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African American Literature
• 1. The literary tradition of the African Americans
• P503 • 2. Myth/Key to understanding this literature• P504• 3. Term: Harlem Renaissance • P505
Harlem Renaissance
The Features • The most noticeable element of Harlem Renaissance
writing is the use of dialect and folklore and the identification with the spirit of jazz.
• Along with the popularity of jazz, people showed interest in black culture. Cultural plurality was then celebrated.
• African arts were collected. Black intellectuals were respected and black writers were acclaimed.
• The burst of black talent and of white appreciation embodies the significance of the movement.
Representatives
• Four major writers who established their reputation during this period were Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countée Cullen and Langston Hughes (P510).
• “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”• “As I Grow Older”
Black Writers
Richard Wright (1908-1960) Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) Toni Morrison (1931- ) Alice Walker (1944- )
Richard Wright (1908-1960)
Native Son (1940) protest novel
P513
Major character: Bigger Thomas
Tripartite structure: “Fear,” “Flight,” and “Fate”
Plot P513Set in ChicagoBigger Thomas is impoverished, angry, and poorly educated.
• work as chauffeur for the wealthy, white Dalton family.
• On his first evening of work, Bigger drives home the drunken college-age daughter, Mary, and carries her to her bedroom. In a brief moment of panic, Bigger tries to silence Mary with a pillow and inadvertently smothers her to death.
• The final section of the book recounts Bigger’s trial.
• His defense attorney pleads that Bigger is not responsible for his violent actions because social forces drove him to crime, while the state’s prosecutor argues that Bigger is a cold-hearted criminal who must die as the law requires
• Themes: P514• classism, • racial prejudice, • poverty, • Criminality
• Character Analysis: Bigger Thomas• P514
Ralph Waldo Ellison (1914-1994)
Invisible Man(1952)• A great classic in American literature• A book on racial discrimination, black-w
hite relationship, and the rebellious stance toward an unjust and repressive society P516
• An archetypal existential story of modern times
• An odyssey of modern man’s quest for self-realization
Plot: P515
Major Theme:Racism as an Obstacle to Individual Ide
ntityP515
Craft:P517 Symbolism, style
I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids---and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me.
Toni Morrison (1931- )
Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 (the first black woman to win it)Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1988"who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
• a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor.
• Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters.
I’m interested in survival ---who survives and who does not, and why --- and I would like to chart a course that suggests where the dangers are and where the safety might be.
Themes in her Novels:
The terror and trauma of racial oppressionThe complex behavior of living under gender and racial conflictsThe psychology of survival
Toni Morrison in 2008
Novels• The Bluest Eye (1970) • Sula (1974) • Song of Solomon (1977) National Book Critics Circl
e Award P524-5• Tar Baby (1981) • Beloved (1987) Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Ame
rican Book Award• Jazz (1992) • Paradise (1999) • Love (2003) • A Mercy (2008)
The Bluest Eye (1970)
• It is Morrison's first novel • The story is about a year in the life of a young
black girl in Lorain, Ohio named Pecola. • It takes place against the backdrop of Americ
a's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression.
• The Bluest Eye is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third person omniscient viewpoint.
• Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism, incest, and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.[
• Claudia and Frieda MacTeer live in Ohio with their parents. The MacTeer family takes two other people into their home, Mr. Henry and Pecola.
• Pecola is a troubled young girl with a hard life. Her parents are constantly fighting, both physically and verbally. Pecola is continually being told and reminded of what an “ugly” girl she is, thus fueling her desire to be a girl with blue eyes.
• Throughout the novel it is revealed that not only has Pecola had a life full of hatred and hardships, but her parents have as well.
• Pecola’s mother, Pauline only feels alive and happy when she is working for a rich white family.
• Her father, Cholly, is a drunk who was left with his aunt when he was young and ran away to find his father, who wanted nothing to do with him.
• Both Pauline and Cholly eventually lost the love they once had for one another.
• While Pecola is doing dishes, her father rapes her. His motives are unclear and confusing, seemingly a combination of both love and hate.
• Cholly flees after the second time he rapes Pecola, leaving her pregnant.
• The entire town of Lorain turns against her, except Claudia and Frieda.
• In the end Pecola’s child is born prematurely and dies.
• Claudia and Frieda give up the money they had been saving and plant flower seeds in hopes that if the flowers bloom, Pecola's baby will live; the marigolds never bloom.
• The title The Bluest Eye is based on Pecola's fervent wishes for beautiful blue eyes.
• Her insanity at the end of the novel is her only way to escape the world where she cannot be beautiful and to get the blue eyes she desires from the beginning of the novel.
Themes
• Ideas of beauty, particularly those that relate to racial characteristics, are a major theme in this book.
