Research paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 3

Research Paper Example In the last work by Langston Hughes that is I, too were identified varied themes, symbols and metaphors. This paper intends to unravel the commonality of those themes, symbols and metaphors in the two short stories by the author, which are Father and Son and Cora Unashamed. As was traced in the poem I, too by Langston Hughes, the short story Father and Son by the same writer delineates the atrociousness and brutality of the Jim Crow rules, but in a more detailed and intricate manner. Father and Son is a story about a Georgia white man Colonel Thomas Norwood who keeps a black woman Nora for a mistress and fathers five children by her. The story reveals the psychological and social might of the Jim Crow laws. In the story, Colonel Tom is showed to harbor feelings of constrained affection and liking for his sons from Cora, as is natural for any man. However, his allegiance to the Jim Crow system is evinced to be more doughty and mightier than his commitment to the voice of human feeling s within him. He not only tends to publically deny his children from his black maid Cora, but considers an open profession of affection by his son Brat to be a mark of dishonor and disgrace. As in I, too, in Father and Son, Hughes exposes the absurdity and fickleness of Jim Crow laws, which allow a white man to get into the most intimate of relationships with a black girl and to father sons by her, yet, do not allow one to socially and legally recognize the relationships that such intimacies and acts entail. As in other works of Hughes, the register attributed to the black characters further exposes the bestial and subhuman level to which the blacks character are supposed to stoop in Jim Crow America, replete with invectives like nigger, darkie and yard-nigger. In Father and Son, Hughes elaborately shows the decorum and mannerisms which the black dependants were expected to follow in subservience to Jim Crow norms that he alludes to in I, too. The black slaves owned by Colonel Tom a re never allowed to enter his home from the front door or to roam about in his inner chambers, irrespective of their long service to him or their relationship to him. The blacks were always to approach his home from the backdoor and allowed to gather only in the kitchen. Like a dog, they were expected to maintain a respectable distance from and decorum with their white master. The story also reinforces the social status attributed to black characters in Hughes’ other works. All the black characters are shown to be serving in menial positions. Colonel Tom do tries to be good to his children by extending to them educational and other opportunities and facilities. However, the magnanimity of his concern for his children never dares to cross the boundaries marked by Jim Crow laws. The story also reveals the fear of marginalization of the whites, as in Hughes’ other works. When Brat, the youngest son of Colonel tries to rebel against the constraints of segregation and recla im his relationship with his father, the system comes crashing down on him and his brother. Cora Unashamed is one of the masterpieces of Langston Hughes. Though the writer predominantly repeats the themes, symbols and metaphors in the story with which he deals with in his