49 pages • 1 hour read
The Ways of White Folks
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Stories 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 4 Summary: “Passing”
Set in Chicago, the story is structured as a letter written by a son, Jack, to his mother. Jack apologizes to his mother for ignoring her on the street the night before. At the same time, he thanks her for ignoring him, too. Jack is biracial and passes for White; his mother is Black. Jack’s passing allows him to get a good job for a Southerner. Living around White people, Jack overhears their prejudices and hostility toward Black people. Jack remains resilient, however, writing, “But I don’t mind being ‘white’, Ma, and it was mighty generous of you to urge me to go ahead and make use of my light skin and good hair. It got me this job Ma, where I still get $65 a week in spite of the depression” (52). Despite the better economic opportunities, Jack feels bad for ignoring his own family.
On the street the night before, Jack was with a beautiful girl whom he plans to marry. She is of German-American heritage, and Jack has no plans to tell her he is half Black. He has decided to live in the White world and doesn’t want to worry about color anymore. He hopes to transfer to San Francisco or New York, where he won’t have to worry about running into his family. Ignoring his mother pained him, and he reflects on the resentment his siblings, Charlie and Gladys, hold toward him for passing for White.
Jack promises to keep sending his mother money, even if he must ignore her on the street and deny his family heritage. When Jack’s White father died, none of the money went to his mother. He hopes Charlie and Gladys manage to find better jobs, which has proven difficult because of the depression. As for himself, Jack feels optimistic about buying a house in a nice area after he marries. He promises to write his mother more letters after he moves. Jack finishes his current letter with an unanswered question to his mother: “Anyhow, I’m glad there’s nothing to stop letters from crossing the color-line. Even if we can’t meet often, we can write, can’t we, Ma?” (54).
Story 5 Summary: “A Good Job Done”
The narrator is a young man who recounts his time working for the wealthy Mr. Lloyd. Mr. Lloyd’s wife is paralyzed, and he carries out numerous affairs with younger women. He pays the narrator very well, enough that he plans on studying dentistry at Columbia. Mr. Lloyd’s only demand is that the narrator not speak about Mr. Lloyd’s business. Some of the women Mr. Lloyd brings home are rude and racist toward the narrator, but Mr. Lloyd always defends him. Other times, Mr. Lloyd becomes depressed over his wife’s paralysis. He drinks heavily, forces the narrator to drink with him, carries out more affairs, and occasionally hits the women he sees. The narrator grows accustomed to Mr. Lloyd’s behavior and overall enjoys the job because it pays so well.
One night, Mr. Lloyd brings home a Black woman, Pauline. Mr. Lloyd is immediately infatuated with her: “She had the old man standing on his ears. I never saw him looking so happy before. She kept him laughing till daylight, hugging and kissing” (60). Pauline makes Mr. Lloyd happier than his other mistresses. He stops seeing multiple women and stops forcing the narrator to drink with him. When Mr. Lloyd finds out Pauline has a boyfriend, a Black man, he becomes insanely jealous. Mr. Lloyd and Pauline argue. The only man she loves is her boyfriend, and Mr. Lloyd can’t buy her love. Mr. Lloyd hits Pauline, and she throws a whiskey bottle at him. Mr. Lloyd pleads for her love, but Pauline hits him in the head with the whiskey bottle, cutting his head. She tosses all the jewelry Mr. Lloyd bought her on the floor, then leaves.
Mr. Lloyd looks for Pauline in the city but can’t find her. He recovers from his head wound, but the narrator senses a change in his boss: “When I did see him, he wasn’t the same man. No, sir, boy, something had happened to Mr. Lloyd. He didn’t seem quite right in the head. I guess Pauline dazed him for life, made a fool of him” (65). Mr. Lloyd resumes his womanizing but longs for a deeper relationship. The women are put off by his neediness and leave more quickly than before. Mr. Lloyd drinks more and more and eventually needs to be institutionalized. The narrator has enough money saved to finish college, but without more income coming from Mr. Lloyd, he doesn’t have enough to attend dental school. The narrator laments Mr. Lloyd’s downfall and mourns the good job he once had.
Story 6 Summary: “Rejuvenation Through Joy”
Eugene Lesche, charismatic, dark-haired, and handsome, earns his living giving lectures about joy. He draws crowds of thousands, charges by the seat, and guides them toward personal fulfillment. He preaches about Indian and Black cultures, which he sees as more musical and spiritual than the modern world. After his lecture series concludes, Lesche sends personal invitations to the attendees, announcing his plans to open a Colony of Joy. Some of Lesche’s devotees can’t pay his steep asking price to join the Colony of Joy, but other members have the funds: “These last were mostly old residents of Park Avenue or the better section of Germantown, ladies who already tried everything looking toward happiness” (73). People are particularly excited by Lesche’s plan to embed his new courses with Black music.
