The Themes, Styles, and Techniques of Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri on February 1, 1901 to Carrie Mercer Langston and James Nathaniel Hughes. Hughes lived in a number of different towns in the Midwest, meanwhile during the early years of Hughes’ childhood, his father left the family and later divorced Hughes’ mother. After his parents separated, Hughes’ mother left Hughes with his maternal grandmother in order to travel and seek employment opportunities. After his grandmother passed away, Hughes moved to Lincoln, Illinois for two years, then moved back with his family to Cleveland, Ohio where he attended high school. He would later moved to New York City, which is where remained for most of his adult life and wrote most of his works. Hughes eventually passed away on May 22, 1967 due to complications from abdominal surgery he had to deal with, because he was diagnosed a form of prostate cancer a couple of months earlier.
Being a black man in the early 1900s, Hughes used that fact as an inspiration for many of his works throughout his writing career. The theme of racial equality is prominent in almost all of his writings due to his upbringing and experiences in Harlem, New York. Hughes seemed to be heavily involved in the drag scene there describing what he thought of the people and the costumes of the drag parties that happened in Harlem. Another theme that Langston Hughes is well known for is his arguments for political and economic justice for all people, but especially for the African-American community during the time period that Hughes was writing in. One style that Langston Hughes often employed in his writing was his sympathy toward other countries, especially toward the Soviet Union. Although this appeared to be controversial given that the Soviet Union and United States were pinned against each other for most of Hughes’s life, Hughes used his writing as an opportunity to extend an open mind towards the ideals of the Soviet Union and many other Eastern European countries at a time when that part of the world was feared in the United States. Towards the end of his writing career, Hughes became more aware of what his readers thought because he eventually came back to admiring American democratic values, this led to him writing a couple of anthologies with many different poems from different authors of various ethnic backgrounds.
One major topic that Langston Hughes used in almost all of his works was the well known fact that there was a very apparent disparity between races in the United States. One of Hughes’s most notable works to feature racial inequality as a prominent theme was his poem Let America be America Again. Hughes used the poem to make many different points about racial inequality within the United States, with many believing that he had political motivations behind this work (Westover 5). With many of his works being racially charged and motivated, Hughes never actually made any political statements in his writings (Westover 6). Hughes also used many senses of imagery in the poem to portray his message in a clear and accurate way. He used lines such as “I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land,” (Stanza 5 Lines 1-3 Let America be America Again by Langston Hughes) (Hughes qtd. in Westover 7) to show that equality still has not been achieved by the society he is living in. Let America be America Again also uses a sense of counterpublic discourse to convey his meaning (Westover 7). This allowed Hughes “exhort his countrymen to promote the economic justice and equality he attributes to a primordial America, but on the other, he expresses dissent as to the very meaning of America” (Westover 7). Another work that seems to shed light on Hughes’s political aspirations was Ask Your Mama. Hughes uses an aggressive tone to push his political message onto the reader in order to make sure that the reader can see his message in full. (Higgins 5). Hughes also used the work Ask Your Mama to experiment with the musical form of poetry, which allowed him to use music as the basis for many of his poems after this series. (Higgins 5).
Hughes used many of his later writings to describe the injustice of African American economic situations compared to white economic situations. In The Ways of White Folks, Hughes boosts his message of economic and political equality for the African Americans with the white communities (Retman 594). Though satirical, this work actually conveyed one of Hughes’s most prominent themes of equality amongst races (Retman 594). When he wrote The Ways of White Folks, Hughes used it as satirical propaganda against rich, white patrons that were often seen by poorer people as arrogant, snobby, and greedy with all their money that they were unwilling to share with the poor (Retman 593). Hughes used these tactics to often times attack the system that had been put in place in America during this time which he felt oppressed people in his community while giving certain advantages to the wealthy white men of the country. (Retman 595). Hughes also used his writings as “propaganda” to try to motivate his readers to support his messages and also to get out and spread his messages (Retman 597). In his poem Theme for English B, Langston Hughes uses the image of a white English teacher assigning the students a one-page paper (Brox 18). He makes sure to mention the fact that the narrator was the only “colored student the class” to convey that there is already a struggle for the narrator in the class (Brox 15). The rest of the poem focuses on the struggles that the narrator has in fulfilling the assignment due to the fact that he was African-American (Brox 18-19). However at the Hughes mentions the commonality between the two characters, which is that they are both Americans (Brox 19). This allowed Hughes to turn a negative situation and spin it into a positive light and convey a recurring message of his, which is equality and acceptance of all races (Brox 19).
