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Freud said that “the fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction” (Freud, 111). Freud is saying that humans are naturally aggressive and self-destructive. He believes that men know they can exterminate each other and this causes their “unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.”
Langston Hughes’s poems contain explicit references to or incidents of cruelty and violence. In “negro” African Americans are depicted as slaves throughout history. They served Caesar, Washington and built the pyramids and the Woolworth building. The images of Belgians cutting the hands of negros in the Congo and negros being lynching in Mississippi are cruel and violent. Although the images are shocking they get the point across that negros have suffered the worst treatment imaginable, death and physical harm. The images make the poem more memorable by grabbing the reader’s attention.
Freud said that man has no consideration towards his own kind. Negros being treated like animals by their fellow man exemplifies this. Negros were exploited for their labor, humiliated, tortured and some were killed. Man possesses a natural “cruel aggressiveness” according to Freud. This causes man to dominate each other. Freud says that men “do not feel comfortable without…the satisfaction of this inclination to aggression” (p.72). Dominating another allows the person that is aggressive to assert their dominance and it satisfies them. Someone has to be on the bottom for someone to be on top. Being on the bottom or being dominated can eventually lead to a rebellion of aggression. Eventually those on the bottom might rise to the top, but only by asserting their aggression. Aggression begets aggression. Man’s natural urge to be aggressive, does not allow him to be taken advantage of for long, if he can help it. Freud himself is aggressive in nature and he lets us know this. Freud in speaking about “loving his neighbor as thy neighbor loves thee” says that his neighbor is interested in “showing his superior power, and the more secure he feels the more helpless I am” (p.67). For Freud to love someone, he believes that the person must deserve it in some way. Freud says not only does his neighbor not deserve his love, but he also deserves the utmost hate, because he is not trustable and selfish.
If blacks rebelled against their ill treatment then white supremacists would try harder to control them and there would be a large-scale conflict. Freud cites Heine’s opinion of the axiom: love thine enemies. Heine, in speaking of his enemies in the context of the axiom said “before their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies- but not before they have been hanged” (p.68). One might expect for there to be a grandiose African American rebellion by way of violence. African Americans might be provoked and the “mental counter forces which ordinarily inhibit” their natural aggression might not do so, which might “reveal man as a savage beast to whom consideration towards his own kind is something alien” (p. 69). An incident like the Rodney King beating provoked much rioting and black on white violence.
In “Goodbye Christ” Hughes discusses Christ in a negative way. Hughes portrays Christ as not being able to help African Americans. Hughes does not need Christ. He tells Christ to “beat it.” Hughes is cruel to Christ. Hughes discusses how Christ has been exploited over the years and vows to not be the victim of the same thing. The way Hughes depicts and addresses Christ enhances Hughes’s negative feelings towards Christ. It is clear that Hughes does not have faith in Christ and does not want to associate with him. Hughes thinks lowly of Christ. It seems as if Hughes is upset that Christ did not rebel against his persecutors. Hughes seems inclined to be aggressive against any ill treatment. He would probably urge African Americans or anyone experiencing domination, to aggressively and violently rebel against those mistreating them. Hughes’s aggression is evident in his poems through the narration of the African Americans in his poems.
Hughes depicts the landlord in “ballad of the landlord” as cruel and the renter is portrayed as an outspoken protestor. The tenant is unhappy with his leaking roof, broken steps and does not want to pay the rent until his house is fixed. The landlord threatens to evict him. The poem addresses the landlord and the tenant threatens to land his fist on his landlord for threatening to evict him and take his furniture. The landlord may call the cops. The tenant, although not in the wrong, could end up in jail without bail. The poem depicts how an African American civilian can be forced into a submissive position even thought he is a free man and everyone is equal in this country. The landlord is in control of the African American’s housing, making him a slave to the landlord. Police officers would arrest the tenant, not the landlord, because the tenant is black and the landlord has more power in the situation. The reader pities the tenant, because of the negative outlook of his situation. He will not get his house fixed, and for not paying his rent in protest, he will be arrested and upon returning to his home his furniture might be out on the street like the landlord promised. In a land lord tenant relationship the landlord has the proprietary dominance. This poem reflects Freud’s assertion that “the ownership of private wealth gives the individual power” (p.70). Freud goes on to say that “if private property were abolished… ill will and hostility would disappear among men” (p.70). If no one had an unsatisfied need, then “no one would… regard another as his enemy”(p.70-71). Man’s need for power causes him to dominate others physically and by way of ownership. A socialist society would restrict the natural instinct of aggression, based on Freud’s assertions about the causes of it. Such a society would prevent insatiable men from thriving and benefiting from others mistreatment or suffering.
