantly white world where the rules of the game were fixed and unrelenting, Cora commanded a place amongst the lowest of the lowest. In fact, Hughes explicitly declares her status in the white society when he says that “She worked for the Studevants, who treated her like a dog”. However, Cora differed from the characters in the writer’s last two works that are I, too and Father and Son that she adapted to her menial status with rejection and acceptance, without protesting or questioning the scheme of things. This very humility of Cora with a little temperament for cursing brings out the essential humanness and love in this work, that is very subtle and indirect in Hughes’ other writings. Again, the social decorum and mannerisms that Cora is expected to abide by are the very same as in Hughes’ other works like I, too. She is considered to be a piece of property though she is a free black unlike Hughes’ other characters. The whites have placed her in a system that allows for no pity or sympathy for Cora, however, this story differs from the last work in the sense that it amply reveals that the whites are also not left untouched by the system of segregation and stereotyping upheld by them. If they are not allowed to be human with the blacks, the stereotypical aspirations and ambitions that a ‘white first’ society heaps on them also prevent them from being human with their own flesh and blood, even under the worst of circumstances. If segregation restrained the blacks, it also restrained the whites in many socially invisible ways. Like Hughes’ other black characters in I, too and Father and Son, the world of Cora is limited to the family kitchen, yet it is a world which offers ample scope for sensitivity and acceptance, as is discovered by Jessie in her innocent way. Cora though bound by the system of segregation is yet inadvertently freed by that system in a variety of manners. Being a black woman, she is not subject to popular morals and ethics, as was with the character of Cora in Father and Son. So this abnegation from the popular morals allow her to understand the tribulations and pains of Jessie in a more humane and sympathetic manner. There exists a lot of pain, violence and suffering in many of Hughes’ writings. Still, the hallmark of Hughes is that his works do end with a subtle and symbolic message of hope. In Father and Son, the metaphorical sentence in the end “The dead man left no heirs” hint towards the betterment of things in the times to come, when the generations will refuse to carry on with the legacy of hatred and injustice. Also, in Cora Unashamed, Cora by the dint of his sympathy with Jessie transcends the dog like status that the society allocated her, to come out as a refined and human character. So quintessentially, Hughes repeats the same themes, symbols, metaphors and values in Father and Son and Unashamed Cora, which are evinced by him in I, too. Works Cited Hughes, Langston. “I, Too”. Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama ,and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Boston: Longman, 2010. 548. Print. Read More