The Use of Laughter in Poetry by Langston Hughes Essay -- Biography Bi

The Use of Laughter in Poetry by Langston Hughes Jessie Fauset explains in her essay The Gift of Laughter that faint comedy developed not as a method for blacks to make people laugh, but as a necessary emotional outlet for black people to verbalize their struggles and hardships. The funny man took on a much more sober emotion than appeared on the surface level. Comedy was one of the few manner black people had available to them to express themselves. The paradoxical definition of gag is applicable to all human beings the limited means of expression is queer to those in an inferior place in society, such as the black Americans of the Harlem Renaissance. In a sense, what makes the struggles represented by the black comedian idiotic is the white audience members ability to retain mastery over himself and the note (Swabey 184). The white audience can laugh at the struggles and hardships on constitute because of their refusal to accept the role they have played in the oppressions that caused them. Marie Collins Swabey as well writes in her book Comic Laughter that By uncovering unheeded hypocrisies, illusions, vanities, and deceptions in the behavior of persons and societies...while making us laugh, also removes in spell our blindness with regard to certain factual and moral weaknesses in domain (11). Generally speaking, comedy makes us aware of certain character flaws. Fauset entertains this motif in her essay by wondering, ...if this picture of the black American as a living comic supplement has not been painted in order to camouflage the real feeling and knowledge of his white compatriot (161). Whether or not the black comedy of the Harlem Renaissance caused an epiphany for the white audience is not cl... ...nd His Continuing Influence. Ed. C. James Trotman. forward-looking York garland Publishing Inc., 1995. 119-129. Phelps, Thomas C. An opening to Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes The Man, His Art, and His Continuing Influence. Ed. C. James Trotman. New York Garland Publishing Inc., 1995. 19-34. Rampersad, Arnold, ed., and David Roessell, assoc. ed. The Collected Poems ofLangston Hughes. New York Vintage Books, 1994. Simpson, J.A., and E.S.C. Weiner, eds. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd Edition. Vol. VIII. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1989. Swabey, Marie Collins. Comic Laughter. Archon Books, 1970. Tracy, Stephen C. Langston Hughes Poetry, Blues, and Gospel--Somewhere to Stand. Trotman, C. James, ed. Langston Hughes TheMan, His Art, and His Continuing Influence. New York Garland Publishing Inc., 1995 51-61.