“On the Road”, by Langston Hughes, is a short story of a homeless man that is trying to find refuge from the cold. He has just gotten off a freight train and it is night time. The cold, wet snow is unnoticed by the tall black man; hungry and tired are on his mind. Hughes seems to pay tribute by recognizing the universal truth of desperation. What one will do to survive even in the harshest conditions. This short story just happens to take place during the Great Depression; during a time of severe oppression. How can a cold, hungry, tired, black, homeless man survive during the most racially oppressive and economically depressive years of American history? Hughes gives us just a glimpse of what it might have been like to endure a night of hell. Hughes could have been more descriptive of what some African Americans truly suffered through, but it might not have been published. It gave him peace and allowed him to seek refuge in his mind until it was time to hop on another train. It is when he is beaten on the knuckles by the cop that he awakes to find himself in jail, for trying to break into a church, just to get out of the cold. The only thing that seemed to give the man hope was his delusions of walking with Christ, or was it?
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