Black Moves, White Ways, Every Body’s Blues: Orphic Power in Langston Hughes’s

Much of what has been written about Langston Hughes and the blues focuses on his poetry. Few extended analyses address his fiction, and only one critic that I have found mentions orphic power in relation to Hughes’s fiction. Referring to the musician Roy’s mother in the short story “Home,” R.Baxter Miller (1976) says that her perspective is one of “three variations of the theme on music and art in Hughes’ short fiction: contemplation, orphic power, and anticipation of Messianic Presence.” Because Roy’s mother is religious, “she is well-suited for making an observation concerning myth. In Roy’s music, she perceives an orphic power” (33). This “orphic” power is present in Hughes’s use of the blues as ethos and aesthetic in several, if not all, of the stories in The Ways of White Folks (1933).