“Why, You
Reckon?” is a short story written by Langston Hughes, set in Harlem during the
period of the Great Depression.
The main character is a black man who is poor,
hungry, uneducated, but isn’t a trouble maker. One night he was hungry so he
teamed up with another black man and they decided to rob a rich white man. They
brought their victim in a basement and robbed him of his money, diamonds,
shoes, coat, everything they could. Although, the protagonist ended up with
nothing in his hand when his accomplice took off with the entire loot.
The white man was excited about his experience, ““This is the first exciting
thing that’s happened to me,” said the white guy. “This is the first time in my
life I’ve ever had a good time in Harlem”” (Hughes 218).
The protagonist was
very confused from that situation and, when he exits back on the road, hungrier
than before, he wonders, “What do you suppose is the matter with rich white
folks? Why you reckon they ain’t happy?” (Hughes 219).
We can now see that the main question is ‘Can money buy happiness?’ The answer
proposed in the story is: no, money cannot buy happiness.
This answer is given
within the protagonist’s confusion: he, just as many poor people during the Great Depression, thought that wealth was a certainty for not being hungry, for
staying warm, and most of all for happiness.
After the encounter with the
young, rich, white man, he understood that money, for those who have a lot of
it, is just something disposal, not important. The man wasn’t at all upset about being robber,
this incident did not have an impact on his life. Moreover, the white man's life was so shallow that the robbery was one of the most exciting things he had experienced.