• Pecola Breedlove ---The protagonist of the novel, a poor black girl who believes she is ugly because she and her community base their ideals of beauty on "whiteness".
• Claudia is given a white baby doll to play with and is constantly told how lovely it is.
• Insults to physical appearance are often given in racial terms;
• a light skinned student named Maureen is shown favoritism at school.
• Most chapters' titles are extracts from a Dick and Jane reading book, presenting a happy white family. This family is contrasted with Pecola's existence.
• a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel• The novel, her fifth, is loosely based on the life
and legal case of the slave Margaret Garner, • The book's epigraph reads: "Sixty Million and
more," by which Morrison refers to the estimated number of slaves who died in the slave trade.
• A survey of writers and literary critics conducted by The New York Times found Beloved the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years;
• Time Magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005
• In this tale set in Reconstruction Ohio, Morrison paints a dark and powerful portrait of the dehumanizing effects of slavery.
• Inspired by an actual historical incident, Beloved tells the story of a woman (Sethe) haunted by the daughter she murdered rather than have returned to slavery.
• Plot P525• Part ghost story, part realistic narrative, t
he novel examines the mental and physical trauma caused by slavery as well as the lingering damage inflicted on its survivors.
• Magic Realism P526
Themes
• In prose both stark and lyrical, Morrison addresses several of her enduring themes:
• the importance of family and community, • the quest for individual and cultural identity, • and the very nature of humanity.
Style• experimental structure.• It is not a linear tale, • It is a story encompassing levels of past,
from the slave ship to Sweet home, as well as the present.
• Sometimes the past is told in flashbacks, sometimes in stories, and sometimes it is plainly told, as if it were happening in the present (with highly unusual use of the present tense).
• The novel is, in essence, written in fragments, pieces shattered and left for the reader to place together.
• The juxtaposition of past with present serves to reinforce the idea that the past is alive in the present, and by giving us fragments to work with Morrison melds the entire story into one inseparable piece to be gazed at.
• From a stylistic perspective, Morrison's artistry in this regard is nothing short of breathtaking.
Alice Walker (1944- )
A feminist black writer
The black woman struggling towards self-realization in a hostile environment is a theme in much of her work.
The Color Purple (1982)
American Book AwardPulitzer Prize 1983
An epistolary Novel
A great book both in thematic and formal terms
• The novel was adapted into a film of the same name in 1985.
• It was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, and Oprah Winfrey as Sofia.
• nominated for 11 Academy Awards,
• 1. African American women’s growth against the backdrop of social and familial oppression
• ---Feminism• 2. Black men’s change and growth as
well
Thematically: P529
In formal terms: P5311. The narrative scheme and the suspense
2. The language
3. The symbolism: the color purple, God, letters, pants
Jewish Writers “to portray the dilemmas of misfit heroes yearning for meaningful lives and moral regeneration”
Saul Bellow (1915-2005 )Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)
Saul Bellow (1915-2005 )
Winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature
the voice of the modern intellectual
for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work.
• awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts.
• He is the only writer to have won the National Book Award three times,
• and the only writer to have been nominated for it six times.
Novels and novellas P413• Dangling Man (1944)
• The Victim (1947) • The Adventures of Augie March (1953) National Book Award• Seize the Day (1956) • Henderson the Rain King (1959) • Herzog (1964) four awards• Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) National Book Award• Humboldt's Gift (1975), 1976 Pulitzer Prize • The Dean's December (1982) • More Die of Heartbreak (1987) • A Theft (1989) • The Bellarosa Connection (1989) • The Actual (1997) • Ravelstein (2000)
Themes P413• the disorienting nature of modern civilization,
and the countervailing ability of humans to overcome their frailty and achieve greatness (or at least awareness).
• Bellow saw many flaws in modern civilization, and its ability to foster madness, materialism and misleading knowledge.
• Principal characters in Bellow's fiction have heroic potential, and many times they stand in contrast to the negative forces of society.
• Often these characters are Jewish and have a sense of alienation or otherness.
HERZOG (1964)
a man seeking balance,trying to regain a foothold on his life P415
• three levels of meaning in Herzog: • the protagonist plays the role of the innocent in
the age-old plight of illusion versus reality, of naivety versus worldliness;
• he assumes the figure of the intellectual who is suffering from self-doubts concerning his own social relevance;
• he acts as a symbol of human conditions. • Themes:• 1. Alienation• 2. Quest
• Evaluation of Bellow P418-9
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986)
The effects of suffering are central to Malamud's fiction.His Jews symbolize all victims.
The Assistant (1957) P428
man's struggle to survive against all odds, and the ethical underpinnings of recent Jewish immigrants.
Morris BoberIda Bober Helen Bober
Frank Alpine
Thematic Issues
1. Suffering and Endurance
2. Father and Son Relationships
