Rewriting

Polytropic Identities

in the Postmodern African American Novel

Notes

Chapter VII

1.     In Playing in the Dark, Morrison analyzes the antithesis between the white man, Harry, and the black man, Wesley, characters in Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. Morrison answers here a significant question: “What would have been the cost… of humanizing, genderizing, this character [Wesley] at the opening of the novel? For one thing, Harry would be positioned—set off, defined—very differently. He would have to be compared to a helpless alcoholic, a contemptible customer, and an individualized crew member with, at least by implication, an independent life. Harry would lack the juxtaposition and association with a vague presence suggesting sexual excitement, a possible threat to his virility and competence, violence under wraps. He would, finally, lack the complementarity of a figure who can be assumed to be in some way bound, fixed, unfree, and serviceable” (73).

2.     We should take into account here Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s interesting argument that Twain’s two models for Huckleberry Finn were in fact black (the black boy Jimmy, and the black man Jerry—both of them skilled orators), in the context in which the writer himself “allowed African-American voices to play a major role in the creation of his art” (1993, 5).

3.     As one might recall, the fourth part of William Faulkner’s “The Bear” was absent when the story was initially published in The Saturday Evening Post, in 1942. Significantly, it is this fourth part which links Ike’s quest with the slaves’ condition.

4.     In this direction, Toni Morrison states: “What became transparent [while examining the white texts] were the self-evident ways that Americans choose to talk about themselves through and within a sometimes allegorical, sometimes metaphorical, but always choked representation of an Africanist presence” (1992, 17).

5.     Gaines’ fiction intricately connects a variety of literary influences. In terms of language, his work draws upon the simple, concrete, vivid style present in Hemingway’s writings, and also upon the ability to draw sketches of essentialized human characters, as depicted by Guy de Maupassant and Gustave Flaubert. As Gaines himself acknowledges, the way in which such authors as Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, and Anton Chekhov described the rural condition of Russian peasantry made him envisage in universal terms his own African American people living in the South. In his fiction, the center of gravitation is an imaginary Louisiana plantation named Bayonne, an intricate mindscape, which echoes William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha. In an interview with Bernard Magnier, Gaines highlights the similarities between his work and Faulkner’s: “I certainly feel close to Faulkner. We both belong to the South. We write about the same things—life in small towns, the everyday struggles of poor people, the influence of big land-owners on small farmers, race problems. And Mississippi isn’t far from Louisiana” (Magnier 1995, 6).

6.     “Self-crushing” is a striking attribute to be found in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, in a symbolic scene, where Janie looks at her lover, Tea Cake, while he is asleep and feels “a self-crushing love,” so that “her soul crawled out from its hiding place” (122).

7.     A complex analysis of the figure of the “bad man” is offered by Jerry H. Bryant’s “Born in a Mighty Bad Land:” The Violent Man in African American Folklore and Fiction (2003). Bryant discusses nineteenth century bad man ballads in connection with the image of the violent man in the fiction of the Harlem Renaissance authors, as well as in works by Wright, Baldwin, Ellison, Himes, Mosley, Wideman, and Morrison.

8.     The multiple connotations related to the term “bad nigger” are underlined in Leon Litwack’s Trouble in Mind: “bad nigger” has often been celebrated for “cunning, boldness, coolness, and wit, often in the face of overwhelming odds, and for the uncanny ability and imaginative powers he displayed in outwitting his enemies” (Litwack 1998, 438).

9.     I was inspired here by Jeffrey Folks’s article, “Communal Responsibility in Ernest Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying.”

10. Whereas Gaines’ protagonist conversion may remind us of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom (the prototype of the Christ-like hero), the contemporary author departs from Stowe, since he purges his message from Stowe’s nineteenth century mentality.

11. In his introduction to Native Son—“How ‘Bigger’ Was Born”—Wright discusses how he adapted various techniques from white authors: “I took these techniques, these ways of seeing and feeling, and twisted them, adapted them, until they became my way of apprehending the locked-in life of the Black Belt areas. This association with white writers was the life preserver of my hope to depict Negro life in fiction, for my race possessed no fictional works dealing with such problems, had no background in such a sharp and critical testing of experience, no novels that went with a deep and fearless will down to the dark roots of life“ (Wright 2000, 11).

