Why, You Reckon - Essay m6270

Costin Sorin Spanish-English, 3rd year

20.01.2019

”Why, you reckon?” as a modernist short story It is well known the fact that modernism means far more than a period in which the writers delivered literature to the public masses. Beyond the temporal representation established between the late nineteenth-century and almost the middle of the twentiethcentury, modernism is considered a philosophical movement that implies a lot of changes trough literary perspectives and arts. Even if before I said that the temporal meaning of ‘Modernism’ doesn’t play the most important role, the period in which happened apported it’s most specific flavour: the capability of the reader to observe the evolution and changes of the human mind. We can clearly observe a rupture of style between Realism and Modernism, but we also can see a division inside the Modernism. The split occured because of the First World War, a new and agressive perspective brought by a disastrous event. If before the war the novelists built their designs around exterior details, after it, they got inside and analized the psychic aspect. Their purpose was to create a character more than a plot. It wasn’t entirely revolutionary, it was just a question of parallax: the same thing seen diferently depending on the point you are watching from. Peter Childs stated that “modernist writers therefore struggled, in Ezra Pound’s brief phrase, to ‘make it new’, to modify, if not overturn existing modes of representation, partly by pushing them towards the abstract or the introspective, and to express the new sensibilities of their time: in a compressed, condensed, complex literature of the city, of industry and technology, war, machinery and speed, mass markets and communication, of internationalism, the New Woman, the aesthete, the nihilist and the flâneur.”(pg. 1) We shall to the short story that we have to analize from a modernist point of view: ”Why, you reckon?” by Langston Hughes. The plot gravitates around the narrator that is a black man in Harlem during the Great Depression, and he is starving. Another black man approaches him, telling that he is hungry too, and suggests they mug one of the rich white men who frequent the night clubs. They do so, pulling a young, very rich white boy, Edward, into a basement. The other man takes all of his things, and berates him out for his entitled existence, while the narrator stands by and does nothing. The thief leaves, giving nothing to our narrator and leaving him with the victim. Edward bizarrely thanks the main character for the experience, saying that it was the first exciting thing to ever happen to him. The narrator says he would be happy with what he had if he was rich, and Edward refuses that statement. They go their separate ways on good , and the narrator is left feeling just as hungry, and very confused on how a rich white man could ever be dissatisfied with his easy life. It’s interesting when you realize how you get caught by a story that has nothing to do with your reality, but by barely knowing some of the afro-american lifestyle, you can empathize with the facts. Here is where the subjective perspective won ground: by being in the first

Costin Sorin Spanish-English, 3rd year

20.01.2019

person, the reader feels the character as being himself. The more complex the character, the better the trip of the lecturer. ”Modernism is associated with attempts to render human subjectivity in ways more real than realism: to represent consciousness, perception, emotion, meaning and the individual’s relation to society through interior monologue, stream of consciousness, tunnelling, defamiliarisation, rhythm, irresolution and other that will be encountered later in the book.’’ (Peter Childs, pg. 1) Regarding the individual’s relation to society trough monologue aspect, previously mentioned in Child’s quote, we can also notice a social hierarchy between the two ’negros’ and Edward Peedee McGill III. Neither the protagonist, nor his companion has a name, while the upper class provenient has a fancy dynastic name. This accentuates the futility of their lives because of their ethnicity that not long ago was under slavery. Legally it was abolited, but the power was still in the white people’s hands. Another modernist feature is the presentation of the city, especially the most needy neighborhood from the big Manhattan to which Langston Hughes adds the most contrastant elements: coal and diamonds, spent shoes and furs. Also, it is interesting to observe the fight between rational and instinct. Going on the rational path, our narrator would not have commited that unlawfulness, but when his partner in crime reminded him that he was ”hongry” he couldn’t resist the temptation of making ”a little jack”. Intriguing is the final discution between our fooled men that concludes with the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. This whole story might represent something real from Hughes’ life given the fact that he fits a similar profile as the protagonist. ”All human relations have shifted—those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.” (Virginia Woolf, pg. 3) In conclusion, the author built a profile close to the environment he lived in and by ”keepin’ it real” he resisted over time as an artist and a fighter for the human rights. ”The foundation of good fiction is character-creating and nothing else...Style counts; plot counts; originality of outlook counts. But none of these counts anything like so much as the convincingness of the characters. If the characters are real the novel will have a chance; if they are not, oblivion will be its portion...”(Virginia Woolf, pg.1)