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Mulatto by Langston Hughes

            "Mulatto," by Langston Hughes, explores the strained relationship between a white man and his Mulatto child. The racial conflict between the father and son is demonstrated by intense dialogue throughout the poem and is further developed by the anger and hate fueled language between the pair. Playing contrast to this inflamed theme, Hughes places a variety of nature orientated details within his text to help broaden his central conflict of being a biracial child in a racist society. The "stars" play an important role in the poem "Mulatto," because they represent biracial children and their isolation from both white and black society in America. .
             In the opening lines, Hughes places his readers directly into the natural setting of the poem as he writes "The moon over the turpentine woods. The Southern night full of stars. Great big yellow stars" (7-10). This is the first place within the poem where we see emphasis placed on the color "yellow". Hughes not only describes the night as being full of stars, but continues on to reiterate the stars again using the adjective "yellow". A similar parallel is drawn further into the poem as the white man describes the brutal rape scene in which the narrator was conceived. The white man first addresses his son as a "little bastard boy" on line 16, and later as "A little yellow Bastard boy." on lines 25 and 26. The reoccurrence of the color yellow between both the stars and skin color of the Mulatto child allows the readers to generate the symbolism of the "yellow stars" (10). Stars are not usually labeled with a color when being examined, Hughes specifically uses the color yellow to guide the reader to the conclusion that the "stars" serve as a purpose to represent biracial status of the Mulatto child. .
             Once the reader has uncovered the identity of the stars, Hughes now reinforces the conflict that falls among both the biracial children and the stars alike.


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