CHAPTER - I

REVIEW OF CRITICAL MATERIAL

William Faulkner and Richard Wright, the authors under study, have been
subjected to wide critical scrutiny. The criticism evoked by these two writers has been
so voluminous that a survey of all critical work done on them is practically impossible.
Faulkner has been studied for his narrative methods, his vision of the South, his
characterization, his technical virtuosity, his treatment of history and his treatment of
the blacks. The relation of Faulkner's life to his work has also been the subject of much
critical enquiry. Faulkner criticism has been adverse as well as favourable. Early critics
like Alfred Kazin,1 Clifton Fadiman2 and Norman Podhoretz3 found Faulkner deficient
in style as well as content. On the other hand, critics like Olga Vickery,4 Frederick J
Hoffman56
, Cleanth Brooks8 and Malcolm Cow ley7 respond favourably to his work.

Alfred Kazin, On Native Grounds (New York : Harcourt Brace, 1942).

Clifton Fadiman, "Faulkner, Extra-Special, Double Distilled". The New Y orker. Oct 31,
1936 78-80. Condensed version ptd. in Robert Pern Warren, ed., Faulkner A Collection
of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views (New Jersey : Prentice Hall Inc, 1966)
289.

Norman Podhoretz, "William Faulkner and the Problem of War : His Fable of Faith".
Commentary, vol 18, N o.3 (Sept. 1954), 227-32. Rpt. in Faulkner A Collection of
Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. 243-253.

Olga Vickery, The Novels of William Faulkner. (Baton Rouge : Louisiana State Univ.
Press, 1959).

Frederick J Hoffman, William Faulkner. Tw ayne's United States Authors Series, rev.ed.
1966 (Bombay : Popular Prakashan, 1967).

Cleanth Brooks, William Faulkner : The Yoknapatawpha Country. (New Haven : Yale
Univ. Press, 1 963).

Malcolm Cowley, The Portable Faulkner (New York : The Vikinq Press. 1946).

12

This see-saw of critical opinion has continued through the decades and can be seen in
every aspect of Faulkner criticism. A significant aspect of Faulkner criticism is the work
done on his treatment of blacks. Although it is only one aspect of his work, it has been
the subject of much intensive critical enquiry. There are more than five full length
studies, and over fifty articles dealing with Faulkner and race.

The criticism dealing with Faulkner and race can be broadly divided into three
main categories. First, the social and political attitudes that emerge when the question
of race is studied. Second, the psychological implications of race that are revealed
through his characters. Third, the impression his vision leaves on the form of his work.
In this chapter, I have surveyed the criticism in chronological order for purposes of
convenience and also because this arrangement facilitates the study of certain trends
which emerge and develop in criticism under the influence of changing view s on race.
A view of the criticism in chronological order will also reflect the impact of the political
and literary climate on the critical trends.

The first full length study of Faulkner and the blacks was published in 1962. The
60's which witnessed the trauma and turmoil of the Civil Rights Movem ent turned the
eyes of critics to this important question. Faulkner spoke openly on race matters and
his statements ever so often brought him into the limelight. His statements were
extremely controversial. On the one hand, he spoke of the need to give full rights to the
blacks and on the other spoke of choosing Mississippi, "Even if it meant going out into
the streets and shooting N e g ro e s"8. Faulkner was variously denounced as a racist and

Interview with Russel Warren Howe, " A Talk with William Faulkner" The
(March 1956). 19
13

Q /j 0-S

admired as a Civil Rights advocate. The end result of this was that from the 1960's a
lot of attention centred on Faulkner's treatment of difficult racial issues.

