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Harish Chander, "Evil and Religion in Langston Hughes' - Tambourines To Glory - "
Harish Chander, "Evil and Religion in Langston Hughes' - Tambourines To Glory - "
Harish Chander
Shaw University
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
-- John 8. 32
“The Bible is the Rock, and the Rock is the Truth, and the
eternal conflict between good and evil; on the other, it is a story of economic
sounds of gospel songs, but it has its central action focusing on the problem of
evil, the Devil exploiting the weaknesses of persons to ruin them. As pointed out
by the author in his 26 July 1956 letter to his friend Arna Bontemps, “It’s a
singing, shouting, wailing drama of the old conflict between blatant Evil and quiet
Good, with the Devil driving a Cadillac” (Nicholas 344). This statement shows
that this play’s Devil is different from any other Devil. Nowhere in literature,
from miracle plays to morality plays and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and from
Goethe’s Faust to Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker” and Stephen
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 2
Benet Vincent’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” do we find the Devil given so
much importance that it is the Devil who introduces the play. Not only does the
Devil in Tambourines to Glory speak the prologue in both Act I and Act II, but to
hoodwink the congregation the Evil one goes through the mock ritual of baptism,
sings “New York Blues”(1.6. 310), and makes a fake confession that he was
fooled by the Devil to play, and “almost lost my immortal soul” (1.7. 320). In this
confession, the Devil seems to betray his modus operandi as to how he preys upon
vulnerable individuals by feeding their vanities. Nor does Hughes’ Devil bear any
significant resemblance to Esu, the Yoruba deity of mischief. In this play, there is
no compact of any kind with the Devil, either. Indubitably, Langston Hughes gives
the Devil’s persona the Hughes’ difference. Hughes’ play exposes how under the
influence of the Devil, certain pastors of the so-called “holiness” churches are
tempted to use dishonest devices to fill their own pockets. However, this
important aspect of the play that pertains to evil and the Evil One has not received
the critical attention it deserves, except for brief comments by Leslie Catherine
Sanders refers to “[t]he duel between good and evil in this play [Tambourines to
Glory]” and likens the Devil in the play to the “trickster devil of black religion”
(116), but she does not expound her views. And Wallace D. Best in Langston’s
Salvation: American Religion and the Bard of Harlem (2017) shows the great
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 3
religious orientation and abundance of religious themes he has dealt with. In his
discussion on Tambourines to Glory, Best seems to suggest that Hughes has not
made a clear distinction between good and evil. In Best’s own words, “Hughes
‘good’ and ‘bad’, viewing them as complicated and constitutive parts of the other”
(25). He does not clearly show how he has reached this inference, however. Best
points out that Tambourines to Glory went through several revisions on its way to
the final 1963 Broadway version, but he does not compare the different versions.
He observes that Buddy Lomax “was evil personified” and Buddy in the final
version “is a much more complex portrayal, alternately depicted as both a man and
the actual ‘Devil’” (189). He does not mention specifics of the changes this
reveals that Langston Hughes in this play conforms essentially to the Judeo-
Christian concept of evil, but at the same time “signifying,” to use Henry Louis
Gates’ term, upon depictions of evil and Evil One in earlier canonical literary
Tambourine Temple, a holiness church in Harlem of the 1950s that two women on
public relief start with altogether different purposes. The sincere, honest Essie
Belle Johnson aims to achieve financial independence and to save souls, and the
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 4
brash, lustful Laura Wright Reed to make her fortune and enjoy a flamboyant
lifestyle. Laura, who cares precious little for saving souls, confesses to Essie that
the Gospel Church is something they can collect on. These quite contrary
motives of the two ministers propel the play’s plot. However, the play has a
happy ending, with the self-serving minister repenting and coming back to the
The Judeo-Christian concept of evil and the role of the Devil, the Evil One,
are defined by Augustine and Moses Maimonides. Evil is the negation of good,
and the Devil is the Spirit of Negation. As Augustine puts it in his Enchiridion:
… [T]hat which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own
place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and
value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the
power over all things, being Himself supremely good, would never
not so omnipotent and good that He can bring good even out of evil.
