Not Without Laughter: Schultz’s Analysis

In the essay “Natural and Unnatural Circumstances in Langston Hughes’ ‘Not Without Laughter’”, Elizabeth Schultz argues that Hughes' Not Without Laughter has some natural and unnatural elements. By comparing these two characteristics with some events from the book, she also highlights the similarities between childhood and adulthood between Hughes and Sandy, our main character from the book. She implies that natural elements like plants, weather, color, and sky can be seen in rural places like Kansas. She also shows that Hughes connects these natural elements with the events that African American people experience. Schultz states that “Hughes also integrates images and metaphors of nature into his narrative to celebrate his people, their color, and their culture.” (Schultz 8). When it comes to the unnatural elements in urban life, Sandy sees them more clearly when he goes to urban places like Chicago. Schultz describes this situation as: “a "natural" story of a boy's coming-of-age reveals the "unnatural" circumstances of racism and poverty." (Hughes 4). Schultz makes these natural and unnatural circumstances more clear by showing examples in her essay like the poem “The Negro Speaks of River” by Hughes, the tornado effect, early summer in the second chapter, cold weather and snow (winter season), and the last parts of the novel when Sandy is in Chicago. 

THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF RIVER

The Negro Speaks of River by Hughes is a poem in which he tries to show that African American people were there when the history happened. Schultz implies that this poem links the African American experience to nature. She says the river that Hughes talks about might be the Kaw River, which Hughes saw as a boy. So they were there like the white people. Like in his novel, we also see “nature” in that poem. He connects nature and its beauty or ugliness with the experience of African American people. Schultz says: “the poem's rivers is the symbiosis he generates by seeing them as the embodiment of African history, the African diaspora, and himself, perceived as the representative "Negro": "My soul has grown deep like the rivers” (CP23). (Schultz 4). The novel starts with the Tornado event. This natural event is not only a bad experience for the African American people but also the white people. So in Hughes’ nature, there is no discrimination here in this event. Aunt Hager loses her porch and other people’s trees are damaged. Here the reaction of African American people is a little bit strange because they are not so angry with nature or extremely sorry; they say it could happen worse, or at least we survived this calamity. Their reaction is also connected with the novel’s title “Not Without Laughter”. Schultz connects this natural disaster with racism because “racism” affects people and then maybe they show a reaction to the racism but mostly Aunt Hager stays positive with her words.

SEASONS and NATURES

In the other chapters, as stated in the essay, we see the summer, fall, and winter and their metaphorical connection with Sandy’s growing. This growing is like a fall of innocence for Sandy, Schultz says. Hughes shows this falling by changing the seasons and word choices for each season. Schultz indicates this growing up: “Thus in the course of Sandy's growing up, Hughes explicitly aligns the changing seasons not only with his protagonist's developing consciousness of an existential and sexual identity but also with his developing consciousness of social and racial inequities and of his own racial identity.” (Schultz 6). When it comes to the winter season, all the inequality is unburied. An absent father, ill mother, worker grandmother… There was no Christmas spirit in their home like the white ones. Hughes writes: “Sandy passed the windows of many white folks' houses where the curtains were up and warm floods of electric lights made bright the cozy rooms. In Negro shacks, too, there was the dim warmth of oil-lamps and Christmas candles glowing. But at home, there was not even a holly wreath. And the snow was whiter and harder than ever on the ground. (NWL 148). This situation creates more reactions from Sandy to racism and poverty. Maybe there is an irony with the colors; snow is white and it represents the white people because they are the ones who are racists, and they are warm in their homes, but African American people are in a prison with darkness in their cold houses. Hughes links weather and color imagery with the people here. 

Schultz talks about the last eight chapters. The time that nature loses itself in the novel. She says: “The dominant imagery of these concluding chapters concerns architecture, books, streets, trains, and elevators.” (Schultz 11). At the end of the novel, Sandy gains maturity. He remembers the nature, beauty, and history of his race. He starts to see the unnatural elements in Chicago. He thinks, "There are "no trees, no yards, no grass such as he had known at home" (NWS 281). That was his epiphany, I think. Like the author, he does not forget his legacies at the end. Hughes himself wrote this book 15 years after he left Kansas, Schultz says at the beginning of the essay. Schultz says at the end of the essay: “Yet, at the end of Not Without Laughter, Hughes makes it apparent that the now mature Sandy has the capacity to remember the all-important legacies from his rural home and to integrate them into his new urban life. After all, it was from his own boyhood memories of the diverse natural and unnatural circumstances that Hughes himself—a small town, Midwest boy transplanted to a major metropolis—created many of his major poems, as well as Not Without Laughter itself.” (Schultz 12). That is why there are some similarities between Sandy and Hughes.

With the many examples from the book, it could be an event, the weather, a color, a feeling, or a place. Hughes manages to tell all these things and the meaning behind them with the connection of nature and unnatural elements. In Schultz's essay, we can see chronological events that go from natural to unnatural. I think that Schultz agrees with the natural connection with African American people because it is a perfect way to show the history and experiences that African American people have. Also, nature was the first argument from the poem “The Negro Speaks of River” because it shows that African American people existed like white ones, and they saw a lot of things and went through lots of horrible or beautiful experiences. We see this argument in Not Without Laughter as we see it in his poem. Elizabeth Schultz focused on that discussion in her essay by giving detailed examples from the novel and analyzing them with the theme of nature.