[1] Critics, however, were more negative, perhaps in part because director/producer Martin Jones altered much of the plot, moving the play away from tragedy and into melodrama.
[1] Melinda D. Wilson notes that Jones's addition of a rape scene may have helped sell tickets, but also may have reinforced stereotypes of violent and promiscuous blacks—the kinds of stereotypes that Negro and Mulatto writers of the time were trying to stamp out.
[4] Literary scholar Germain J. Bienvenu argues that the play examines this prejudice through the character of Robert.
[4] This is what makes Robert such a tragic mulatto figure, similar to other characters in prevalent in Langston Hughes' work.
[6] The plantation of the American South is designed to divide race and maintain the power held by white owners through both socially and architecturally.