12. See, for example, at the turn of the century, Thomas Nelson Page’s Red Rock (1898) and Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman (1905), as novels that proliferate the “beast” image of the black man, an image that has roots in biological views upon the African race as inferior. In The Black Image in the White Mind, George Fredrickson indicates that, at the beginning of the century, demonized images of blacks were proliferated mostly in connection with rape. However, “although rape was the central and most horrifying example of the Negro’s allegedly inherent criminality, some writers took a broader approach and emphasized the increase of Negro crime of all sorts” (1987, 281).

13. In the last section of the novel, Bigger confesses: “I didn’t want to kill! But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder…” (453).

14. It is interesting to remember Native Son’s genesis. Disclosing the process of writing his novel, in his Introduction to Native Son, Wright confesses that he initially wrote the last part of the novel, that is, the scene in the courtroom.

15. Here I metaphorically borrow from Michel Fabre’s The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. As the critic explains, Native Son seems to end without developing Bigger’s sense of liberation. The novel thus contains, to use Wright’s own words, a number of “unrealized potentialities” (Introduction 30).

16. Probably the harshest criticism that Native Son has ever received comes from James Baldwin, who refers to its main character as a descendant of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom. Even if the angry Bigger Thomas is the opposite of the submissive Uncle Tom, the similarity between them consists in the fact that Bigger “had accepted [the same] theology that denies him life, that he admits the possibility of his being subhuman and feels constrained, therefore, to battle for his humanity according to those brutal criteria bequeathed him at his birth” (1994, 155). In Baldwin’s view, Wright failed to see the humanity in Bigger and wrote only about sociological statistics. However, Baldwin’s criticism is questionable from one perspective: the more the image of the “bad nigger” is reinforced in Native Son, the more it is undermined, so that an attentive reader can grasp Wright’s subversive intention.

17. Kenneth Kinnamon points out that Wright must have learned about Daltonism in the Chicago hospital where he worked. Kinnamon specifies: “In their fashion, the Daltons in the novel strive toward color blindness, though they fall tragically short of achieving it” (1995, 15).

18. Robert Felgar draws our attention to Wright’s suggestion that Bigger’s “violence is one of the effects of 350 years of slavery and oppression; Bigger Thomas is a native son of the United States” (2000, 43). In the same direction, Margaret Wallace sustains that Bigger’s reaction to the murder “is not accidental,” being “rooted in the past which has conditioned him” (2000, 29).

19. The New Oxford Annotated Bible (edited by Michael D. Coogan, 2001) comments upon the book of Job: “For many, the man Job is most well-known through the cliché about ‘the patience of Job,’ derived from the traditional translation of Jas 5.11. The Greek term that is translated as patience, however, means not so much patience as ‘endurance,’ ‘persistence,’ or ‘steadfastness.’ And, indeed, the Job that one encounters in the book that bears his name is not patient, but he is persistent in his claim that he has suffered undeservedly” (726).

20. In his Introduction to Native Son, Wright describes the stereotypical situation: whenever a crime is committed, the police “cruise the Black Belt and grab the first Negro boy who seems to be unattached and homeless.” The treatment this black boy receives during a week of incarceration makes him confess anything the white people want him to: “When a black boy is carted off to jail in such a fashion, it is almost impossible to do anything for him. Even well-disposed Negro lawyers find it difficult to defend him, for the boy will plead guilty one day and then not guilty the next, according to the degree of pressure and persuasion that is brought to bear upon his frightened personality from one side or the other (24-25).

21. Sorin Antohi observes that, in order to institutionalize its disciplinary system, “the modern state conceives and imposes a whole apparatus of alterization, of exclusion,” which is disclosed by the practice of “‘penal partition’ (the separation of the delinquent from society, the constituency of the delinquent area)” (1997, 19-20).

22. The idea of racial inferiority as an argument for innocence also appears in Native Son, where Bigger is considered too dim-witted to commit such a crime.

23. For a deconstructionist view upon the Eurocentric racism, see Molefi Kete Asante, “Locating a Text: Implications of Afrocentric Theory” (1992) and The Painful Demise of Eurocentrism: An Afrocentric Response to Critics (1999).

24. Discussing Native Son, Trudier Harris refers to the time of the plot—the 1920s and 1930s—as a time characterized by “an increased concern over the lynching of blacks” (1984, 113).

25. As Harris observes, in the ritualistic lynching of African Americans, “white Americans were carrying out rites of exorcism in which they seemed determined to eradicate the black ‘beast’ from their midst, except when he existed in the most servile, accomodationist, and helpful of positions” (1984, xiii).

