The Stories of Hughes by Langston Hughes

First published:The Ways of White Folks, 1934; Simple Speaks His Mind, 1950; Laughing to Keep from Crying, 1952; Simple Takes a Wife, 1953; Simple Stakes a Claim, 1957; The Best of Simple, 1961; Something in Common, and Other Stories, 1963; Simple’s Uncle Sam, 1965

Type of work: Short stories

A Poet Turns to Fiction

Langston Hughes was already an accomplished poet when he began writing short stories. Though he had previously published several stories in a Harlem magazine, it was not until 1933 (while sitting in a hotel room in Moscow, after having read D. H. Lawrence’s The Lovely Lady) that he decided the short story was another genre he could master. Hughes became proficient in such a short time that his first collection of stories, The Ways of White Folks, was published in 1934. Despite this initial success, there was a delay of sixteen years before another collection appeared, though after the drought came seven extensive volumes of short stories published between 1950 and 1965. Five of these feature Hughes’s most famous fictional character, Harlem “folk” philosopher Jesse B. Semple, who holds forth on subjects ranging from his landladies to former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Hughes’s short stories in general can be divided into two categories: early ones that follow Hughes’s adapted version of a traditional Aristotelian short-story form, and later ones, most of which utilize a more flexible and generally more entertaining dialogue form. Both categories feature Hughes’s incisive commentary on race relations and demonstrate his career-long search for a form flexible enough to accommodate both his high aesthetic principles and his political interests.

The title of Hughes’s first book of short stories, The Ways of White Folks (1934), is a homage to W. E. B. Du Bois’s classic of African American sociology, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Du Bois’s work makes the bold claim that the history of the twentieth century will be the history of the color line; Hughes’s work investigates the psychological and sometimes physical consequences of an individual character’s relationship to the color line. Two stories, “Little Dog” and “Father and Son,” show, respectively, the white and black sides of customary and legal segregation. In “Little Dog,” the protagonist, Miss Clara Briggs, a forty-five-year-old Manhattan-dwelling spinster, suddenly decides to adopt a pet. Miss Briggs chooses a little white dog that she names Flips, only to find that her decision brings her into daily contact with Joe, the broad-shouldered African American janitor of her building. Miss Briggs soon becomes enamored of Joe and organizes her schedule around his daily delivery of dog bones. She will not, however, allow her emotions to take any public form; she represses her feelings for Joe and eventually moves to another apartment building in an attempt to escape her socially unacceptable desires. The structure of the story, as in much of Hughes’s best work, reinforces spatially the structure of Miss Briggs’s emotions. Joe and his family are kept down in the basement, just as Miss Briggs’s feelings for him and sympathy for his family are denied. Her “white flight” becomes an emblem of the connection between spatial relationships and her inability to control the color line in her own mind.

In the concluding story of the collection, “Father and Son,” Hughes offers some of his most trenchant criticism of southern race relations. “Father and Son” is the story of Colonel Thomas Norwood, a wealthy Georgia planter, and his illegitimate multiracial son, Bert Lewis. Colonel Norwood obviously overcame the customary problem of sexual relations between the races, having fathered several children by his servant Cora Lewis. He also has some affection for these children, for he is willing to pay for their education (if they agree to go to Atlanta). Like Miss Briggs, however, the colonel is unwilling or unable to cross the color line and admit that Bert is his son. Where Miss Briggs can literally move away from her problems, Colonel Lewis cannot avoid seeing his son when Bert returns from a year at the “Negro college” to visit his mother and family who remain on the plantation. Bert, who is said to have inherited his father’s stubborn character, refuses to work in the fields and in general gives the impression that he is “uppity.” In 1930’s Georgia, the combination of intelligence and character in an African American did not go over well with the local white population. In an ending that foreshadows the work of Richard Wright in Uncle Tom’s Children (1938), the conflict is resolved in an orgy of violence. Bert strangles his father after the colonel refuses one last time to recognize him as his son; the ensuing manhunt ends with a double lynching, as both Bert and his Uncle Tomish brother Willie are made victims of the Jim Crow traditions. Both “Little Dog” and “Father and Son” show the ways in which whites refuse to face the truth of their feelings about African Americans and attempt, sometimes forcibly, to put them back on their side of the color line.

Cultivating a Lighter Touch

Laughing to Keep from Crying, which appeared in 1952, offers a more lighthearted approach to racial issues. The stories tend to be more flexible in form and more simplified in subject matter. Conflict is often reduced to its simplest form, and the function of the characters involved is often that of comical and ironic opposition. Stories of exceptional merit include “Who’s Passing for Who?,” a story of disguised racial identity; “Something in Common,” the title story of a later collection of selected stories; “Little Old Spy,” an ironic story of prerevolutionary Cuba; and the concluding story of the collection, the powerful and moving “Big Meeting.”

