"The Pushcart Man" and "Drama for Winter Night" are two of my favorite works by Langston Hughes. I think I can help you find lots of ways in which the individual is both embedded and alienated in these works.

First, when one says embedded, they mean a part of or entwined. A journalist embedded with troops is a part of those troops and linked to what they’re doing. If those troops are attacked, the journalist could get attacked too.

With "Drama for Winter Night," we could say the "good man" is bound to the winter night. First, he tries to sleep in the church, and then in the car. What happens? He's expelled from both places. It's almost if the "good man" has to be out in the cold. Yet, near the end, he's facing alienation from the cold because he's "attracting a crowd" and people want to send him to a hospital. However, this community support could also be seen as an end to his alienation from the people around him, who earlier seemed not to care about his health sleeping in the cold.

In "Pushcart Man," we see the same kind of paradoxical embedded and alienated quality. What are the names of the people in the "Pushcart Man"? You can’t. Hughes doesn't provide one. The lack of names could be thought of as alienating. Their true identity has been replaced by their profession or their characteristics. For example, we have a "dark young fellow" talking to a "light young girl".

Yet we could also say that the characters in “Pushcart” are so embedded in their surroundings and relationships with each other that they don't need names. It’s like they’re so familiar with each other that they’re beyond names.