"Like a Violin for the Wind to Play": Lyrical Approaches to Lynching by Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer

Abstract

Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Jean Toomer experiment stylistically in their representations of lynching. event of lynching can be understood both an act existing within a symbolic system created by white people and a moment within a trajectory of advancement pursued by black people. Within a system where black people attempt to make sense of meaning of lynching, their symbolic understanding of event is very different from that of its white participants. Schematizing lynching into black and white symbolic values highlights lynching an act that polarizes groups and establishes rigid boundaries. Such schematization enables me to discuss literary repetition among black male writers and elucidate differences among these writers. Critics have tended to focus on representations of lynching in late-nineteenth and mid-to-late twentieth centuries. In Exorcising Blackness, Trudier Harris discusses efforts by Richard Wright, John Widemann, Toni Morrison, and David Bradley to rewrite lynching ritual. More recently critics such Sandra Gunning and Erika M. Miller have concentrated on importance of women writing about lynching in post-Reconstruction period, and in their collection Strange Fruit: Plays on Lynching by American Women, Judith L. Stephens and Kathy A. Perkins also focus on women's representations of lynching. But despite increasing interest in representations of lynching in literature, very few scholars have focused on early twentieth century. Stephens asserts that reached their peak in 1892 when 255 individuals (155 black victims, 100 white) were killed by lynch mobs (8). Harris makes point that as lynchings decreased--in a general way, though there were periodic rises--in twenties, thirties, and forties, and black writers searched for a distinct tradition and symbolism of their own, lynching and burning scenes reflect stylistic experimentation, symbolic language, and multiple levels of interpretation (71). Barbara Foley complicates Harris's explanation of experimentation in early twentieth century by highlighting fact that the early 1920s signaled if anything an increase in exploitation and racial violence: Throughout South there were in 1921 more lynchings than there had been in any year since 1909 (190). Thus, writers like Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer did not experiment because threat of lynching was no longer tangible. Rather, their efforts are consistent with increasing interest in literary style in early twentieth century, and these experiments with lyricism enabled them to affirm humanity of lynching victim while also illustrating brutality of lynch mob. Lyricism shifts symbolic importance of lynching from perpetrators to victim and restores his/her humanity. Hughes, Du Bois, and Toomer explore conflicts that precipitate lynching. In doing so, they de-emphasize their male characters' sexual desire for white women and focus instead on their desire for social and advancement. Barbara Foley has challenged long-standing impression of lynching by asserting that, contrary to popular belief, great majority of lynchings (more than seventy-five percent) were committed not in response to allegations of rape of white women by black men, but in reaction to black acts of defiance against white abuse, both physical and economic (187). In Home, Langston Hughes focuses on musical attainment of Roy Williams a classical violinist. In The Coming of John, W. E. B. Du Bois emphasizes John Jones's attainment of a liberal education. Finally, in Blood-Burning Moon, Jean Toomer highlights Tom Burwell's desire for land and a family. protagonists of Home, Of Coming of John, and Blood-Burning Moon, respectively, struggle against and educational constraints. act of lynching highlights inconsistency of punishing a man because he strives for improvement. …