In “Who’s Passing for Who?,” Hughes tells the story of a group of Harlem artists who let guilt-trip white liberal tourists foot all of their nightly bar tabs. It is only when a group of Iowans pass through town that they get their comeuppance. The artists begin to impress upon the Iowans, in a good-natured manner, the magnitude of the cross-racial disguise problem. According to the artists, thousands of African Americans throughout the country are passing for white. In an ironic ending typical of Hughes’s stories from the 1950’s, the Iowans reveal that they indeed belong to the group of African Americans who are passing for white, though only for the reason that they make more money as white people. The confession leads to all parties dropping their pretensions and enjoying the evening on an equal footing. As the story ends, however, the Iowans leave with one last parting shot—they reveal that they are in fact whites who are passing for “colored,” just for the sake of having fun. The narrator is left musing about the racial identity of the midwesterners and can only conclude that the evening’s entertainment has been at his expense.

“Something in Common” is one of a group of Hughes’s stories set in exotic locations, in this case Hong Kong. This “defamiliarization” of the reader allows Hughes to represent the conflict in its simplest terms. The dialogue between a stuffy and pretentious Kentucky colonel and a radical midwestern African American allows the reader direct access to the story in a manner similar to the Semple dialogues. Both characters carry their conception of the color line with them to Hong Kong, and they soon begin arguing about Jim Crow (segregation) laws in the United States. They can come to agreement only when confronted by a common enemy, the Cockney bartender who throws them out of the bar for fighting. “The Little Spy” is another of the stories set in a foreign locale; this time, the Havana location features a Cuban pimp who has been hired by the government to spy on a visiting African American artist. Again the plot is resolved only after the artist and the spy enter into a dialogue about race and sex over a bottle of Bacardi (provided at the artist’s expense). The ironic twist at the conclusion concerns the delivery of a secret message from the artist to his revolutionary comrades—all accomplished while the pimp/spy is suffering from the consequences of too much talk and drink.

“Big Meeting” is the concluding story of the collection and is Hughes’s most complicated story that utilizes the dramatic dialogue form. The story revolves around three sets of interwoven dialogues: one between the preacher and worshipers at a tent revival, one between two youths who have skipped the meeting but remain within earshot, and one between a white couple who have decided to use the meeting as a form of entertainment. The two youths, Bud and the narrator, are the only characters who are in a position to overhear what is said by all the others, and they therefore serve as a bridge between the reactions of the whites and the African American worshipers.

As the story proceeds, the skepticism of the boys and the voyeuristic enjoyment of the whites give way to a profound feeling for the proceedings of the big meeting. Reverend Duke Braswell repeats the story of Jesus’ crucifixion in terms of black-white conflict. Christ is “lynched” because of his support of the poor and downtrodden (a theme repeated by Jesse B. Semple in the story “Simple Prays a Prayer”). It is only a black man named Simon who is willing to bear the cross before Christ is left on Golgotha with the two thieves. The reverend is stressing the point of Christ’s abandonment on the cross when the whites decide to leave, the evening’s entertainment having suddenly turned serious. The narrator attempts to stop the whites by saying that the part of the service where sinners are called upon to confess is approaching. The whites, however, have no interest in entering into any dialogue at this point and drive off in an effort to avoid any contact. The color line is redrawn, but all have been changed in some way. The boys are drawn back into the meeting by the persuasiveness of the reverend’s oratory, and the whites have been exposed and affected by the power of the dialogue between the preacher and his congregation.

Jesse B. Semple

The last and most famous of Hughes’s fictional creations is Harlem “folk” philosopher Jesse B. Semple. The “Simple” stories began as a column for the African American newspaper The Chicago Defender and soon acquired national attention. Semple, like Ishmael Reed’s character Jes Grew, is a signifying creation, though Jesse B. Semple’s folkloric home is a modern, urban one. Semple provides colorful commentary on every topic from politics to landladies, usually from his second home, the Wishing Well bar. His constant interlocutor is the college-educated narrator, who serves as the perfect straight man in the dialogues. Semple’s “signifying” (or verbal gamesmanship, to use the term popularized by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) always concerns the issues of sex, race, and class, all complicated by Semple’s southern upbringing. On the issue of sex, Semple’s life is governed by his ex-wife in Baltimore and his two present-day loves. Zarita, his former girlfriend and still sometime companion, also spends a great deal of time at the Wishing Well bar and fits in the Semple category of “nighttime” women. Joyce, Semple’s wife, is a thoroughly respectable and hard-working woman who conveniently fits in the category of “daytime” women. Not coincidentally, Joyce supports Semple during many of the early stories. In fact, when Hughes decided to stop writing the column, instead of killing Semple off (as many writers have done when retiring their most famous characters), he moved him to a house in the suburbs bought by Joyce.

