”Temptation” is a short story by Langston Hughes. In the text he expresses how the myth, “The Fall of Man” impresses a coloured man, and how “The Fall of Man”, can make racial confusion.
Simple, a black character, and the narrator, who’s also black debate the biblical story of Genesis, and why it doesn’t include black people. Simple asks a lot of questions to our narrator, who’s also known as the I. Simple is confused because he can’t understand where the black people were when Lord said: “let there be light”, as Simple said in the text (page 1, line 28), “That is why I want to know where was us Negroes when the Lord said, ‘Let there be light?” The narrator can see a lot of Simple’s point of view, and agrees in some of what Simple is saying and substantiates Simple’s stance.
The narrator said: “The snake is a symbol, a symbol of temptation and sin. And that symbol would be the same, no matter what the race”. Here can we see that there isn’t any racial prejudice, and it is all symbols and signs.
Simple believes that if Adam and Eve in the myth had been black; there would be no racism today. I have never thought about why Adam and Eve really were white instead of being black. In the myth there are no blacks, even the angels are white, and they don’t even mention the black people. The narrator said “Adam and Eve are symbols too,” it’s clear what he means. Adam and Eve are also symbols, and the colour of a symbol doesn’t matter, and the significant thing is that Adam and Eve are building on the mutual human conduct, namely that they are tempted to eat the apple. I think the narrator is right in, what he is saying, that we have to see Adam and Eve has a deeper meaning instead of the account that they are whites and not blacks.
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