Langston Hughes and Tennessee Williams, Essay Example

Introduction

It would be difficult to point to two literary men more different than Langston Hughes and Tennessee Williams, based on the overt realities of the work of each.  For one thing, while Hughes wrote plays, stories and novels, he is primarily thought of as a poet; Williams, although he infused a great deal of poetry in all his work, is regarded as a great playwright.  Then, at least on the surface, both artists focused on specific arenas of the human experience, so much so that their work serves to define the experience.  Langston Hughes lives on as a powerful voice of the African American man, subjugated and noble in spirit, and Williams endures as the poetic spokesman for the tragically lonely and lost.

In taking a closer look at both writers, however, striking parallels can be seen.  The most obvious is that each man had a major impact on culture in the twentieth century.  Less apparent, but equally important, is a connection of artistic ambition.  Throughout both of their careers, which were marked for each by rises and falls in public and critical opinion, they stayed true to the impulse and the themes that drove them to be artists in the first place, and never ceased exploring those themes.  What is even more striking is that, as vastly different as their styles and forms of expression were, Hughes and Williams are linked by a dedication to probing the soul of humanity.  Issues of racism, sexuality, and religion figure in the work of both men, and they lived lives always somewhat apart from the mainstream.  Ultimately, however, Hughes and Williams are united by a driving honesty in their work, and a relentless desire to uncover the truth of modern humanity.

Focusing on Hughes

It seems that a price Langston Hughes pays for having been an early, noted African American literary presence is that the controversy surrounding his early poems both helped and hurt him.  At the time, race relations alone brought him into the limelight, and the mere fact of his being an educated, black artist was exceptional by itself.  If the “Harlem Renaissance” was showcasing exceptionally creative black faces and voices, that was a very small segment of American society in the 1920s, and Hughes was something very unusual to the greater world.  This notoriety served to actually obscure the value of his work, as his race alone generated interest.

It is all the more interesting, then, that the passing of time has removed that early bias and Hughes’s writing is now seen as both deceptively simple and deeply beautiful.  The poetry of Langston Hughes, for instance, is as far from the poetry/dialogue of Williams as any writing can get;  he observes some classic structures now and then, but most of it is a wondering, free-form verse expressed in ordinary language.  Sometimes he deliberately lapses into “Negro dialect”, to make an ironic point, as in “Broke”: “Sho, I wants de job! Yes, sir!/ Has I did it befo’? Certainly!” (Hughes, 1995, p. 149).  This is not unlike the Gothic, exaggerated form of speaking Tennessee Williams gives to his Southern ladies; it is simply a device to highlight a circumstance.  If it also, as with Williams, fails at times, it does not appreciably harm the writer’s reputation: “Whatever the inadequacies of Hughes’s various styles, his place in literary history is an assured one” (Bloom, 2007, p. 2).

Aside from a sometimes gentle, sometime enraged, view of race relations, there is a core of intense loneliness in the work of Langston Hughes.  Largely raised by his grandmother, who read him Bible stories and told tales of how the family had bravely fought against slavery, Hughes lived very much in his own world.  Writing poetry, even at a very young age, allowed him to begin to find a voice when he was not being heard by the world (Rummel, Wagner, 2005, p. 14).

This is something else he shares with Williams, as both artists turned their backs to their known worlds as young men and set off to find a sanctuary of their own, both in life and in their work.

Like Williams, Hughes would achieve high standing by the middle of the twentieth century and be regarded as an acknowledged great.  Like Williams, he would go on to suffer lesser critical appreciation, and his artistry would be questioned by new generations.

Emphasis on Williams

That Tennessee Williams is a much “bigger” figure in American literature than Langston Hughes has not saved him from similar, critical mistreatment, especially in his own later years.  The young man who gave the theater The Glass Menagerie in 1945 and  A Streetcar Named Desire in 1947  was showered with awards and praise; the Williams who presented Sweet Bird of Youth in 1959 was too familiar, and by no means embraced:  “Despite the diversity of his dramas, Tennessee Williams essentially tells the same story over and over again…The yearnings of the loveless, the cries of the desperately lonely (Koprince, 2002, p. 82).  Although he never stopped presenting new plays and stories, the aging Tennessee Williams was generally viewed as a once-great, or has-been.

In terms of pursuing individual and central artistic themes, Hughes and Williams are virtually brothers, at least in the sense of how each has been perceived over time.  If Langston Hughes has suffered because the public feels his stress upon the African American experience is too consistent, so, too, has Williams been severely criticized for presenting female characters who represent his own, troubled sexuality.  People think of Langston Hughes and they think of “A Raisin in the Sun”, and racial oppression.  With Williams, Gothic oddness and lust come to mind, as his heroines are uniformly tortured and repressed, and as his male heroes are typically wandering, virile intruders.

However, all of these components are, again, only props.  Hughes’s expressions of black anguish are by no means restricted to black men.  Over a lengthy career, Hughes wrote of other races as well, clearly revealing that his artistic vision was not restricted to the black experience.  So, too, is there a great deal more to Williams than an obsessive interest in frustrated sexuality.  If Williams had issues with sex, they were only symptomatic of his greater concerns regarding human isolation and abandonment.  In a sense, Williams exemplified a courage regarding sexuality on a par with Hughes’s themes of race.  The reality is that only Tennessee Williams, out of many gay playwrights in the gay-friendly world of New York’s Broadway, dared to present an unashamed, sane, balanced gay male in a play, in 1953’s Camino Real (Paller, 2005, p. 49).  As Langston Hughes sought to break the chains of perception binding other races, Williams increasingly presented gay people as similarly misunderstood and oppressed.

Conclusion

As noted, there are many and apparent differences between the artistic efforts of Langston Hughes and Tennessee Williams.  They actually appear to occupy wholly different realms in American literary tradition, and some of this assessment is certainly valid.  Hughes is primarily a poet absorbed in relating how race influences, and harms, humanity’s involvement with itself, while Williams is a playwright notorious for elaborate and Gothic presentations of despair, sexuality, and imminent madness.

As artists, however, these men share more common ground than they differ.  Each made a lasting impression on twentieth century consciousness, and one moreover that has gained classic status as having been artistically done.  Both men were isolationists, in a sense, escaping repressive homes to confront the world, and to try out their visions on that world.  Most importantly, each ultimately placed the human experience at the core of their efforts.  Hughes and Williams are united by an unvarying commitment to honesty in their work, as well as an implacable desire to reveal the truth of modern humanity.

References

Bloom, H. (2007.)  Langston Hughes.  New York, NY: Infobase Publishing.

Hughes, L. (1995.)  The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. New York, NY: Random House.

Koprince, S. (Bloom, H., Editor.)  (2002.)  Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New York, NY: Infobase Publishing.

Paller, M. (2005.)  Gentlemen Callers: Tennessee Williams, Homosexuality, and Mid-Twentieth Century Broadway Drama. New York, NY: Macmillan.

Rummel, J., and Wagner, H. L. (2005.)  Langston Hughes: Poet.  New York, NY: Infobase Publishing.