For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? (Ch.
11)
Augustine in the next chapter of the same work points out that God made
beings “good” but “not perfectly good” and as a result they “are liable to
corruption.”
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 5
Augustine, has this to say about evil in The Guide for the Perplexed:
All evils are negations…. [I]t cannot be said of God that he directly
creates evil … this is impossible. His works are all perfectly good.
Ch. X)
And Maimonides in Part III, Chapter XIII of the same work adds:
due
seek relief from our faults; we suffer from the evils which we, by our
own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is
far from being connected with them. (Part III, Ch. X111)
Good and is not the creation of God, but God surely brings good out of evil.
However, these statements do not take into account the influence of Satan or the
Devil. While the Old Testament gives only a small role to the Devil, the New
Testament shows him as the chief of force of evil who rebelled against God and
was defeated and hurled into Hell with his cohorts (Revelation 12). It was Satan
who tried to tempt Jesus, after he had fasted forty days and nights, with all the
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kingdoms of the world if he would worship the Devil. Jesus told Satan to go away
because “it is written, Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shall
thou serve” (Matthew 4). It is worth noting that Jesus enjoined his followers to say
the Lord’s Prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”
(Matthew 6.13; Luke 11. 4). As pointed out by Aldous Huxley in The Devils of
Loudun, the Greek “tou ponerou” is masculine and should therefore be interpreted
as the Evil One, the Tempter”(174). Milton in his Paradise Regained deals
Luke 4. 1-13 and Matthew 4.1-11. While Eve and Adam in Paradise Lost could
Making the biblical account of Satan his basis and the Heavenly Muse his
inspiration, John Milton built the argument of his sublime Christian epic titled
Paradise Lost around the fall of man and its consequences. In Milton’s account,
Satan was an archangel who revolted against God when God made Jesus, his only
begotten Son, his vice-regent. Satan not only revolted, but by his lies also induced
other angels to follow him in defying God, and waging a war against God in
Heaven. As eloquently described by the poet in Paradise Lost, God threw Satan
and other rebel angels into Hell, the bottomless pit, to experience eternal
damnation. Since Satan understood that he couldn’t win against the Omnipotent,
he thought of taking revenge upon God by corrupting humans, Adam and Eve,
who were leading an idyllic life in Paradise. When Adam was away, Satan
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 7
assuming the form of a serpent snuck into the Garden of Eden and impressed upon
Eve that she would become like God by partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree.
Foreknowing Satan’s mind, God sent the Archangel Raphael to warn Adam about
the impending danger, but Satan was able to exploit Eve’s vanity to prevail upon
her to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in direct defiance of God’s
command. Adam out of his love for Eve also took the fruit of the forbidden tree.
The resultant effect is that sin and death entered the world, and Adam and Eve
In Paradise Lost, Book IV, Milton emphasizes Eve’s flaw, in her own
words, that brings about her fall: “A Shape within the watery gleam appeared /
Bending to look on me, …Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks /Of
sympathy and love; there I had fixed mine eyes till now, and pined with vain
desire” (IV, 460-466). Here, Milton is alluding to Ovid’s Narcissus who vainly
yearned for his own image reflected in the pool as well as to Eve’s flaw of vanity
that made her susceptible to Satan’s flattery. Thus, according to Milton, Eve and
Adam, whom God had made “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (III,
99), ate the fruit of forbidden tree by their own choice, and were, thus, responsible
for their fall. In Areopagitica, Milton avers that persons who “complain of divine
providence for suffering Adam [and Eve] to transgress do not understand what
virtue: “If every action which is good or evil in man [and woman] at ripe years,
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were to be under pittance and prescription and compulsion, what were virtue but a
name”(479). Having no hope of regaining entry into Heaven, Satan tells the fallen
angels: “To do aught good never will be our task, /But ever to do ill our sole
delight” (I, 159-160). He further says: “If then his Providence/ Out of our evil
seek to bring forth good/ Our labor must be to pervert that end / And out of good
still find means of evil” (I, 162-165). Satan, henceforward, is going to follow the
policy: “Farewell Remorse! All good to me is lost; Evil, be thou my good” (IV,
109-110).
