Why You Reckon Character Analysis

Dissatisfaction with ones present life can lead them to do almost anything. Langston Hughes short story, “Why, You Reckon” captures a naïve main character whom learns the hard way of trusting another personage, solely for the fact that they share a common dilemma. Hughes makes it apparent from the very beginning, that both the narrator and minor character share a common situation. This plays as a detrimental part as to how the short story plays out. Ultimately, Hughes “Why, You Reckon” represents that in the end everyone has their own motive, even if they say otherwise.

Hughes uses characters of similar circumstances to bring them together for a seemingly common goal. Keeping in mind these circumstances, The African American man asks the narrator “Man, ain’t you hongry? Didn’t I see you down there at the charities today, not gettin nothin – like me?”(Hughes 253). They are able to bond over the fact that they’re both most likely underprivileged individuals who have almost nothing to lose if they rob a white man. Notably, Hughes makes it apparent that even after the narrator is asked to be an accomplice in the

The idea that rich white people “{…[coming] up to Harlem spendin’ forty or fifty bucks in the night clubs and speakeasies and don’t care nothin’ bout you and me out here in the street, do they?”(Hughes 254). Hughes does this to allow the narrator to have a common agreement with the other African American man. To sum up, by Hughes creating the tone in the way the characters speak to one another, it allow them to have connection, because the angry they both fault. Or sort of understanding, which in terms made the narrator, feel as if him and the other African American man were in this together, although the African American man had a motive of his