26. In this direction, Jeffrey Folks also remarks: “Once the binding of shared values is severed, discrete acts of irresponsibility and violence occur with increasing frequency. The individual is unable to invent a personal culture; human civilization is the shared creation of the human masses over time” (1999, 73).

27. In White Mythologies, Robert Young concisely phrases Foucault’s view on power as a two-way process: “Just as the exercise of power is heterogeneous, so is resistance… Resistance does not operate outside power, nor is it  necessarily produced oppositionally: it is imbricated within it, the irregular term that consistently disturbs it, rebounds it, and which on occasions can be manipulated so as to rupture it altogether” (1990, 87).

28. James Marshall states that Foucault’s work on power has challenged the process of education from two points of view: “first, philosophically, his work challenges liberal education philosophy (and liberal education) and its use of authority as the fundamental concept for describing and understanding the ‘process’ of the transmission of knowledge… Second, he challenges the relationship between teacher and learner and the sorts of human relationship that underline that relationship” (2002, 413-14).

29. As Justen Infinito points, “absolute control of or liberation from the forces of power was not Foucault’s goal—indeed, for him this is an impossibility—nevertheless, he advocated exerting our positive freedom by experimenting on and creating a self” (2003, 163). According to Foucault, there are certain technologies for self-formation that allow us to disrupt various discourses. Exploring the ancient technologies of the self, Foucault noticed that the Greeks used to understand their own existence as a permanent exercise (1988 b).

30. In A Lesson Before Dying, Vivian Baptiste reminds us of Catherine Carmier, the title heroine of Gaines’ first novel (1981). Like Catherine, Vivian comes from a Creole family who forbids her to associate with anyone darker than herself. Like Catherine, who falls in love with Jackson, a black man, Vivian’s first husband is black, hence, the racial and emotional conflict initiated by her family’s mentality. Moreover, by describing the relationship between Grant and Vivian, A Lesson Before Dying also stresses another aspect: Vivian’s struggle as a Creole to be accepted by Grant’s black community. Since Vivian, Grant’s aunt, and Miss Emma share the same religious and ethical values, they learn to accept and respect each other.

31. Leon Litwack draws attention to this white educational process of “taming” black children: “Every black child would come to appreciate the terrible unfairness and narrowness of that world—the limited options, the need to curb ambitions, to contain feelings, and to weigh carefully every word, gesture, and movement when in the presence of whites. To learn to live with this kind of harsh reality became no less than a prerequisite of survival” (1998, 7).

32. Schubert’s point is also supported by Oliver and Lois Horton, who draw attention to the difference between the urban, industrial North and the rural, agrarian South, where the two-tiered slave system still survived during Reconstruction and later during the twentieth century: “As the nation turned its attention to the more northern concerns of industrialization, urbanization, and European migration, the South was increasingly free to develop its own policies on race, and southern blacks found themselves isolated in poverty and oppression. For most African Americans freedom remained—in the words of poet Langston Hughes a generation later—‘a dream deferred’” (2001, 199)

33. Pirkko Markula notices that “according to Foucault (1984), the practical form of transgression involves every day practices through which the individual constantly re-invents him/her-self, but in addition, it requires a necessary aesthetic element: an individual recreates him/herself as a work of art. This takes place through a complex and difficult process of stylization and therefore, the individual’s relationship to one’s self is more like a creative activity, a constant process of invention” (2003, 102).

34. The invisible man shows his awareness in the prologue of Ellison’s book, where he thinks retrospectively: “I have been boomeranged across my head so much that now I can see the darkness of lightness” (5).

35. Mark Busby comments upon the invisible man’s innocence: “Homer A. Barbee, a black orator (both literally and figuratively blind), articulates this myth as it was supposedly embodied by the Founder and then reembodied by Dr. Bledsoe. Believing the myth, the narrator cannot see the world as it really is—one in which Bledsoe manipulates both whites and blacks in order to hold on to his power” (1991, 50).

36. One of the most haunting aspects of Ellison’s novel is the invisibility of the black body. In his article on Invisible Man, Daniel Y. Kim stresses that racism has negative effects not only over the mind, but also over the physical aspect of the black person: “To be the ‘nigger’ for the white man is not only to accept and acknowledge one’s racially subordinate status, it is more precisely to relinquish authority over one’s body—to allow one’s body to do whatever the white man says it should do” (Kim 1997, 321).

