The title of "Why, You Reckon?" asks a question. What does the narrator wonder about? What answer does the story propose? Support your answer with at least one detail from the story.

"Why, You Reckon?" is a short story written by Langston Hughes, set in Harlem during the period of the Great Depression.

The main character is a black man who is poor, hungry, uneducated, but isn’t a trouble maker. One night he was hungry so he teamed up with another black man and they decided to rob a rich white man. They brought their victim in a basement and robbed him of his money, diamonds, shoes, coat, everything they could. Although, the protagonist ended up with nothing in his hand when his accomplice took off with the entire loot.

The white man was excited about his experience, ""This is the first exciting thing that’s happened to me," said the white guy. "This is the first time in my life I’ve ever had a good time in Harlem"" (Hughes 218).

The protagonist was very confused from that situation and, when he exits back on the road, hungrier than before, he wonders, "What do you suppose is the matter with rich white folks? Why you reckon they ain’t happy?" (Hughes 219).

We can now see that the main question is ‘Can money buy happiness?’ The answer proposed in the story is: no, money cannot buy happiness.

This answer is given within the protagonist’s confusion: he, just as many poor people during the Great Depression, thought that wealth was a certainty for not being hungry, for staying warm, and most of all for happiness.

After the encounter with the young, rich, white man, he understood that money, for those who have a lot of it, is just something disposal, not important. The man wasn’t at all upset about being robber, this incident did not have an impact on his life. Moreover, the white man's life was so shallow that the robbery was one of the most exciting things he had experienced.