This Childhood Trauma and Its Connection with Hughes's Story - On the Road - Research Paper Example

Langston Hughess short story “On the Road,” is a tale of rich thematic layering. It tells the story of a black man d Sargeant who has fallen victim to the dreadful unemployment statistics of the Great Depression. So dreadful that it was estimated “that 17 percent of the white population and 38 percent of the black population could not support themselves without assistance” (Greenberg, 21). As one man among that 38 percent, Sargeant became a hobo, living in flophouses and jungle camps off the rail yards. When he got desperate he would wander into town, commit a minor crime, and spend a few nights in jail with a roof over his head. On the occasion described by Hughes, Sargeant is beaten on the head by the police and hallucinates a conversation with Christ. Perhaps the most obvious theme running through “On the Road,” is one of religion. When Sargeant first arrives in town he is turned away by the good Reverend Mr. Dorset. He feels the chill of racism and seeks sanctuary in a white mans church. This same church he breaks into just as police beat him on the head and he begins to hallucinate. Sargeants hallucinations are telling. He saw Christ only in a glimpse through a soft, round window. Yet Christ becomes a central figure in his delusions. Not a traditional Christ, but a Christ burdened by the pain of religion. This is a metaphor that draws obviously on Hughess own experiences with religion as an organization. Experiences that all but traumatized him as a child. In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Hughes relates his “salvation” at the age of twelve. Attending church with his aunt/guardian, he was placed in a situation of overwhelming social pressure to accept Jesus. He did this, though he did not feel any converting power. Afterwards, he wrote, That night, for the last time in my life but one-for I was a big boy twelve years old-I cried. I cried, in bed alone, and couldnt stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come ino my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldnt bear to tell her that I had lied. That I had deceived everybody in the church, that I hadnt seen Jesus, and that now I didnt believe there was a Jesus any more, since he didnt come to help me (Hughes, 21). This childhood trauma affects Hughess story profoundly. He not only depicts Sargeants interactions with religion in a cold, white, and distant way, but he also humanizes Christs dismay at being held captive by the church. As if Christ may have been a wise prophet but not on interested in deriving a cult of personality from his name. A negative perception that only softened in Sargeants mind when he was able to find refuge among the grayness of the hobo jungle. For Sargeant, who had been traumatized by the stony whiteness of the town, by white preachers, white churchgoers, and white cops, his escape to the outskirts, to that world where his color was less important than his employment status, offered mental refuge from the racial trauma of his youth. In the hobo, too, Hughes raises another theme, one of movement. According to Kenneth Allsop, a hobo “was homeless and unmarried. He freeloaded on the freight trains whose tracks he laid and whose tunnels he blasted. He lived in bunk houses or tents or jungle camps or city flophouses. He was a marginal, alienated man, capriciously used and discarded by a callous but dynamic system, yet he was proud of the mode he devised out of an imperative mobility. He was a unique and indigenous American product” (Allsop, Prefatory Note). The hobo was always on the move. “In one of his aspects he was the Ancient Mariner of this oceanic land, the albatross of failure hung about his neck” (Allsop, Prefatory Note). Hughes grabs hold of this theme, and references Biblical fables, when he walks Sargeant and Christ from the white town to the gray hobo jungle. Movement is not the only theme, either, that Hughes drew from the Great Depression setting of “On the Road.” Early in the story Sargeant alludes to automaton-like labor, to chain gangs, and prison work details. It is a quick reference, but one tied in with Hughess other writing. According to literary critic Harold Bloom, “During the depression, Hughess writing grew steadily anticapitalist as he saw for himself the black masses at the bottom being ground up in the urban machine that was engineered to create wealth for the few at the top” (Bloom, 16). This view is demonstrated by Sargeants behavior and positioning on an economic level. He has been in jail before, and it is easily inferred that he has used the same technique to find such shelter: of attacking a white establishment to elicit police response to cart him to the warmth of prison-a technique used by homeless still today, in their efforts to deal with their condition. The final theme is linked to Sargeants plight of unemployment and his hallucinations. Throughout the story Hughes uses a series of adjectives to describe Sargeants feelings; adjectives that change subtly as events unfold. When Sargeant first arrives in town he is “hungry,” “sleepy,” and “tired.” It then becomes “hungry, sleepy, cold,” as he approaches the church. When he is about to break its doors he is “tired,” “hungry,” “sleepy,” and “cold.” Finally, as Sargeant walks with Christ he feels “tired, sweating and tired.”This variable mood seems almost without reason, except perhaps in reaction to emotional stimuli, or maybe Sargeants final transition to sweating hot is caused by his unrealized incarceration. Yet to Sargeant, this change is unexplained but by a lazy walk fit for conversation. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, depression symptoms include “change in appetite or weight, sleep, and psychomotor activity; decreased energy; feelings of worthlessness or guilt; difficulty thinking, concentrating, or making decisions; or recurrent thoughts of death or suicidal ideation plans, or attempts” (DSM, 349). In addition to these symptoms, there must be a generally depressed mood before a diagnosis of depression is appropriate. (DSM, 349). In his actions to the police and his changing attitudes towards sleep, food, and life, it is possible that Sargeant is demonstrating symptoms of depression. It is likely that Hughes intended his character to illustrate some kind of mental health disorder, whether depression or schizophrenia, or some other disorder. It is interesting to examine the question of mental health and its link to the Great Depression. Hughes may have been attempting to suggest that certain criteria-in addition to a beating over the head-contributed to the black mans psychosis. That first cold, in all its forms, was the underlying problem. Sargeant was left in the cold as a hobo, he was shunned by Reverend Mr. Dorset and forced into the cold. The door of the church was closed to him, leaving him alone with the cold stone pillars. He was cold and hungry and tired. Perhaps Hughes intended this to be a catalog of causation. Racism fed the disease, too. Racism and religion. Early trauma combined with a lifetime of inferiority imposed by the white man and his white church. All of this combined with the Great Depression and the resulting economic hardship of unemployment and a life of wandering the rails. Whatever the cause of Sargeants illness, he serves as a powerful literary character representative of Americas heightened racism during the Great Depression, a depression that affected both Americans pocket books and their mental health. Works Cited Allsop, Kenneth. Hard Travellin: The Hobo and His History. New York: Plume Books, 1967. Print. Blooms Major Poets: Langston Hughes. Ed. Harold Bloom. Broomall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1999. Print. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. American Psychiatric Association. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association Press, 2000. Print. Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. To Ask for an Equal Chance: African-Americans in the Great Depression. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2009. Print. Hughes, Langston. The Big Sea. 2Nd ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993. Print. Read More