Langston Hughes's Jesse B. Semple commentaries: A Nietzschean reading

Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of the Apollonian/Dionysian opposition found in The Birth of Tragedy provides a means to analyze Langston Hughes's Jesse B. Semple commentaries. The language and archetypal characters found in the Semple commentaries demonstrates the shifting balance between the struggles and the triumphs of some American Negroes. This shifting balance is represented by the Dionysian and Apollonian traits of Simple and the narrator, Boyd. By creating these characters, Hughes is able to display the importance of the low-down culture for some black artists. Through the intoxicated Dionysian insight of Semple and the Apollonian logos of the narrator, Hughes demonstrates the blending of folk tradition or myth to common sense or reality. Ultimately, the struggle between these characters constructs the image of the New Negro, as well as the creative framework of the Harlem Renaissance.