Lesche and his good friend Sol Blum assemble a team to run their colony: French staffers, and a Yale man to help write speeches. They decorate an old estate with African furniture and find immediate success with unhappy, rich clients. Before starting the Colony of Joy, Lesche acted in movies, posed for paintings, and later started a gym with Sol, where they made good money teaching rich women to swim. On a trip to Paris, the two learned about the money they could make running a colony and promptly made it their next business venture. They paid off publicity men to increase their public profile and have been expanding their joy business ever since.
The Colony of Joy opens, and buzz continues to spread. Some praise the colony, while others brush it off as a con. Nevertheless, numerous patrons are willing to pay to find happiness through Lesche’s methods: “And who would have thought it might have come through the amusing and delightful rhythms of Negroes? Nobody but Lesche” (90). Lesche takes on the moniker New Leader, his followers New Women and New Men. He spends personal time with each of his followers, and the New Women become intensely jealous of each other. Lesche wants to quit, but Sol convinces him to stay. Lesche cancels personal meetings, but the damage is done. Amid the boiling hostility, a New Woman pulls out a gun and shoots at one of the Colony’s musicians during an argument. The musician flees, and commotion breaks out. Someone else grabs the gun and shoots at Lesche, and Lesche flees, too. Patrons scatter, and some are arrested. After the disbandment of the Colony of Joy, the tabloids add to the scandal by reporting that Lesche is a Black man who has been passing as White.
Stories 4-6 Analysis
Stories 4-6 introduce another key subject for Hughes: passing. Where the first three stories depict the difficulties of being Black across the United States, “Passing” and “Rejuvenation Through Joy” show the additional internal and external conflicts that arise from being able to pass as White. “Passing” is the first story in the collection to tackle this subject. The structural choice to craft the story as a letter allows Jack to give the reader expository information about passing; he recounts his situation to his mother, which feels natural given the structure of the piece. Hughes chooses to immediately show that passing can be painful in its own way. Jack opens his letter with, “I felt like a dog, passing you downtown last night and not speaking to you” (51).
Although Jack has opportunities the rest of his family doesn’t, his fortunes come with a heavy price. Routinely, he feels awful for ignoring his mother, so much so that he even hopes to move out of state to avoid having to do it again. “Rejuvenation Through Joy,” meanwhile, tackles passing with more absurdity and humor. Eugene uses his ability to pass to con rich people out of their money. Throughout the story, it is not Eugene’s ethnicity or race that gets him into trouble, but his devious business tactics. With these two stories, Hughes once again tackles the same subject, but with different tones and conflicts.
Like the first three stories, these three all address class in various ways. In “Passing,” “A Good Job Done,” and “Rejuvenation Through Joy,” the characters enjoy economic privileges because they pass for White or found employment with a rich White person. Jack tells his mother he doesn’t regret choosing to pass for White, knowing full well what his life might be like if he didn’t: “When I look at the colored boy porter who sweeps out the office, I think that’s what I might be doing if I wasn’t light-skinned enough to get by” (52). In “A Good Job Done,” the narrator opens the story by fondly remembering his time working for Mr. Lloyd: “It was a good job. Best job I ever had” (57). Eugene Lesche enjoys even greater financial freedom. He leases an estate, travels to Paris, and hires staff to work for him. Each character enjoys pleasures and opportunities because of their wealth or access to a wealthy person. For Jack and Eugene, their opportunities are further enhanced by their ability to pass as White men. Where the first three stories showed economic hardships, Stories 4-6 show what more financial security looks like—security that is often tied to connections with White people or passing for White.
Structurally, Hughes again tells distinct stories that are still cohesive as a collection. “Passing” and “A Good Job Done” both utilize first-person narration. While the voices are markedly different from those of the third-person stories, the tone and subject matter create a through line. “Passing’s” somberness matches the tone of previous stories, particularly “Cora Unashamed.” “A Good Job Done” follows a similar structure to “Slave on the Block,” wherein a Black man works for flawed and wealthy White employers. In “Rejuvenation Through Joy,” Eugene finds work posing for rich White women, similar to Luther in “Slave on the Block.” Each story brings a unique quality to the collection but is still built with common traits.
Unlock all 49 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Langston Hughes
