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Langston Hughes Tales Of Simple: Temptation

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Langston Hughes’ Tales of Simple: Temptation is written in 1965. He is an American poet of the Harlem Renaissance, novelist, playwright and short story writer. Even though Hughes is of mixed race, he considered and saw himself as a black writer whose work is full of pride in the African American identity. Hughes seeking has been to explain and illuminate the blacks condition in America. Therefore, in his work he confronted racial stereotypes and protested social conditions. The main themes in the short story is the relation between black and white condition and how people judge the races different and unfair. In the story simple also ask some big questions like what would the world look like if Adam and Eve started out as black instead of white …show more content…

Simple lives and is from Harlem, New York, United States of America. He’s clearly mad and frustrated about the difference of black and white man. That can easily be seen in the first lines of the short story. ‘When the lord said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, what I want to know is where was us colored people?’ Simples frustration is illustrated. He wants to know where the colored people was. He wonders how the Lord could forget to create the colored people back then. The I/narrator tries to explain Simple that the Lord wasn’t referring to people when He said, ‘Let there be light.’ But that he was referring to the elements, the atmosphere, the air.’ Simple says that the Lord must have included some people, he means that The lord included white people, because the Lord said let there be light, and in fact that is white. He’s still stating that colored people wasn’t there when the Lord created the World. It’s clearly to see that simple feels suppressed and unrighteous treated. He is really dissatisfied and angry with the fact that the Fall of Man only relates to white people. His dissatisfactions are mostly about the suppression of black people and how it actually started all the way back to Adam and Eve who both were white. Simple said, ‘I just want to know how come Adam and Eve was white. If they had started out black, this world might not be in the fix it is today. Eve might not of paid that serpent no attention.

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