One style that Langston Hughes often seemed to use in his works was the sympathy that he showed time and time again to many different Communist countries, most notably the Soviet Union. Hughes took a trip to the Soviet Union in 1932. During this trip, Hughes was exposed to the ideas of Communism and Socialism which allowed Hughes to develop a staunch opinion on these ideals, which led to his sympathetic writings towards the ideas (Wipplinger 168). Hughes also got to see East Germany, which allowed him to see what a near equal society could look like in the United States because of the ideals that were in place in the country at the time (Wipplinger 182). Eventually Hughes faded away from this style of writing after living in the United States for a while (Wipplinger 183).
Promoting equality across the world was an important message to Langston Hughes. This led to him writing controversial works about the response to Cold War anti-communism (Lowney 50). In his columns in the Chicago Defender, Hughes seemed to be more radical in his ideas compared to some of his later works in the late 1950s (Lowney 50). Hughes’s questions of national pride went against his radical international vision because it threatened to end his career, if he didn’t become increasingly anti-Communist (Lowney 50). The Poetry of the Negro, showed that Hughes was committed to preserving American democratic values, but Hughes also wanted to try to implement equality in the United States (Lowney 51). Being that The Poetry of the Negro was an anthology, Hughes and his co-author, Arna Bontemps, brought together poems from many authors of African and Caribbean backgrounds, but they also included some poems from authors of white backgrounds defying racial boundaries that basically defined works written by many African-American authors in the future (Lowney 53).
Hughes also used a perspective of writing from the perspective of life in 1920-1930 Germany (Wipplinger 174). He would often compare Germany to Harlem and use the similarities between the two places to describe how he felt not only about where he lived, but how he felt about society as a whole (Wipplinger 175). Because Langston Hughes used this style, he would often appear in German press for his works, however he could never read the papers and opinions of his works (Wipplinger 178). This style of writing allowed Hughes to graso a larger audience not only in America, but also overseas in Europe (Wipplinger 178). In 1927, Hughes met Anna Nussbaum, who was able to help Hughes get his works translated into German so the people in Germany were able to read about the author they had been hearing about in the news (Wipplinger 178).
Langston Hughes was inspired by both the Blues and Jazz movements during his time living in Harlem in New York City. Throughout most of Hughes’s works, Jazz is one of, if not the most recurring themes throughout all of Hughes’s works (Wipplinger 169). In Harlem, Jazz was the main center of the culture there, so it was impossible for Hughes not to be influenced by it, considering he grew up around it and lived through that era (Wipplinger 170). Although the Blues were almost a subsection of Jazz, they served as one of the main inspirations for Hughes’s early writings (Hoffman 110). Although later fading away from Jazz overall, especially the Blues however, Hughes always had roots ingrained in these themes which allowed him to incorporate them into almost all of his works (Hoffman 111). Hughes used his work Ask Your Mama to lay a foundation for his future musically inspired works. (Higgins 5). After writing that work, Hughes wrote in musical forms for almost the rest of his career which showed how rooted he was in the musical form of writing. (Higgins 6). While beginning his work Ask Your Mama, Langston Hughes said that he “hear music” in the early stages of the work (Higgins 6). Although the work is filled with anger and politics, Hughes used it as a kind of launching tool to help base many future works in this styles (Higgins 7).
During Hughes’s career as a writer, he was inspired by many things, but one thing that many scholars and critics of his say inspired him the most was his time living in Harlem, New York. An aspect of life in Harlem that Hughes mentioned several times throughout many of his writings was the popular drag scene in the area that he lived. In his autobiography The Big Sea, Hughes mentions several occurrences of seeing many people dressing in drag outfits (See 799). Hughes described the drag scene as “the ball where men dress as women and women dress as men” (Hughes qtd. in See 798).
Throughout his career, Langston Hughes was always speculated to be a homosexual, not only through his actions, but also through his writings (Gray 6). Although Hughes was never confirmed to become homosexual, many of those themes came up in his writings. Tyler Hoffman of the Michigan University Press expressed Hughes’s writing styles as “A gay and low-down Blues” (Hoffman 108). This could also be connected to his involvement of the drag scene in Harlem during the 1920s. According to George Chauncey, a professor at Columbia University, which Hughes attended for a short time, Harlem in the 1920s was a “homosexual mecca” (Chauncey qtd. in See 799). Many literary critics that have study Hughes’s works have speculated whether Hughes was a homosexual or not (Reyes 271). Often times, according to Reyes, the speculation was created in order to stir up some new gossip about Hughes’s life behind his writings (Reyes 272). Giving Hughes the gay identity basically sanctioned him a way of life that he did not openly acknowledge nor address (Reyes 272). Langston Hughes was a notoriously quiet and private person, causing many “conspiracies” to circle about what was happening in his private life that not many people knew about (Reyes 272).
