Black Consciousness and Racism in Richard Wrights Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man Abstract
CHAPTER ONE
OBJECTIVEOF STUDY
This concept became a form of literary expression associated with the Afro-American movement whose concern was for the discovery of the meaning of black man’s experience. Black, consciousness has to do with the revolutionary consciousness which occupies most Afro-American writing. This concept places emphasis on the Afro-American search for self-esteem in a hostile social environment and the search for a language to affirm a “black selfhood” as well as express the richness of an oral culture.
CHAPTER TWO
THE LITERARY CAREER OF WRIGHT AND ELLISON
Richard Wright: His background
Wright distinguished himself as one of the frontline Afro-American writers preoccupied with the presentation of the dehumanizing effects of racism in literature. He is regarded as the first twentieth century writer to have dealt extensively with the economic and moral problems of the American blacks. Wright’s artistic accomplishments cannot be fully appreciated without an examination of his background. This is due to the fact that most of the raw materials of his works are derived from his personal life experience.
Richard Wright was born in the Southern State of Mississippi in a town called Natchez on the 4th of September, 1908. He was born at a period characterized by intolerance and bigotry. His father was a sharecropper, while his mother taught in a small country school. His father deserted the family having realized he could not support them. He had his early education at the Howard Institute in Memphis at the age of seven. The financial situation of his family was so bad that their lives were characterized by poverty. His mother soon fell ill and became partially paralyzed. She was compelled to lace her sons: Richard and his brother in an orphanage. His childhood experience was characterized by loneliness and distrust of people, adult in particular. He grew sullen and became impatient. Impatience was the most notable characteristics of his entire career. This attribute of his is reiterated in the words of Nathan, A. Scott Jr.:
Richard Wright was of course, always impatient with the probing disciplines of art”.
Wright was later sent to live with his relatives in Jacksons Mississippi. His childhood experiences were those of oppression, poverty, hunger, racial prejudice and violence. All of these became the subject of his fiction. Violence was dominant characteristic of his life and work. His autobiography has been described as a book that:
Suggests how Wright attempted to suppress his tendency towards Extreme bahaviour, how he had to dissemble before those white southerners who expected him to be submissive.
Wright at most times rebelled against the hostility and the religious teachings of his grandmother who was a fanatic Seventh Day Adventist. He moved to Memphis in 19125 where he was able to borrow books by pretending that he was sent by a white man, He did this by presenting a forged note which read:
Dear Madam,
Please let this Nigger boy have some books by H.L. Meckens,
In this manner, he was able to read the works of novelists like Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser and other social novelists who have written about the American society. These influenced his literary career a great deal. It is important to note that his personal experience formed the basis of his choice of subject-matter of many of his works. The violence, racism, lynching he witnessed in his southern years are major themes in many of his works. Much of what he presented in Native Son is products of his personal experience in metropolitan Chicago where he had moved to in 1927. He continued his education in America race relations and became attracted to the communist party.
CHAPTER THREE
WRIGHT AND ELLISON ON THE RACE PROBLEM
Wright and Ellison like other Afro-American writers draw attention to vital aspects of the Afro-American racial experience; it has been argued that the meaning of the American society and the American situation to the black is summed up in Native Son and Invisible Man. Both authors are concerned with the inequities of the American social structure which dehumanizes the black. The two novels present the humiliation and the plight of blacks in America. Protest against America’s treatment of its black minority can be regarded as the motivating force behind these works. The literature created by Afro-Americans is both a protest against the irrational racial situation as well as an attempt by these authors to explain the unique status of black Americans to the white society in particular and the world in general.
Native Son (1940) is regarded as Wright’s most significant work of fiction. The novel has been described as the most phenomenological successful portrait of inner city poverty and dehumanization. The importance of this novel also has in the fact that it expresses the socio-economic condition of the blacks in America. Thus, it is written in the protest tradition. The novel like Ellison’s is clearly committed to the social struggle; both authors are dedicated to the cause of black freedom. Hence, their works are regarded as protest and propaganda. Native Son is written in the naturalistic tradition. Ellison however rejects Wright’s naturalism and the philosophical assumptions on which it rests, particularly the assumption that racial themes can be handled only in a naturalistic novel. It has equally been pointed out that the black American writer’s entire spirit is represented by such writers as Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. Both writers explore truths of the American experience in the way they perceive it. They also present to the reader the predictable effects of the Afro-American experience, particularly the dehumanizing effects of racism. Thus, both authors paint realistic picture of the travails of the black man in America. Much of the materials for Native Son were provided by Wright’s personal experience in Chicago hence he was able to express the brutal aspects of black experience. Ellison also captures the specifics of black history in his novel.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE LITERARY DEVICE OF WRIGHT AND ELLISON
Writing without artistic quality can only lead to dull and ineffective protest literature. For the writer, a serious and purposeful commitment to racial justice and social action requires the most intensive discipline.1
Wright and Ellison in their attempt at transmitting their awareness of the racial situation into literature display a tremendous amount of literary creativity. The creative imagination of both authors has always been widely applauded. It has been argued that the most impressive feature of Native Son is its narrative drive. Wright has also been described as a writer who writes with great economy. He displays a high level of craftsmanship in his successful fusion of narrative and metaphorical level. Wright presents the story of Bigger Thomas in the third person narrative. This makes it possible for him to present the inner consciousness of the protagonist through authorial description of feelings. Thus, Wright most of the time describes the emotional state of Bigger Thomas and the other characters in the novel.