Semple is most eloquent on the subject of race relations, especially when he recalls his early life in Virginia. In fact, Semple can never forget about his southern past, because his Virginia cousins F. D. and Minnie come to live with him for brief periods of time. The narrator, who is always on the side of moderation and understanding, is regularly shocked and appalled by Semple’s views. Semple’s comments on race are very simple; in the story entitled “Semple Prays a Prayer,” Semple comes to the conclusion that Christ should come back as avenger and smite down white folks. The narrator, somewhat taken aback at Semple’s radicalism, asks Semple if he really means all white folks should be smitten. Semple’s reply is no, not all of them: He hopes Christ leaves Eleanor Roosevelt alone. Likewise, in the story “There Ought to Be a Law,” Semple has another radical idea after watching a nature film. In addition to a nature preserve where there is a sign that reads “NO HUNTING,” Semple would like to see a game preserve for blacks where the sign would read “NO LYNCHING.”

The last and one of the most telling of Semple’s criticisms of society concerns the class system. In many respects the class system coincides with the race problem, the exception, in Semple’s mind, being Harlem landladies. His encounters with landladies have all been problematic, usually with his landladies winning the verbal battle, as in the story “Landladies,” in which Semple has to rewrite all the signs he has removed from an apartment house. To Semple, however, monetary barriers are the spirit of Jim Crow reborn, and they keep him from finding the high-paying job he wants. All is related to the confluence of race and class: When Semple is told by his white coworkers in “Apple Strudel” that he can stay in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel if he wants to, his reply is that he cannot because he does not have the money. Semple claims that he would have the money if he were not black.

The stories of Langston Hughes show a progression from a relatively traditional short-story form to a flexible, dialogic structure. As Hughes became more adept at exploiting the conventional beginning-middle-end formula, he also realized its shortcomings in the presentation of his subject matter. His conversion to the dialogue approach, first in the short stories of the 1950’s and then in the Simple stories, proves the success of his efforts to create a narrative form through which the truth of African American experience could be told.

Bibliography

Blake, Susan L. “Old John in Harlem: The Urban Folktales of Langston Hughes.” Black American Literature Forum 14 (Fall, 1980): 100-104. Examines Hughes’s Simple stories and how they function as folktales in a black urban society. Shows how the stories, functioning as folktales, tend to unite the black population through recognizable past and present experiences.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Langston Hughes. New York: Blooms Literary Criticism, 2008. Collection of essays by leading Hughes scholars discussing all aspects of his life and work.

Emanuel, James A. “Bodies in the Moonlight: A Critical Analysis.” Readers and Writers 1 (November-January, 1968): 38-39, 42. A critical examination of one of the first of Hughes’s published short stories. This brief analysis emphasizes an “innocence” theme that is set in a seafaring environment. Does not include notes.

Jemie, Onwuchekwa. Langston Hughes: An Introduction to the Poetry. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Explores the African American, political, and musical experiences of Hughes’s life and shows how these areas affected his works. Jemie’s conclusion is that these experiences proved to Hughes that there was a “black existence,” or a distinctly separate black culture, in America. It was this “black existence” that developed into the incessant African American themes used in Hughes’s writings, including the fiction. Extensive notes.

Klotman, Phyllis R. “Jesse B. Semple and the Narrative Art of Langston Hughes.” Journal of Narrative Technique 3 (January, 1973): 66-75. Klotman’s essay establishes a theory that Hughes’s narrative technique in the Simple stories cemented the popularity of those stories with black and white audiences alike. Klotman successfully proves her theory by a detailed analysis of four literary devices used by Hughes.

Miller, R. Baxter. The Art and Imagination of Langston Hughes. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006. Demonstrates that Hughes’s literary style is more sophisticated than it seems; examines the relationship between the writer’s experiences and his fiction.

Mullen, Edward J., ed. Critical Essays on Langston Hughes. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Reprints reviews, essays, and articles on Hughes’s poetry, prose, and drama. Contains a thorough introduction by Mullen that includes a brief biography of Hughes, a bibliographic overview, and analyses of Hughes’s poetry, prose, and drama. Extensive notes.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, 1991. The definitive biography of Hughes. Rampersad provides an extensive account of Hughes’s decision to begin writing fiction and offers a fascinating version of the history behind the Simple stories.