with the same flaw of vanity that Milton’s Eve has. Laura is vain of her physical
charms, her shapely legs and large breasts. Laura confesses to Essie, “I’m gonna
live fine, and look fine,” no matter the price she has to pay (1.5. 302). She adds,
“…you want to cramp my style. Well, you won’t. I’ll tell you now, Essie, I’m
getting a fur coat, a Cadillac, and buying a hi-fi set—for Buddy” (1.5. 302). Essie,
who has noticed Laura’s vanity, exclaims: “Laura, one of these days the Spirit is
going to strike vanity from your heart, lust from your body, and ----- (1.5. 302). It
is her vanity that makes Laura an easy target for the Devil’s trap. While Essie
wants to use the church for saving souls, Laura’s sole aim, like Chaucer’s
Pardoner’s, is to win silver. Just as Eve in Paradise Lost dreams of loving her
image in a pool, Laura during an afternoon nap dreams of fish, and that dream
gives her the idea of using biblical texts to give the winning lottery numbers. The
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 9
vain Laura raises the Scotch whiskey glass to “her own reflection in the mirror”
(2.1. 330). Buddy, the Devil, observes Laura’s vanity, and exploits this weakness
in her to sell tap water for Holy Water from Jordan, as well as give lottery
numbers based on biblical texts. Laura uses a clever strategy to compel people to
give, as she warns: “You’ll have no luck if you don’t give God His’n. Aw, let’m
clink! Let the holy coins clink!” (1.7. 318). Essie notices how Laura is being
influenced by Buddy and warns her against his company. Laura, who is obsessed
with Buddy, doesn’t listen to her warning, and goes deeper and deeper into the
Devil’s net, not knowing that Buddy is the Devil. Essie sees but doesn’t do
anything to restrain Laura. When Laura is selling bottles of “holy water” bottles or
giving lucky texts, Essie withdraws herself and goes to the anteroom for “pause”
exercising her patience, believing that Laura will eventually come back to the
righteous path. The difference between Essie and Laura is that whereas Laura
yields to temptations, Essie is able to resist them. Essie says, “I wrestle with
temptation, too, Laura, in my heart. But somehow or another, I always did want to
try to be good. Once I thought being good was doing nothing, like you said, I
guess, so I done nothing for half my life. Now, I’m trying to do something—and
be good, too. It’s harder” (1.6. 307). However, Laura, under the influence of the
As earlier indicated, Buddy, the Devil, speaks the prologue in both the acts
of the play. Buddy is called the leading man, and as the lights dim he introduces
different names and various guises. He is not what he seems. Also, he can be any
skin color, dark or white. In the prologue to Act 2, Buddy again appears and
nickname, Old Nick” (321). He adds that even “a devil has faults” (322), and his
fault is his greed. “The way to get any good man … on the Devil’s side,” he adds,
“is to put your hand in his pocket with something in it—money” (321). When
Essie tells Laura to pray over Buddy, Laura responds that instead of the Holy
Trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Buddy believes in the
“unholy trinity” of “ Love, loot, and likker”(2.1. 329). Buddy claims that he is
working for the white Marty, who never appears in the play. Buddy is clever
enough to point out to the Black church congregation that white Marty is his boss
because in the Civil Rights era Blacks, especially the followers of the Nation of
Islam, were given to believe that the white man was the devil because Blacks had
their views of whites in America. Muhammad believed that “black people were
divine and white people were devils.” He added, “Allah was a black man” (qtd. in
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C. Lincoln 69). In the same interview, when asked if he believed that “all whites
were devils,” Malcolm X replied, “white people collectively were evil” (qtd. in A.
