Summary

In “Tales of Simple: Temptation” by Langston Hughes, Simple and the first-person narrator are having a conversation about the biblical Genesis. Simple wonders where black people like him were when God created light. Simple assumes that people like him were not there because their skin is still dark, while white people have light skin. The narrator explains that humans were created by God after he created light.

The two of them talk then about Adam and Eve and Simple argues that they must have been white because this is how they are depicted by the church. Furthermore, he believes that if Adam and Eve had been black, they would have never eaten the apple offered by the snake. The narrator tries to explain to him that the Genesis is a symbolical ...