49 pages • 1 hour read
Langston HughesThe Ways of White Folks
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1934A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Paris
In several stories, Paris serves as an important setting, and it comes to represent more than just a city. Every Black character who goes to Paris feels less ostracized for the color of their skin. In “Poor Little Black Fellow,” Arnie meets a diverse group of friends for the first time, feeling “Paris and music and cocktails made you forget what color people were—and what color you were yourself. Here it didn’t matter—color” (148). Conversely, when Roy returns to the United States from traveling across Europe, he notes, “His skin burned. For the first time in half a dozen years he felt his color. He was home” (36).
As Arnie continues to socialize, another partygoer makes the same comparison between Paris and the United States: “Well, what’s new in the States now? I haven’t been home for three years. Don’t intend to go soon. The color-line’s a little too much for me” (147). In “The Blues I’m Playing,” Oceola plays across Europe without any mention of race, which continues to be an issue between her and Mrs. Ellsworth stateside. Across the stories of The Ways of White Folks, Europe, and Paris in particular, represents a way of living more equally than many regions of the United States. The hope it signifies is further solidified in “Poor Little Black Fellow,” when Arnie decides to stay in Paris and reject his homeland.
As romantic as Paris and Europe are in the stories, Hughes does not overly romanticize them. Reflecting on his travels in “Home,” Roy comments, “Folks catch hell in Europe […] I never saw people as hungry as this, not even Negroes at home” (34). Oceola also finds problems with Europe. Living abroad, she mingles with a diverse set of people but finds their arguments trivial and pointless: “Why did they or anybody argue so much about life or art? Oceola merely lived—and loved it” (112). Unlike Arnie, Oceola chooses America over Europe, showing happiness can still be found in the States. With Paris, Hughes shows that places exist without hostility toward a person because of their skin, but that doesn’t mean other problems don’t exist there.
Leaving
The act of leaving is a motif employed regularly in The Ways of White Folks. Several main characters end their stories by leaving their situation, hoping for something better. After her outburst at Jessie’s funeral, Cora never returns to work: “Cora never came back to work for the Studevants” (16). Arnie is tired of how he’s treated in America, his story ending with a short and definitive line: “Arnie went out” (157). Luther and Mattie in “Slave on the Block” and Berry in “Berry” are forced to leave their employers. Whether through their own agency, or forced by another, numerous characters leave a bad situation with the hope of finding better opportunities.
Hughes uses this established motif to depict White flight in “Little Dog.” Miss Briggs can’t properly articulate it, but she feels uneasy around her apartment’s new Black janitor, Joe. Her anxiety builds to the point where she moves. She’s never directly aware of it, but Miss Briggs’s leaving is directly motivated by her relationship with Joe. Here, Hughes repurposes his motif for a different context. Miss Briggs leaves her changing neighborhood, moving away and into obscurity: “But in a very short while the neighborhood had completely forgotten about her” (174).
Music
Music appears frequently throughout the collection. Two main characters—Roy Williams and Oceola Jones—are musicians, and many characters appreciate music and art. For Roy and Oceola, their musical prowess helps them avoid the economic exploitation shown in other stories. Both travel to Europe and enjoy cultures with less outwardly racist behavior. Furthermore, in “Slave on the Block,” Luther isn’t a musician himself, but the songs he sings still add to Hughes’s themes on income inequality. Walking upstairs in the Carraway household, Luther sings, “Dear Ma, I’m in hard luck: / Three days since I et, / And the stamp on this letter’s / Gwine to put me in debt” (26). The lyrics tell the story of someone poor and starving. Luther singing adds detail to his character, while also shining more light on class disparity in the US, a central theme for Hughes.
Characters like Eugene Lesche, the Carraways, and the Colonel reinforce the motif of music but also show how the medium can be abused. Eugene doesn’t respect music; he only wants to profit from it. There’s never a scene in “Rejuvenation Through Joy” that shows him appreciating music. Michael and Anne Carraway use music for entertainment while looking down at the creators of it. The Colonel and his colleagues are even more devious. They want to “revitalize” singing among their Black workers for their own gain:
Let the Negroes sing and shout their troubles away, as in the past. White folks had always found revivals a useful outlet for sullen over-worked darkies. As long as they were singing and praying, they forgot about the troubles of this world (229-230).
In The Ways of White Folks, music leads to a better life and builds on thematic messages for many characters, but it is also manipulated by antagonists for selfish reasons.
Small Towns
Many of the stories are set in small towns in the South of the United States. In each story set in a small town, the main character suffers. Hughes establishes this pattern early. Story 1, “Cora Unashamed,” opens by describing Melton as an irksome place: “Melton was one of those miserable in-between little places, not large enough to be a town, nor small enough to be a village—that is, a village in the rural, charming sense of the word. Melton had no charm about it” (3).
Melton’s lack of charm gives the setting a darker feel, which Hughes uses to further enhance the racism Cora deals with there. Her town is unappealing on the outside and unappealing on the inside, too. Story 3, “Home,” builds on the symbol of small Southern towns, imbuing them with even more hatred and violence by concluding with Roy’s lynching. Later, in Story 13 (“One Christmas Eve”), Arcie reiterates to her son that they’re not in Baltimore; Joe isn’t allowed into the theater to see Santa because it’s only meant for White people. In “Father and Son,” Bert and the rest of the Lewis family constantly grapple with the racism in their Georgia town. When Bert starts rebelling, a storeowner calls the Colonel and gives him an imposing message: “Now, Tom, you know that stuff don’t go ’round these parts o’ Georgia” (235). Hughes spaces his small towns throughout the collection, allowing this symbol to build and stay imprinted in the reader’s mind. In every case, Hughes depicts small towns as being small and thinking small. For the Black characters, they are hostile and dangerous places, particularly in the South, and the White townsfolk want to keep them that way.
An exception to the rule is Arnie in “Poor Little Black Fellow.” Arnie’s story, however, takes place near Boston, up North. There, he faces a juxtaposed dilemma: Everyone is overly nice to him. He’s always the poor Black fellow and never truly treated as an equal. Arnie doesn’t fear violence, but he still doesn’t feel like he has a place he can call home, and he ends up hating his home country and chooses to stay in Paris. Here, the small town still serves as a symbol for small thinking. Arnie’s town fails to accept him, and they lose him forever because of it.
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