The novel also has a rich symbolic texture. Wright resorts to the use of symbolism to convey his notion of black life in America. The symbolic act in which Bigger kills a rat with a skillet in the first chapter of the novel is central to the meaning of Bigger’s crime later in the noel. This cat is regarded as representing Bigger’s unconscious anticipation of his fate. Also, the heavy snowfalls and the icy gales of book I and II represent a hostile racist environment in the novel.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
There is no doubt that in the imaginative writings of Afro-American intellectuals, there exists a residuum of African characteristics. Perhaps one may suggest the existence of distinctive characteristics in terms of folklore, narrative strategies, aesthetics and creative potentials of black intellectuals in America. More so, when it has been argued that the Afro-Americans have inherited from their ancestors, a temperament, mind and spirit which facilitate the expression of deep seated aesthetic and religious nature. Black consciousness remains a distinctive characteristic of Afro-American literature. This element has been identified in the works of both Richard Wright and ralph Ellison.
African heritage occupies a tangible place in the writings of Afro-American. This is examined in Native Son and Invisible Man. Richard Wright is identified as one of the black writers who use Afro-American folklore and oral tradition to explain and explore racial issues. Ellison’s extensive use of folklore materials as a means of expressing the meaning of black experience is also examined in the second chapter of this research. Black consciousness is Ellison’s work takes the form of black Nationalism as proclaimed by Ras the Exhorter whose political speeches represent Black Nationalism. There is also the parody of the sermon “Blackness of Blackness”
Racism, of course, is a crucial subject in Afro-American literature. Wright and Ellison as part of their contribution towards the liberation of blacks in America explore racial themes of the invisibility of the black to the white society, the blindness of the whites to the humanity, violence, alienation as well as the theme of personal identity. This is discussed extensively in the third chapter.
It has been suggested that the combination of Afro-American folk tradition and racial experience are creatively used in the articulation of the Afro-American predicaments, the definition of black experience and the achievement of black solidarity. All of these are social necessity in the American society where racism has been a problem and threat to justice and freedom for the blacks. This research has been able to highlight the fact that the meaning of black experience and the definition of blackness is a priority for Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. This is a factor which has haunted the imagination and minds of most black writers in America. Both authors’ treatment of racial themes may be regarded as their own contribution to black struggle for liberation. The Afro-American’s struggle may be regarded as part of the effort to realize the American dream of racial justice, equality and freedom which are still part of the challenges faced by the present day America.
The so-called American dream which was also Martin Luther King’s dream is described by President Bill Clinton in his inaugural lecture delivered when he took the oath of office in January 1993 as “a quest” and “promise” which he says:
By our dreams and labours we will redeem the promise of America in the twenty-first century,1
The examination of racism in this research work may therefore be regarded as a contribution towards the understanding of the racial situation in America. And going by Martin Luther King Jr.’s claim that: “all inhabitants of the globe are eihbours”2. We in Nigeria are not only neighbours to America but brothers and sisters to our fellow blacks in America. The racial situation confronting the black people in the united states should therefore be our concern, since racism is not just a threat to America alone but according to Martin Luther King Jr., “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”
REFERENCES
- Primary sources:
- Ellison Ralph (1952), Invisible Man, Random House, New York
- Richard Wright (1940), Native Son, Harper and Row, New York
- Secondary sources:
- Baker Houston, A. Jr., (1971), Black Literature In America, McGraw, New York
- Baldwin James (1986), The Price Ticketz: Collected Non Fiction, St. Martin / Mark, New York
- Barksdale R. And Cinnamon K. (1971), Black Writers in America: A Comprehensive anthology, McGraw.
- Berghan Marion (1977), Images Of Africa In Black Literature, Macmillan, London
- Bums R. (1965), The Negro Novel in America, Yale University Press, New Haven.
- Clinton Bill (1977), Cross Road, Vol. 3, No.1
- Davis Charles T., (1982), Black is The Color Of The Cosmos, Garland Publisher, New York.
- Dorson M. Richard (1970), American Negro Folktales, Faucet, New York
- Ellison Ralph (1953), “Change the Joke and Slip the Yoke” in Shadows and Act, Random House, New York.
- Eliison Ralph (1953), “The Art of Fiction” in Shadows and Act“, Random House, New York
- Gates Louise (1988), “Figures of Signification” in The Signifying Monkey, Oxford, University Press, New York
- Ghallagher Kathleen Match (1984), “Bigger’s Great Leap to the Fugitive”, Vol. 27, No.5, CIa Journal.
- Glicksberg Charles (1963), “The Symbolism of Vision” in Twentieth Century Interpretations Of Invisible Man (Ed.) Horizon Press, New York.
- Howe Irving(1963), “Black Boys and Native Sons” in A World More Attractive, Horizon Press, New York.
- Johnson C. (1989), “Novelist of Memory” in Afro-American Literature, USAI Publication
- Locke Alain (1968), The New Negro, Johnson Reprint Corporation, New York.
- Margolies Edwards (1968), Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth Century Black American Authors, J.B. Lippincott Co., New York.
- Perkins George Et Al (Eds.).(1991), Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, Harper Collins, New York.
- Scoff Nathan A. Jr. (1979), ” Black Literature” in Harvard Guide to Contemporary : American Writing (Ed.), Harvard University Press, Daniel Holfman, London.