37. In a Melus Interview with Wolfgang Lepschy, Gaines advocates the necessity for African American people to remain in the South. He characterizes Grant as a teacher who works hard to “save” his pupils, to make them grow roots in their native place: “Otherwise some of them might have run away and done the things this dying professor had told Grant he should do. But now the kids will stay and do all the work that is necessary. And those are the ones that have made all the difference in the South, staying, working there, living there, fighting, and dying” (Lepschy 1999, 207).

38. Commenting upon the portrait of The Founding Father and Bledsoe, Robert Stepto affirms: “While the demystification of these would-be examples is prerequisite for the Invisible Man’s blossoming as a truly literate figure, the thrust of the narrative is not to replace these portraits with that of the Invisible Man as a heroic example. Rather, it is to identify Bledsoe, Norton, and the rest as varying fictions of reality and history which must be deposed… defiled in order for the fiction that is the narrative to be imagined” (1986, 61).

39. In Invisible Man, Ellison sketches Bledsoe’s portrait: “Influential with wealthy men all over the country; consulted in matters concerning the race; a leader of his people; the possessor of not one but two Cadillacs, a good salary and a soft, good-looking and creamy complexioned wife” (78).

40. Comparing Bledsoe in Invisible Man to Babo in “Benito Cereno,” Valerie Bonita Gray remarks: “Both Babo and Bledsoe wear a mask that affects their conduct, dress and speech. Upon closer examination, however, one sees that the two characters are using the same means for different ends—the former to liberate his people, the latter to subjugate them” (1978, 41).

41. The ambivalence of Bledsoe’s educational system is metaphorically expressed by the symbolic statue of the college Founder: as he stretches his hands toward the veiled face of a kneeling slave, we do not know whether it is a gesture of lifting the veil or one of lowering it.

42. There are two instances in the novel when Grant searches for models of heroes. One is Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play baseball in the major leagues, who had an active role in the Civil Rights Movement in 1947. The other one is Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish national hero, leader of the Irish nationalist movement during the early 1880s, who is also the focus of James Joyce’s short story “Ivy Day in the Committee Room.”

43. Miss Emma’s dignified status is also suggested by the polite way in which she is called by the others. She is not addressed as “Aunt Emma,” as black women used to be called during slavery, but as “Miss Emma,” pointing to her higher moral status in her community. Gaines’ use of names is one of his techniques of reconstructing the black image in a racially segregated South that still preserved a two-tiered racial system from the time of slavery.

44. This idea is also stressed by Keith Byerman who notices that there is always a conflict in Gaines’ novels between “those who ‘defend’ the rules” and “those rebels who are willing to die in order to break the system.” The last category is always supported by the folk community, which appears as “a means of resistance to the white system of repression (1985, 67).

45.  The whole community gathers in the church to witness the reenactment of their daily life in the nativity scene. Just like the black women, Mary wears a denim dress as a sign of her poverty, while Joseph wears overalls and carries a hammer in order to show his profession.

46. Gaines does not reconsider just black and white relations. He also pays attention to the relation between the blacks and the Creoles. There are two significant instances in the novel, where the Creoles treat the black people in a racist way. One instance hints at Vivian’s Creole blood; the other instance to the conflict between the blacks and the Creoles at the Rainbow Club. (See here Mary Ann Doyle’s article that focuses on pointing out how Gaines’ novel “led to a more focused inquiry about the history of Creoles in Louisiana and the implications of that history for us as teachers or students preparing to teach” (2001 453).

47. Importantly, at the end of the novel, Jefferson’s death is narrated from the perspective of various black and white characters, who sympathize with his suffering.

48. Auger draws an interesting parallel between Gaines’ Paul and Paul in the New Testament, who has a revelation and starts preaching the word of Christ (1995, 83).

49. His leitmotif—“I am doing all right” (233)—should be literally read as his attempt to see his actions as rightful.

50. Mark J. Justard used the term “écriture masculine” in his essay on male physicality, stressing how this type of writing “deconstructs stereotypical constructions of masculinity” (1996, xi).

51. In his article, “Twentieth-Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity,” Ralph Ellison uttered oracular words: “The artist is no freer than the society in which he lives, and in the U.S. the writers who stereotype or ignore the Negro and other minorities in the final analysis stereotype and distort their own humanity. Mark Twain knew that in his America humanity masked its face with blackness” (1994 b, 148).