Life of Black
Life of Black “Liberating Christ” is a critique of Langston Hughes, “On the Road” by Carolyn P. Walker. Hughes uses barely over 1000 words to narrate his story. His great skills of using metaphor, symbolism and imagery are some of few techniques of his great work. Hughes uses nature to express Sargeant’s refusal to participate in life. In Liberating Christ, Walker’s says Hughes has done serious criticism of racial discrimination. There were few other points we will be looking into oppression, anger and hardship and how all of those are put together to overcome racial barriers. To describe Racism between black and white, Hughes uses snow, dark, two doors, dark and light. All these to describe how Sargeant is discriminated and suffers on a “cold night; unsheltered, too hungry, too sleepy and too tired” (Hughes, 55). To begin with Walkers criticism on Hughes use of snow, being quite cold, a symbol of white world which makes Sargeant so depressed and to disregard the cold. The snow has become an oppressor to Sargeant; he didn’t realize this till after he is turned down from a white man “But the minister said, ‘No’ and shut the door” (17). Walkers also talk about how one is helpless against his or her oppressor, one may try to ignore it but at some level one realizes it. However, to live and to survive it two different things, Sargeant was not living, he was surviving his way out of snow when he first realize the snow “For the first time that night he saw the snow” ( Hughes, 29). Hughes another great example of black against white is when Sargeant being helpless and nowhere to turn to; knock on the door of the white man Mr. Dorset. M r. Dorset without having him explains his situation turns Sargeant down “I’m sorry. No!” (Hughes, 11). Over here Walker points of Hughes using a dark imagery about a black man struck in white man’s storm as compare to snow storm. After hours of being outside in the cold and having nowhere to turn, Sargeant comes across a
Cited: Hughes, Langston. “On the Road.” eFictions. Ed Joseph F, Timmer Wade Jenings, and Annette Patterson. Cambridge, MA: Heinle and Heinle, 2004. 383-86 Walker, Carolyn P. “Liberating Christ: Sargeant’s Metamorphosis in Langston Hughes’s ‘On the Road,’” Black American Literature Forum 25.4 (1991):745-52. JSTOR. Wayne State U Lib., Detroit, MI. 27 Nov 2007 .