Style in Two Short Stories

This study will critique the authors of two short stories, Langston Hughes ("Who's Passing For Who?") and Claude McKay ("Myrtle Avenue"), focusing on characteristics of the styles of the authors. The study will argue that Hughes has a much more simple, leisurely and ironic style than McKay, which serves his more humorous attitude toward race and gender relations in Harlem. McKay, on the other hand, employs a more complex, earnest and emotional style which serves his more critical attitude toward relations among blacks and the sexes in the African-American community.

This is not to say that Hughes does not consider his subject to be serious and significant. To the contrary, Hughes clearly believes race and gender relations to be a vital and dynamic element of relationships in the United States. However, the style and attitude he demonstrates in this short story are aimed at producing a more light-hearted portrayal than the one painted by McKay.

Hughes plays with the reader's perceptions in the same way that the white couple in his story plays with the perceptions of the narrator. That narrator immediately adopts a cynical and superior attitude toward whites as well as toward the blacks who seem eager to accept the "help" (Hughes 564) proferred by whites, especially white tourists like the couple in the story. The narrator mocks Caleb, a black friend, as well as the white couple Caleb is showing around Harlem:

Friends are friends and, unfortunately, overearnest uplifters and

Related Essays

Styles of 2 Short Stories This study will critique the authors of two short stories, Langston Hughes ("Who's Passing .... Hughes has a much more simple, leisurely and ironic style than McKay .... (1282 5 )

Style & Tone in Hemingway's Story The Battler .... Hemingway writes in a succinct style that has been carefully .... The .... share a moment because each has been attacked .... Ad is short for Adam Francis, a famous name .... (1633 7 )

Comparison of Protagonists in 2 Stories .... will compare the young protagonists in two short stories, John Updike's .... as they are represented by the .... young men .... Joyce uses a romantic style to portray the .... (1421 6 )

John Updike's Short Stories .... He combines style with grace by tackling many subjects .... is another theme inherent in many Updike short stories. .... to the lifelong friendship of .... middle-class .... (1291 5 )

Several Short Stories & Reader Empathy .... An examination of several short stories that have endured shows that .... in varying degrees in the other two stories read as .... to by Johnson is the style and skill .... (1453 6 )

ends are bewildered. The blacks question the whites as to their attitude toward people based on color, or apparent color, and the red-haired, confused and angry, storms off. The exchange between the whites and blacks is a comic affair, meant to show the knowingness of the blacks and the ignorance of the whites. The four settle in for dinner, with the blacks "shocking our white friends with tales about how many Negroes there were passing for white all over America" (Hughes 566). Then the white couple drops a bomb---they say they themselves are actually light-colored blacks passing for white "because we make more money" that way (Hughes 567). The narrator and his friend are taken aback at first, and then everybody laughed. And laughed! . . . All at once we dropped our professionally self-conscious "Negro" manners, became natural, ate fish, and talked and kidded freely like colored folks do when there are no white folks around (Hughes 567). Then, as the white couple is leaving, they reveal that they are white after all, and "We just thought we'd kid you by passing for colored a little while" (Hughes 567). The "joke" is that the black narrator and his friend are revealed as being just as prejudiced as the whites they were origina

Category: Literature - S