Cross by Langston Hughes

Cross

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

© Langston Hughes. All rights res

Langston Hughes, in his poem “Cross” address the difficulty people of mixed race have of finding their identity and role in society. The title of the poem connotes a mixture of two things. For example when you cross breed you are mating two different species together to have a mixed offspring that does not exclusively belong to either group. Mulattos such as Hughes, similarly had trouble identifying themselves in times when racial tensions were high; whites didn’t accept them because they  had tainted blood and they didn’t completely fit into black society. The speaker identifies two old people in the first stanza. Besides their age, the only identifying characteristic that the speaker provides is that the man is white and that the woman is black. The differences in how he views them can be understood to be a result of their race.  I believe that the man and the woman represent his respective white and black side. The speaker condemns the old, white man which symbolizes him condemning his white background . Line 4 -5, “If I ever cursed my white, old man / I take my curses back” suggests that the speaker curses himself because he doesn’t want to be part white. However he is shown to be incapable of hating himself because he takes his curses back. This shift represents the speaker’s acceptance of himself as part white. Similarly, in the second stanza, the speaker condemns his black side through  is black, old mother on line 6 he wishes “she were in hell”. The speaker eventually accepts his black heritage on line 7-8, “I’m sorry for that evil wish / And now I wish her well”. The speaker’s reaction to his white and black side parallel each other because he first rejects both of them and also ultimately accepts both of them. However the poem ends with the speaker unclear of whether he should identify himself as black or white. The identity he assumes will cause him to lead vastly different lives. Lines 9 – 10, “My old man died in a fines big house. / My ma died in a shack” reveal that where you end up in life is skewed by your race. The last two lines of the poem, “I wonder where I’m gonna die / Being neither white nor black” create the ambiguity of which race the speaker should identify with. The lines suggest that it is not necessarily his choice of which race he will belong to but rather fate or some other external factor will decide. The last two lines could also be interpreted as suggesting that because the speaker is mulatto he will end up taking a new path in life different from a black or white person. He may neither take the path of the white man that causes him to die in the fine big house or the path of the black mother that causes him to die in a shack. This poem was written to raise questions but necessarily provide answers.

Age of Innocence Revisited

The Old New York society in The Age of Innocence is very superficial. What is ironic is that while it appears to be an orderly, peaceful, and calculated society at a glance, it is riddled with deceit, chaos, and ruled by unquestioned "conventions on which life was modeled".  Though these conventions help being order, they also hold them back from progressing and "were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern".  They are described as “tribal” as they have unwavering loyalty to these customs simply because their predecessors followed them. One convention the society follows is the assumed role of women in society. The women in the novel are in a perpetual state of innocence. They are raised not to question what they do not understand and they are incapable of identifying the inequalities that face. To maintain the women's innocence, they grow up sheltered. However this raises the question which is better, innocence or experience? While the women in The Age of Innocence are presumably protected from the dangerous aspects of society, they also are caged and end up trapped in this state. Men are also allowed to have a past while women are not as Mr.Archer describes "it was his duty as a decent fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a marriageable girl, to have no past to conceal" Because the women have been "caged" for so many generation, they do not know the freedom they are missing, and thus they have no desire to change it. Mr. Archer wrestles with this thought and even exclaims "Women should be free--as free as we are". He sees many of the flaws and the hypocrisy in society. However, according to William Blake, society is doing these women a huge disservice as he believes that the “perfect state” would a balance of innocence and experience. Blake also believes human sacrifice is the basis of social organization. In The Age of Innocence, women sacrifice their freedom in order to keep social organization, even when they unknowingly do so. The restrictive nature of society strangles the imagination which Blake believes is essential to human existence.

Most of the people who live in the Old New York society firmly follow its customs as it is how they were raised. However two characters in particular, Countess Olenska and Newland Archer, seem to question things that other characters take for granted. Mr. Archer critiques the social system and specifically the way women are treated. He is angry about “the hypocrisy that would bury alive a women of her age if her husband prefers to live with harlots”, the double standard in which society overlooks the corrupt deeds that men commit but scold women if they were to do the same. Newland is actually torn between following the customs because it is what society expects him to do or speaking out against the injustice he perceives and face criticism. 

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a very unique war novel due to O’Brien’s focus in the book. The novel is centered around the emotions that revolve around being in Vietnam and not on the actual events that happened. For example in the story “The Man I killed”, the emphasis is not on the fact that someone was killed. Instead, O’Brien aims to capture the emotional response someone has after taking a life and the guilt he would feel. O’Brien admits that everything in the novel may not be true. However the importance is not on whether the events actually happened, it is based upon the emotion that the story evokes. There is difficulty in relaying the emotion of someone in a certain scenario(such as killing someone) to someone who has never been in that situation. For example in the story “Field trip”, O’Brien takes his daughter the place where Kiowa dead. Because Kathleen was not there during his death she cannot understand the significance of the place; she also does not understand the war in general.

O’Brien writes the stories because it helps him cope with the trauma he faced in the war and it helps him make sense of his past. On page 36 O’Brien states, “Stories are for joining the past to the future, Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember except the story” which reveals that O’Brien uses the stories he writes to be understand his present by learning from his past in order to hypothesize how it will affect his future. It’s ironic that O’Brien does not tell stories to share his experiences with others, but writes the stories for self-understanding.

There are also no long battle scenes that portray the intensity of war; O’Brien focuses on the mundane things. In the first chapter, “The Things They Carried”, O’Brien lists out the various things that the soldiers bring to war. In the military where soldiers face life and death the things they bring with them from home would seem unimportant. However the items the soldiers bring with them represent a connection they have to home and place they can return to after the war is over. It is this connection that gives the soldiers the drive to keep going. O’Brien shows that war is not simply about shooting the enemy and returning a hero. Much of the soldiers’ time in Vietnam is spent sitting around, waiting and being bored and it is in these times that they need something to anchor themselves with.

The final chapter of the novel, “The Lives of the Dead” takes place before the war and is seemingly unrelated. However Linda represents O’Brien’s first encounter with both love and death; O’Brien has no control over Linda’ death. Because many things are out of his control, O’Brien dwells on the decisions he makes and the things that are within his control.