Humor In Langston Hughes' S Simple Stories

Langston Hughes is one of the greatest Afro-American writers of the 20 th century in America and has great influence on Harlem Renaissance and contemporary American literature.His innovative creation by combining African-American music into his poetry brings him the title of “The Poet Laureate of the Negro People.”However,his great artistic talents do not only lie in poetry,but also in other genres of works,such as novels,plays and short fiction.Above all,Hughes is not only a poet or writer,but also a humorist and his five collections of Simple sketches assert his position in American humor.Simple stories,published in Chicago Defender,a weekly national black newspaper,have enjoyed great popularity among the common black readership during their publication from the 1940 s to 1960 s among contemporary critics and readers.Simple stories reveal African-American's attitudes towards racial issues,gender roles and social problems.This thesis,focusing on Hughes' s short fiction,The Early Simple Stories(Simple Speaks His Mind 1950,Simple Takes a Wife 1953)and The Later Simple Stories(Simple Stakes a Claim 1957,Simple's Uncle Sam1965),analyzes Hughes' s humor techniques including verbal humor,situational humor and humorous characterization.In the analysis of Hughes humor,three traditional humor theories of Arthur Schopenhauer,Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud,and Henri Bergson's theory of laughter are applied.Hughes' s verbal humor,comic situations and humorous characterization help portray an optimistic ordinary man,despite his skin color and suffering from racialdiscrimination and oppression.Over the two decades,he has remained committed to the protest against racism,although he has undergone intellectual and psychological changes such as his attitudes towards women,his awareness of African-American identity and his reserved criticism on racism.Simple is a comic black character with characteristics of cracker-barrel philosophers in the earlier American humor,of tricksters in the face of racial oppression,and of daydreamers with optimism in the mid-twentieth century.Hughes' s portrayal of a comic black man manifests the life and attitudes of common lower working-class African-Americans whose humor is a weapon as well as a therapy in their confrontation of racial inequality.