Banks 54). It is also significant that the interior of the church has a mural of the
Garden of Eden, which displays a brown skin Adam, strongly built like Joe Louis,
and Eve as chocolate Sara Vaughn, but the Devil as white (1.5. 299). That is the
additional reason for Buddy, the Devil, telling that he works for the white Marty,
It is interesting to note that both Essie and Laura claim to have been called
to found a new church. Essie suddenly rises, looks upward, and exclaims: “Right
now, tonight! Laura, I just got a vision. A voice tells me to take you up on this
shares her vision with Laura in private, the exhibitionist Laura proclaims before a
crowd: “ Lemma tell you how I got the call. It was one night last spring with
Sister Essie here, right on the street, I saw a flash, I heard a roll of thunder, I felt a
breeze and I seen a light and a voice exploding out of heaven cried, ‘Laura
Wright,’ it said, ‘Take up the cross and follow Me!’” (1.2.289-290). She adds that
the Voice told her to come out on this corner and save the people (1.2. 290).
gospel songs bring sinners to the fold of the church, as testified by Deacon Crow-
For-Day and the drummer Birdie Lee, proving that God uses the evil persons like
Laura and even Buddy--the Devil-- to his own purposes. Both Crow and Birdie
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 12
testify how Sister Essie and Sister Laura have saved them. Dean Crow says that he
exclaims, “They done snatched me off the ship of iniquity on which I rid down the
river of sin…” (1.7. 316). Drummer Birdie testifies that Sister Laura and Sister
Essie “ preached and prayed and swung me into the hands of God!” and she said
“goodbye to sin” (1.7. 316-317). And Essie’s daughter Marietta declares her
As for the Devil, he is not satisfied with perverting Laura, and he drops her
for a much younger woman, Gloria. However, before he does any physical harm,
Laura plunges Essie’s knife into Buddy’s back resulting in his death. Laura
implicates Essie because Essie’s knife was used to stab Buddy, so the murder
crime falls on Essie’s shoulders. However, Birdie Lee has witnessed Laura
stabbing Buddy and betrays Laura to the police. By then Laura has also
released from the prison and Laura is thrown into prison. Essie’s prophecy about
Laura that “the Spirit is going to strike vanity from your heart, lust from your
body, and…” (1.5. 302) is proven true as the latter changes from a self-centered
individual to one who is sincerely remorseful about her past behavior. She is
released on bail and confesses her sins before the church congregation. Laura’s
moving confession that begins with “I have sinned” and ends with “Oh, pray for
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me, Church! Sister Essie, all of you, I beg sincerely, pray” (2.6. 341-342) is the
high point of the play, and its supplicatory tone impresses the congregation. Essie
also forgives Laura and prays for her, celebrating Laura’s spiritual redemption.
helpful to compare his treatment of evil in Tambourines to Glory and other gospel
plays and the musical Simply Heavenly (1957) by him, as well as in other church
plays with all-Black cast by other writers, most prominent among them being
Marc Connelly’s The Green Pastures (1930), which won him the Pulitzer Prize,
and James Baldwin’s Amen Corner (1954). In this regard, Henry Louis Gates’
propounds that literary texts engage in conversation with earlier texts, either to
support and reinforce their pet ideas or to criticize and undercut them. In his own
words, “[B]lack writers read and critique other black texts as an act of rhetorical
thought of as only black, let me admit … that all texts Signify upon other texts, in
motivated and unmotivated ways” (344). Langston Hughes seems to believe that
evil is both internal and external. By internal evil, we mean the individual’s inner
propensities for evil, and by external evil, Satan, the Evil One, and his
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 14
representatives. The Devil has “collapsible horns” (The Prodigal Son 426), can
assume various guises, and is always on the prowl for vulnerable souls. In
Tambourines to Glory, the avowedly hedonistic Laura falls an easy prey to Buddy
Lomax, the Devil, not knowing that he is the Evil One, but the genuinely devout
Essie is able to resist the Tempter. Accepting the Word of God who died on the
Cross so that humankind has eternal life can, however, save even repentant sinners
like Laura. In The Prodigal Son (1965), Langston Hughes gives us his rendition
of the popular Biblical parable from the third Gospel, Luke 15, in a one-act play.
