The Transitional Phase in Langston Hughes’s Mulatto
Dr. Khalid Rifat Al-Udayli, Dr. Ibrahim Shalabi

Abstract
Written against an intensely social conscious background of 1930s America, Langston Hughes' record breaking play Mulatto: A Tragedy of the Deep South, has to its credit 373 performances on Broadway. The play deals with a theme much too familiar to the audiences – the stereotyped notion of prejudices based on racial discrimination. The play is also remarkable in the sense that it brings about a culmination of sorts in the Negro Drama as it provides the much needed impetus to, at least, bring about a change in the age – old African-American sensibility by making the whites admit that the blacks were indeed victims. In the play, Norwood, a stereotyped representative of the white people, typifies this view, but resists any change at any front in the then prevalent scenario. However, what is important is the effort on the part of Robert, the mulatto protagonist, who succeeds in challenging the Norwood kind of mentality and thereby making the latter accept many of the things that had hitherto been a taboo. This is largely seen by critics as the beginning of a common shared platform for addressing issues of apartheid.

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