Langston Hughes "Not Without Laughter"

Langston Hughes was an important writer during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance (1920-1930). During that time, several black writers rose to prominence while expressing their views on the African-American experience. Those writers wanted to show the pain and suffering of their experience while at the same time showing the hopes and strengths of the black culture as a whole. Langston Hughes' Not Without Laughter, published in 1930, was quickly acknowledged as a representative novel of the Harlem Renaissance. Although he had published some poetry before, Not Without Laughter was Hughes' first novel. Critics hailed the book as an important work because it accurately expresses the life of rural Negroes during the early twentieth century; furthermore, it was praised for being a great work of fiction, with a meaningful plot and memorable characters. Thus, as noted by Farrison, the importance of Not Without Laughter is found in the fact that "it is an important social document as well as a literary work" (108).

Hughes' novel gives an overview of the rural black experience as seen through the eyes of a boy named Sandy. It is interesting to note that the book's narrative is largely based on the events of Hughes' own childhood. Although Not Without Laughter contains some autobiographical elements, Hughes did not attempt to directly relate his own life story through it. Rather, he fictionalized his personal experiences so that he could "tell the tale of his childho

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a successful blues singer after a long period of adjustment in which she is arrested as a street-walker, among other things. Other characters do not sing or play the blues directly, but nonetheless convey the attitude of the blues in their acceptance of life. For example, Sandy bravely and stoically accepts the hardships of his life when he asks for a "Golden Flyer" sled for Christmas but ends up getting the only thing his grandmother and mother can afford: a rough home-made thing built out of wood and rusty tin (Hughes 163). Rather than complain, Sandy exhibits an attitude of the blues by pretending to like the gift, even though he is crying on the inside. In addition to expressing the difficulties of the black way of life, Not Without Laughter deals with the universal theme of a young boy growing into maturity. For example, one poignant scene shows Sandy getting in trouble because he used his Sunday school money to buy candy with (Hughes 126). In another scene, Sandy asks himself a number of questions about life. The fact that he is growing into maturity can be seen in the nature of his questions. For example, he wonders about what makes girls different from boys, and where babies come from. In the same scene, he rejec

Category: Literature - L