Love theme in Langston Hughes' poetry

¶ … Langston Hughes' poetry appears to this author to center around mother and son. Due to the bad relationship with his father, he was particularly close to his mother. This was vital relationship and by extension may have reflect badly upon many of the male models (particularly his father). It is the assertion of the author that this conflict was reflected in his biracial identity as well as in the relationship with both parents and was worked out eventually successfully later on in life in his poetry.

A good example of this type of poem of the theme of love between mother and son can be found in "Mother to Son." In this poem, the mother ruminates upon the hard life that she has had, particularly as a black woman. This particular theme of love is complicated by the theme of the mulatto that runs through much of Hughes' poetry. With this in mind, this author will also center in on three of Hughes' other poems for analysis as well: "Sweet brown Harlem Girl" and "Love Song for Linda."

"Mother to Son" presents the contradictory love role of the African-American mother. She is often in a double bind with regard to her duties in her role as mother. On the one hand, she wants the best for her son which may compromise his role as a black man. On the other, she is a proud black woman who chaffs at this compromise. In 1926, Hughes wrote an article in the Nation magazine that explores the contradictory role of both parents of a family he terms as "the negro middle class" that is not only busy keeping up with the Jones family, but the white Jones family in particular. This double self-hating entendre is spelled out as follows:

But let us look at the immediate background of this young poet. His family is of what I suppose one would call the Negro middle class: people who are by no means rich yet never uncomfortable nor hungry -- smug, contented, respectable folk, members of the Baptist church. The father goes to work every morning. He is a chief steward at a large white club. The mother sometimes does fancy sewing or supervises parties for the rich families of the town. The children go to a mixed school. In the home they read white papers and magazines. And the mother often says "Don't be like niggers" when the children are bad. A frequent phrase from the father is, "Look how well a white man does things." And so the word white comes to be unconsciously a symbol of all virtues. It holds for the children beauty, morality, and money. The whisper of "I want to be white" runs silently through their minds. This young poet's home is, I believe, a fairly typical home of the colored middle class. One sees immediately how difficult it would be for an artist born in such a home to interest himself in interpreting the beauty of his own people. He is never taught to see that beauty. He is taught rather not to see it, or if he does, to be ashamed of it when it is not according to Caucasian patterns.

For racial culture the home of a self-styled "high-class" Negro has nothing better to offer. Instead there will perhaps be more aping of things white than in a less cultured or less wealthy home. The father is perhaps a doctor, lawyer, landowner, or politician. The mother may be a social worker, or a teacher, or she may do nothing and have a maid. Father is often dark but he has usually married the lightest woman he could find. The family attend a fashionable church where few really colored faces are to be found. And they themselves draw a color line. In the North they go to white theaters and white movies. And in the South they have at least two cars and house "like white folks." Nordic manners, Nordic faces, Nordic hair, Nordic art (if any), and an Episcopal heaven. A very high mountain indeed for the would-be racial artist to climb in order to discover himself and his people (Hughes "The Negro Artist…").

It is necessary to consider this schizoid view in detail. The opposite of love is hate. While the black may love, they also have a dark side of hate close by. This is why he accentuates the love of blackness and asserted it so strongly, particularly at a time when it was not politically correct to do so. He is particularly pained by the fact that black men are not loving black women (or light skinned, if not white women). No wonder this type of mother is saying "don't be like niggers." While she loves her son, she hates herself and her people and this self-loathing does not help her son's impressions at all.

In "Sweet Brown Harlem Girl," David Jarraway remarks that in this and his other Harlem poems Hughes is looking at this love theme as part of a variety of dream postponements. Due to the general disappointment and the stifling nature of black life in America (even in Harlem), love as in anything else in the black experience is usually postponed to a later more appropriate time (Jarraway 69). Extending upon Hughes' radical assertion that black is beautiful, love takes a back seat to respect for his identity and his ethnicity. He is willing to wait for love because he wants it on equal terms. The love he sees is unpatronizing, uncompromising, beautiful and proud. This is the vision of love he has for the black woman.

This type of theme is further explored in "Love Song for Linda." In this poem, Hughes has obviously climbed the "racial mountain" on his own terms as a black poet. The terms of climb are spelled out in the poem itself when he remarks "Love is a high mountain, stark in a windy sky…Do not climb too high (Hughes "Love Song for Linda")." Unlike the mother he pities in his Nation article, he wants Linda to be proud of and to love her blackness. For Hughes, there is no love to be found when one starts with self-hatred. Rather, the black person needs to look in the mirror and be comfortable with themselves. It is this mountain that he sees a contemporary of his having to climb: