76 pages • 2 hours read
Langston HughesNot Without Laughter
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1930A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 28-30Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 28 Summary: “Chicago”
In mid-May, Sandy receives a letter from Annjee. Tempy has told her that Sandy has been staying out late, and since Annjee has had no word from Jimboy for seven months, she wants Sandy to come to stay with her in Chicago when the school year ends in June. She will send the difference between whatever he has saved up and the price of fare. A job as a hotel elevator boy is waiting for him when he gets to Chicago. She needs Sandy to help her out financially since she is not making enough to live on as a trainee under a black hairdresser.
A week later Annjee sends a letter to Sandy with his fare because he can start working at his new job that Saturday. Sandy is on the train that night after having made arrangements to receive credit for the remainder of his school year and saying goodbye to a tearful Tempy, who worries that Chicago may lead to Sandy's moral downfall. He also has the chance to visit Mrs. Johnson a few weeks before to get all the news on all his old friends and reminisce about his time growing up in Hager's house.
When Sandy arrives in Chicago, his mother initially fails to recognize him. As they walk towards her room, an awkward silence, the result of five years apart, falls between them. Annjee thinks about the signs of manhood she sees in her son, while Sandy is disappointed by how "monotonous and ugly" the city is (202). Annjee tells Sandy she is afraid to ride the elevated cars, but Sandy responds that he would like to ride on them. Eventually, they come to the Black Belt, which begins on State Street.
They turn off of State Street and arrive at the house where Annjee lives. Her room is tiny and near one of the elevated trains. Although Sandy tells his mother the room is nice, the noise of the elevated trains is very loud. After telling Sandy that he is handsome like Jimboy, she leaves for work again and Sandy sleeps away the afternoon.
When Annjee returns that night, Annjee introduces Sandy to her landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Harris. Mr. Harris, who found the job for Sandy, tells him to be up at six the next morning to go with him to the hotel. Sandy decides to explore his new surroundings before going to bed.
While he wanders about, Sandy is accosted by a man who begins to follow him. The man, who smells of perfume and has a powdered face, attempts to convince Sammy to come back to his room to look at pornography with him. Sandy has heard stories of pedophiles who pursue boys. He is both afraid and curious about what the man offers. Sandy escapes the man by running and finds himself in front of the marquee of the Monogram Theatre, where ticket buyers are lined up to get tickets to see the Smiths's famous blues act. A rough-looking girl demands that Sandy buy her a ticket, but he refuses.
Sandy eventually finds his way back to Annjee's room, where he is greeted by Mrs. Harris as "Mr. Rogers," a first for him (207). He has a restless night because of the bedbugs, heat, and the noise of the elevated trains, but he eventually falls asleep.
Chapter 29 Summary: “Elevator”
Sandy starts work the next day and eventually settles into a routine. His mother worries incessantly about Jimboy, receiving news only via newspaper reports on black troops. The weather is extremely hot. The only relief is found on the lakefront, but even that relief is limited since much of the shore is forbidden to African Americans.
Sandy bears with the heat as he stands in the elevator in his bright uniform. He is proud to help his mother and tries to save money to return to school in the fall, but Annjee relies on his pay so much that it is nearly impossible to save. Annjee tells him he has more education than she had at that age, so he should stay out of school. Sandy knows Hager would have thought differently, but then Annjee is "less far-seeing than her mother had been, less full of hopes for her son, not ambitious about him—caring only for the war and Jimboy" (209).
After two months of the monotonous work, Sandy feels like he is suffocating. There are other elevator attendants who have been there for years, however. Sandy encourages himself with the thought of the grit shown by Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass in order to get an education at all costs.
He is haunted by the thought of being like his father, however, if he quits his job and has no money. He is more like Harriet, he thinks, with a desire to be free and not at the mercy of white people as a servant. He wants to own his own home one day but doesn't want to be like Tempy's respectable friends. Mr. Siles once said African Americans fail to advance because they are “clowns, jazzers, just a band of dancers," but Sandy believes, instead, that African Americans sing, dance, and laugh because they are poor and oppressed (210).
As the summer wears on, it is only Sandy's desire to fulfill Hager's dream that he will become a great man that keeps him going.
