Hughes and Wright

Handling Racism through Art
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Introduction
Racism is a vice that has plagued America for a long period. Many people have used different tools to stem down the level of racism. Poems and short stories have been advanced to help in addressing the vice. This paper focuses on the contributions of Langston Hughes’s poem “Mother to Son” and Richard Wright’s short story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” in addressing racism menace in America, focusing on the child development and perspective.
Hughes On Racism In America
Hughes’s poem shows the struggles that the given race that the mother and the son belong, as an unfortunate race that has to struggle to survive. Hughes notes that at times the struggle can be dire, but the advice to the child is never to let up and keep on fighting hard to reach out to the desired goals. In the poem, Hughes uses the mother to encourage and give hope to the child not to let up the fight despite their race by writing,
“… So, boy, don’t you turn back.Don’t you set down on the steps.’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard” (Hughes, 2011).Wright On Racism In America
Conversely, Wright shows despair and anger to the unfortunate race and age that Dave Saunders, the teenager, finds himself. Dave got angry because nobody in the society wanted to consider him a man and so bought a gun to kill so as to be recognized. Wright writes,
“Lawd, ef Ah had jus one mo bullet Ah’d taka shot at tha house.
Ah’d like t scare ol man Hawkins jusa little .

.. Jusa enough t let im
know Dave Saunders is a man”CITATION Wri11 l 1033 (Wright, 2011).
Intention and Achievements
The two artists tried to bring into context the concept of despair and exclusion in times of need that can be the root of social evils like continued racism. In an attempt to correct the social wrongs, the characters in both the poem and the story goes against their situations to prove a point. Baym et al, (2011), notes that in deploying the child characters in each story, both artists were largely successful in achieving their ultimate goals. This is because children have pure thought and intentions that cannot be easily disputed, and so they mean what they portray in character.

References
BIBLIOGRAPHY l 1033 Hughes, L. (2011). Mother To Son. In N. Baym, & et al., The Norton Anthology of American Literature (p. 2223). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
N. Baym, W. Franklin, P. Gura, J. Klinkowitz, A. Krupat, R. Levine, P. Wallace (Eds.) The Norton anthology of American literature (shorter 8th ed.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Wright, R. (2011). The Man Who Was Almost A Man. In N. Baym, & et al. (Eds.), The Norton Anthology of American Literature (pp. 2245-2253). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.