Hughes’s father had an unfathomable and utter dislike towards people of color which conflicted the relationship and connection Hughes anticipated to have with his father. Thus, Hughes saw his father as a confined man in a desolate void bound by a presumptuous hatred for his family, himself, and his own son. In the autobiography The Big Sea, Hughes wrote that his father would scold him for playing with Negroes and could barely stand the sight of them. Even though Langston Hughes shared a mutual animosity with his father, Hughes still attained inspiration from him to write defenses for his beliefs. An illustration of the relationship between him and his father embodies his play Mulatto. In which there is a boy, the protagonist, in the play who’s