By not giving a locale for the story, the playwright universalizes the theme.
“devil in drag” – which means a devil in women’s clothing (426), the prodigal son
squanders all his inheritance by his riotous living and “orgiastic” dancing with
harlots until he is reduced to absolute penury and is compelled to live with hogs
and eat husks with them (425). Still, Jezebel wouldn’t leave the Prodigal alone
and continues to entice him to come to the countryside, promising him a time of
his life. When the Prodigal finds himself in a state of abject misery and
hopelessness, Exhorter’s urging and Brother Callius’, Sister Lord’s, and Sister
Waddy’s testimonies of their being accepted by the Lord despite their sinful past
gives him hope and courage to resist the Devil’s new temptations. Thereupon, the
frustrated Jezebel disappears from the scene to look for new victims. In other
important Langston Hughes’ gospel plays, Black Nativity (1961) and The Gospel
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 15
Glow (1962), there are only passing references to the Devil. In Black Nativity,
Woman sings: “ Satan’s mad and I’m so glad/He missed the Soul he thought he
had” (358). Second, the Shepherd Ted warns: “If you live in sin, /When life doth
end, / Then who will you have but/The Devil for your friend? (365).” In The
Gospel Glow also, there are two references to the Devil. The Choir Brother sings:
“The Devil had a stake in me. /He would not let me go. /But Jesus came into my
life, /Oh, now what joy I know! (382).” And the Church Elder testifies: “He
(Jesus) cast out devils. / He restored life” (391). And in Simply Heavenly that
admits to Melon who is obsessively drawn to her that there are times the Devil
“beckons” her, but she tells the Devil to be “on your way” (2.9.239).
Testament Gospel stories with an all African American cast in the framework of a
to note that this play does not cover the Fall of Man, but there is a mention of
Adam and Eve partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree, as a result of which
“dey felt ver’ bad.” There is no scene of Satan tempting Eve, either. However,
God in his conversation with Gabriel indirectly refers to Satan’s doings: “I ain’t
never tol’ you de trouble I had gittin’ things started up yere. Dat’s a story in itself”
(Green Pastures, 656; Part Two: Scene One), but the playwright does not consider
it important to tell that story. God does, however, ask Gabriel to lean over the
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 16
brink of the “Big Pit” and “tell Satan he’s jest a plain fool if he thinks he kin beat
anybody as big as me.” In response, Gabriel says: “Yes, suh Lawd. Den I’ll spit
right in his eye” (657; Part Two: Scene One). Also, God in Heaven is riled by the
doings of the humans on the earth. A cleaning lady in Heaven confides in the
other cleaning lady that her brother who went down to fetch a saint found that
“most of de population down dere has made de debbil king an’ dey wukkin’ in
three shifts fo’ him” (655; Part Two: Scene One). It is safe to infer that Marc
Connelly’s play illustrates that the postlapsarian man is prone to fall into wicked
ways. Having listened to Cain’s explanation for killing his brother Abel, De Lawd
says to Cain, “Well, I ain’t sayin’ you right an’ I ain’t sayin’ you wrong” and asks
him to go away, get married and “raise some chillun,” as there “ain’t nothin’ to
make a man fo’git his troubles like raisin’ a family” (636; Part One: Scene Four).