Chapter 30 Summary: “Princess of the Blues”
In August, Harriett, now known as "the Princess of the Blues," opens at the Monogram on a Monday (212). Sandy and Annjee get tickets to see her, but they don't have the chance to let her know they are coming. The audience is entertained by the wide variety of comedy and musical acts, but the highlight is Harriet's performance.
Sandy recognizes Billy Sanderlee on the piano. While Sandy sees her as beautiful and a great singer, Annjee insists that Harriet is just the same and sounds hoarse. Harriet sings several songs that run the range from traditional songs to provocative blues songs. Afterward, Sandy and his mother go to her dressing room, hoping to be let in to see her. They are able to gain entrance.
Harriet is dressed in furs; her voice is hoarse from drinking and smoking. She takes Billy, Sandy, and Annjee out to eat at a Chinese café. She tells them about her struggles after Hager's death and the success she has since experienced because the Jewish people who control the theaters are more likely to give African Americans a chance.
The three of them reminisce about the old times back in Stanton. Billy, meanwhile, tries to convince Sandy to get in on a new betting scheme. He stops once Harriet scolds him, telling him that what Sandy needs to get a good start at life is education. When Harriet asks Sandy about his education, she is shocked to discover that Annjee doesn’t support Sandy going back to school for his third year. Annjee believes Sandy should support himself financially and stand by her while Jimboy is lost somewhere in Europe.
When Harriet asks her how she can believe such a thing and points out that this attitude counters everything Hager believed, Annjee first tries to defend her stance by pointing out that Sandy helps out with the rent, then relents once Harriet offers to pay what Sandy needs to continue his education. Harriet insists, "Sandy can’t do like us. He’s gotta be what his grandma Hager wanted him to be—able to help the black race, Annjee! You hear me?"(217).
She shames Annjee by getting her to admit that she wouldn’t want Sandy to be an elevator attendant the rest of his life just so he can be a help to his mother. At the end of the visit, Harriet gives Sandy ten dollars for his books. The novel ends with Sandy and Annjee walking home and passing by a church where the black worshippers are singing the old African-American spirituals Sandy once heard back home in Stanton.
Chapters 28-30 Analysis
Sandy's movement from Stanton to Chicago marks his entrance into the Great Migration. Hughes includes important aspects of the Great Migration narrative, including the idealization of the city, the journey, reckoning with the reality of the city and its temptation, and a commitment to make the best of the opportunities offered by the city.
Although Sandy is older, he is still young and passive enough that his motivation for going to the city is one that is thrust upon him rather than something he decides for himself. Annjee wants Sandy with her as consolation for Jimboy's absence, which means that Sandy goes to the city to serve the needs of another person. During his journey on the train—that icon of adventure and mobility that figures so heavily in the blues—Sandy dreams about what life in the city will be like. Like most African Americans who migrated during the Great Migration, he has an inflated and impossible-to-fulfill idea of what the city will bring. When he arrives at the city and sees how grim and dirty it is, when his mother's need for financial support seems to foreclose his ability to act on his own ambitions, and when the monotony of serving in the cage of the elevator threatens to crush him, Sandy gains a more realistic perspective on what it is to be in the city.
The encounter with the man who attempts to lure Sandy into his room with promises of pornography connects to an important idea in the Great Migration narrative, the idea of the city as Babylon, the Biblical city associated with corruption and immorality. Sandy's reaction to the man is not just one of visceral disgust, however. As he thinks about the man's proposition, he recognizes that "he'd like to find out" about the man's activities, "but he was afraid"(205). Billy Sanderlee's offer of a system of gambling is another temptation he sidesteps.
Sandy momentarily faces temptation in the city but flees and ends up in the place that most represents the promise of the city—State Street, the heart of Chicago's African-American community and the place where Harriet has managed to transform her life into a fairy tale by becoming "the Princess of the Blues" (212). Her promise of financial help for him also holds out the possibility of his escape from the drudgery of life as a black emigrant to the city. The restaurant scene in which she offers this help is one in which his family partially reconstitutes itself, while the sound of the spirituals Hager loved from a Chicago church shows that Sandy carries with him the best of the past and the potential of the future. With this last scene, it is clear that Sandy will succeed in his dreams.
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By Langston Hughes
