American Criticism Nineteen-Fifty-Five by Alice Walker and On the Road by Langston Hughes both use a wide variety of implicit and explicit criticisms of American society within their short stories. Both essays focus on White culture vs. Black individuality. This focus opens the door to implicit criticisms such as racism, hypocrisy and discrimination. These examples are especially prevalent in the story On the Road. Hughes gives an image that focuses on looks and money, instead of feeling and good spirit. There are a few explicit examples, like the fact that people should assume White culture to be the important people over Black culture. This seems to be quite typical in the s