eminent Black intellectuals. Giving his impressions of The Green Pastures, Loftin
Mitchell wrote that “black blood flowed in those pastures as white knives ripped at
reside in the heart of its central figure who exploits the church tenets to show her
authority over the worshipers and church functionaries. Based on his personal
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 17
dramatizes the life of Margaret Alexander, who, after giving birth to a stillborn
baby, leaves her Jazz musician husband, Luke, and “hides” with her son David in
the church, rising to the position of the pastor. In leaving her husband, she insists
that she has followed the directions of the Holy Ghost. She professes to be most
holy, free from all carnal desires, and expects the congregants to give up their all
mind ain’t stayed on Him, every hour of the day, Satan’s going to cause you to fall
(Amen Corner 1. 9).” Also, since she is “the Lord’s anointed,” no body has “the
right to sit in judgment on my life” (3. 87). Luke, who is terminally ill, re-appears
and the truth comes out that it was not Luke who left Margaret, but it was
Timothy: “But if any [Christian] provide not for his own, and specially for those
of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (I
Timothy 5.8). The church elders who believe in the sanctity of marriage see
through Margaret’s religious hypocrisy, hold her responsible for the break-up of
her marriage, and find her unfit to be their spiritual leader. Ironically, at the
moment of her downfall, Margaret realizes what loving the Lord really means:
“To love the Lord is to love all his children—all of them, everyone! And suffer
with them and rejoice with them and never count the cost” (3. 88).
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 18
acclaims Tambourines to Glory as “at once the most serious and the most dramatic
religiosity knows no bounds, Langston Hughes has in Laura Wright Reed painted
the picture of a most blatant religious charlatan; however, both Margaret and
Laura are selfish at their core, and they have little empathy, as is evident from
their attitude toward their suppliants. The two central figures of Tambourines to
Glory may have been Hughes’ response to Margaret’s assertion that “[y]ou can’t
love the Lord and flirt with the Devil” (Amen Corner 3. 87). This is because in
Essie Hughes portrays the one who sincerely loves the Lord and in Laura the one
who claims to love the lord and flirts with the Devil. Langston Hughes understood
the impact of religion on African Americans; he also knew that effective sermons
[singers)] know just when to sneak in a hum or moan a song behind the minister’s
telling” (353; Collected Works of Langston Hughes, vol. 6). He only deplored the
Devil admits to his dismay that “... some churches don’t have sense enough to be
crooked. They really try to be holy--and holiness don’t make money” (1.6. 303-
304). As Hughes’ biographer, Arnold Rampersad puts it: “Religion meant a lot to
Langston… [What he] hated was ‘dishonesty in the church’” (Life of Langston
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 19
Hughes 2. 370). Langston Hughes seems to agree with Essie in her statement:
“Religion’s got no business being made into a gyp game” (11.5. 342). In her 1980
interview, Rosetta Le Noire, who played Essie in the 1963 Broadway rendition of
the play, remembers Langston Hughes with fondness and asserts that he never
meant to ridicule the church and those “who took it that way were sadly mistaken”
(qtd. in McLaren 86). In this regard, Langston Hughes can be well compared to
Moliere who was misunderstood as attacking the Catholic Church in his portrayal
of Tartuffe in the comedy of that title. Clearly, then, Hughes’ opposition is not to
the Gospel churches, but to their being taken over by unscrupulous pastors.
PAC Postscript Chander: Evil and Religion 20
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. The Amen Corner. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.
Banks, Adam J. Race, Rhetoric, and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground.
Connelly, Marc. The Green Pastures. Modern English Readings, 3rd ed by Roger
Sherman Loomis and Donald Leman Clark, Farrar & Rinehart, 1939, pp.
623-679.
Massachusetts P, 1980.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Figures In Black: Words, Signs, and the “Racial “ Self.
The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments in the King James
U of Missouri P, 2004.
Huxley, Aldous. The Devils of Loudon. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1972.
McLaren, Joseph. “From Protest to Soul Fest: Langston Hughes’ Gospel Plays”
in Langston Hughes Review, vol.15, no.1, 1997, pp. 49-61. Rpt. In Bloom’s
Milton, John. Paradise Lost and Selected Poetry and Prose. New York: Holt,