Hughes used live performances as a way to boost his likability and publicity On January 15, 1926, Hughes read his book, The Weary Blues, at the Playhouse in Washington DC (Hoffman 111). The audience he had was mixed-race but Hughes was perfectly fine with that, however there was an admission fee of one dollar (Hoffman 111). Although Hughes didn’t perform often, this wasn’t a one time performance of his career either. (Hoffman 112). Another time in 1931, Hughes read to a fairly large crowd in the southern city Columbia, South Carolina (Hoffman 93). Hughes also designed a couple of poems to be read aloud nicknaming these “sermon-poems” (Hoffman 101). One particular poem that Hughes himself got to read to a crowd was his 1942 work Sunday Morning Prophecy (Hoffman 101). After reading in Washington DC, Hughes read near Columbia University, and after the reading, he signed books “until his wrist ached” (Hoffman 102). After this reading, Hughes started getting many more requests than he had anticipated initially, so he declined most of them because he did not want to become a regular performer (Hoffman 102).
In 1951, Hughes published a collection of Jazz poems called Montage of a Dream Deferred. Hughes was able to use this series of poems to portray his life in a way that he hadn’t before, through the use of Jazz compositions (Reyes 269). His poetry generally dealt with the complexity of many different topics including race, class, sexuality, gender, and social justice (Reyes 269). While many thought that Hughes was ahead of his time with many of his ideas, many of his newer critics and readers couldn’t understand Hughes’s “sense of place and social justice performativity” (Reyes 269). Langston Hughes was also a very well known advocate for the empowerment of the African-American women, despite being shunned by his own mother during and after his childhood (Reyes 269).
One way that Langston Hughes often made his works seem relatable was through his use of satire in many different works. He used this often times to point out a problem and even sometimes proposed solutions to that problem in the same work (Brox 15). Although satire appeared in many different works of Hughes’s, there was a lack of a unifying focus in his stories to point out one specific group of works that exemplified his satire (Brox 15). Hughes also used satire in many of his works trying to display the struggles of the African-American community during his writings (Brox 18). For example, in The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Hughes uses satire in portraying that the black artist is struggling not only to appeal to the white people, but the artist is also seen struggling to appeal to his fellow African Americans (Brox 18). This brings up the message of Hughes’s work of a strive for equality amongst the different races in the United States (Brox 18). This showed that Hughes understood that the African-American community needed to be united in their goal in order to achieve what they were looking for, however by using satire, Hughes was able to undermine the African-American community, but at the same time was able to effectively get his message across to them by saying that they needed to be united (Brox 18).
Many of Hughes’s works also had many different gendered themes to them. Many scholars have argued that Langston Hughes was the first black male feminist writer (Brox 20). Many of his works included diverse types of black women as well as some main characters being women (Brox 20). Hughes also used many poems of his such as The Weary Blues, which he published in 1926, to portray his gender equality views as well as his racial equality messages (See 799). Many scholars believe that this equality of gender feeling ties back to his works about drag and also the theories about Hughes possibly being a homosexual (See 801). Many people have believed that since Hughes was such a champion for the rights of women and that in many of his works, women would be the focal point of the story, which allowed Hughes to argue for women’s rights while not actually having to explicitly take a stance on it himself (See 801-802).
Coming from humble beginnings Langston Hughes bounced around a lot as a kid. During this time he was able to focus and become a very motivated person. Growing up without a father and barely with a mother, Hughes learned to be independent of people while also being able to help other along the way. Although the odds seemed stacked against Hughes, he went on to have an illustrious career as an author, poet and even performer. Although he did not have the best life throughout his times, he certainly did not have a bad life. Although he kept his personal life outs of the public’s view, he still managed to incorporate aspects of his private life in many of his works time and time again throughout his career. This led Hughes to being considered in many people's minds one of the greatest African-American writers of all time and also one of the first African-American people to speak out against the inequality in America. This allowed Hughes to attract many people because of his message and his massive popularity amongst not only African-Americans, but also amongst other races as well. Although Hughes’s goals were not accomplished in his lifetime, he certainly left a lasting impact on the world, that many people are still feeling the effects of today.