At the end of Nathanael West’s The Day of the locust, a crowd is in a frenzy. Cops try to control the crowd by beating them with their clubs. The cops could not hold the crowd, which “was made up of the lower middle classes.” Tod had his hat knocked off and when he bent over to pick it up, he was kicked. The crowed laughed at him and he laughed with them, so not to upset or provoke them to attack him. Tod describes new groups and whole families that arrived and became a part of the growing crowd. He saw “a change come over them as soon as they had become part of the crowd.” The new comers “turned arrogant and pugnacious.” Tod said that it would be mistaken to think of them as harmless curiosity seekers. The new comers were “savage and bitter, especially the middle aged and the old, and had been made so by boredom and disappointment.” A boy hits homer in the head with a stone and homer jumps on the boy and proceeds to “stamp on the boy.” Tod comes across a young girl that has been sexually harassed. Her dress was torn and her brassiere was ripped and exposed. A man was hugging her and biting her neck while his hand was in her dress. This reflects Freud’s belief that men will use each other sexually and cause each other pain, and torture and kill each other. Tod says, “most of the people seemed to be enjoying themselves.” This supports the fact that humans enjoy inflicting pain upon each other. A woman declares that Tod is in a riot and says that “a pervert attacked a child” and “he ought to be lynched.” She says all of this after the girl was attacked, which is useless. People must have seen what happened to the girl, and they ignored it or it did not bother them. Tod’s statement that the people of the crowd were devils that were “stirred by the promise of miracles and then only to violence” describes them perfectly. Their dreams did not occur, and they resorted to violence. The narrators of Hughes’s poems did the same. Their dream did not occur, instead their dreams festered like a raisin in the sun, and violence was their way of protecting themselves and protesting. The crowd at the end of Day of the Locust was violent and cruel; their “mental counter forces” did not inhibit their tendency to be aggressive, causing ill treatment towards each other.
The violence of the crowd depicts what can occur due to human nature’s natural tendency to be violent. Humans according to Freud are naturally aggressive and violent, and only await provocation. The people that had gone to California were bored and disappointed and they lashed out. The crowd is a representation of Hollywood and society and how they can corrupt the innocent. Tod and homer were innocent, but they were in the crowd and they turned violent like the members of the crowd. Tod hit homer and a man trying to attack a girl, and he picked up a rock with malignant intent. Homer harmed a little boy that threw a rock at him. The violence is depicted to show how society or Hollywood can affect people, which is much more affective than just making assumptions. The violence and cruelty of the crowd illustrate the author’s intent and theme: society’s affect, the tendency to be violent against one another, and the desensitization of society by society.
In Richard Wright’s “Big black good man” a hotel clerk, Olaf encounters the “biggest, strangest, and blackest man he’d ever seen in all his life” (p. 87). Olaf thinks of the stranger as a “black giant” and to Olaf the man “didn’t seem human.” The stranger’s blackness and bigness frightened and insulted Olaf. Olaf thinks that the man came to his hotel to remind him how puny, tiny, weak and white he was. Olaf in a soliloquy tells himself that he is not prejudiced. At one point the two men stared at each other for two minutes, which allowed the stranger to realize Olaf’s hatred towards him. Olaf, while being choked, thinks to himself “he knew all along that I hated him” (p.96). The stranger then proceeded to choke Olaf, but did not kill him. When Olaf begged for his life the stranger said, “I wouldn’t hurt you, boy” in a tone of mockery. The stranger did not allow Olaf’s ill feelings towards him go by. The stranger asserted his dominance by choking and scaring Olaf. Shortly after, we learn from the narrator that “Olaf learned how to hate, and got pleasure out of it.” Olaf felt that the stranger was showing him how easily he could kill him. Olaf regrets not shooting the stranger. He wishes he had been the dominating figure in that incident. Their need to be in control and their assertions of aggression enhance Freud’s thoughts. It satisfied the stranger to be in control and to dominate Olaf. Olaf would have been satisfied if he had shot and killed the stranger, and not had been roughed up.
There was no material wealth to be gained or retained by being the dominating force in this incident, but aggression was still present. This debunks Freud’s assertion that in the absence of material wealth, aggression is not present. Aggression is present more often than Freud imagined. Freud’s assertion is that an “inclination to aggression” exists in us and presumably in others. African Americans in Hughes poems were mistreated, allowing their persecutors to assert their dominance. The crowd from West’s novel mistrusted each other and depicted an incident in which every man was for himself and had to fight for his life. In the case of Olaf and the black stranger both wanted to be in control of the other. This instinct to be aggressive leads to hostility, cruelty, mistreatment and violence, as proposed by Freud and depicted/represented in the poems of Langston Hughes and Nathanael West’s novel.
Works cited
Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its discontents. New York: Norton, 1989.
Nelson, Cary: editor. Anthology of modern American poetry. New York: Oxford, 2000.
Langston Hughes: “Negro” 503. “Christ in Alabama” 508.
West, Nathanael. The day of the locust. .New York: Signet Classic, 1983.
Wright, Richard. Eight Men. New York: HarperCollins, 1996.
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