It is interesting to see how far criticism dealing with Faulkner and the blacks has
come since 1961. Woodruff9 in his seminal essay on "The Bear" locates the centre of
the novel in Ike's repudiation of his paternal legacy. He points out that "The Bear" deals
with three legacies, Sam Fathers' Old Carother Me Caslin's and Hubert Beauchamp's.
Woodruff makes no mention of Sam Fathers' black history or of the painful life he
relinquishes at the end. Ike's repudiation of the plantation is read as a rejection of his
grandfather's exploitation of human beings. Woodruff fails to see Ikes' mission of
giving money to the children of Tomey's Turl as a possible extension of the age old
plantation myth of the benevolent white patriarch. Buck and Buddy's attitudes are seen
as enlightened, but the fact that they fail in any practical way to alleviate the misery
of their slaves is of no account as Woodruff feels that their actions are admirable.
Faulkner's treatment of the blacks as comic incompetent fools, is overlooked. Woodruff
like Faulkner is concerned only with the responses and feelings of the white
community. Faulkner's treatment of the black as stereotyped does not enter the
discussion.

Charles H. Niton's Faulkner and the Negro10 is the first full length study of
Faulkner and the blacks. Nilon seeks to prove that Faulkner's treatment of Negro

Neal Woodruff Jr. "The Bear" and Faulkner's Moral Vision" Rpt. in Ann L. Hayes ed.
Studies in Faulkner. Carneige, Series in English (Pittsburgh : Deptt. of English &
Carneige Institute of Technology, 1961).

10 Charles H. Nilon, Faulkner and the Negro. Univ. of Colorado Series in Language and
Literature. No. 8 (Colorado : Univ. of Colorado Press, 1962).
14

character does not differ from his treatment of other characters. His characters are
based on a definite social theory, which holds that the ownership of land and slavery
are the tw o evils which undermine Southern Society. Nilon believes that Faulkner
reveals character he does not develop it. On the whole, the author finds an optimistic
point of view in Faulkner's work. Basically Nilon sees Faulkner's depiction of black
characters as positive and as destroying the kind of myth that supports Negro
stereotype. He is also of the firm opinion that Faulkner's attitude to the racial problem
is positive. He agrees with Faulkner that the South will rid itself of its ancestral evil
without any help from the North.

In "The American Negro and the image of the Absurd", Esther Merle Jackson1
seeks to prove that the Negro has served as a "Prototype of that contemporary
philosophic species, the absurd." The absurd sensibility elaborates "man's desperate
struggle to order the moral universe,without recourse to powers outside of himself"
(359). She examines Faulkner's Light in August". Richard W right's Native Son and
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Jackson's assessment of Faulkner's attitude to race is
interesting . She feels that one cannot read Faulkner's work as an essay on the heroic
dimensions of Negro character. Faulkner's position is ambiguous and changes from one
work to another. "If there is a common characteristic which Faulkner's black men share
with each other, it is that they exist within a different world from that occupied by his
white characters.... In most of his work then, Faulkner does not concern himself with
the sensibilities of his Negro characters" (361-62). Even Joe Christmas's humanity
remains a matter of being white rather than black. According to Jackson Faulkner,

11 Esther Merle Jackson, "The American Negro and the Image of the Absurd . Phylon, No.
4 (Winter 1962) 359-371.
15

through Joe Christmas presents an effective picture of the Negro as an absurd sufferer.
In her discussion of Richard Wright she comes to the conclusion that Native Son
presents the Negro as a man in revolt against fate. Wright "Seems to understand the
internal life of this character more clearly, and is thus able to give him richer
motivation" (365) than Faulkner. It is out of Bigger's consciousness of guilt that he
gains an understanding of his own life in an otherwise hostile and meaningless
universe.

This essay is important because the author feels that the three authors read
together "compose an anti-traditional image of the Negro" (361). Jackson, however,
does not seem to notice the significance of the fact that she is studying tw o black and
one white author together.

Robert Penn Warren12 discusses the way in which Faulkner's fiction can be
read as specially Southern. Warren recognizes that Faulkner's vision of the South is
also a record of man's failure to realize his fine ideals because at the very "basis of the
community created in the South there was a primary violation of the 'truth' -the
institution of chattel slavery." (257). Warren, therefore, feels that even in works where
Faulkner deals with the post-bellum period the Negro remains the central figure. Warren
agrees with Ellison's view that Faulkner began with stereotypes of Negroes and ended
by creating human beings.

12 Robert Penn Warren, "Faulkner : The South, the Negro, and Time" The Southern
Review. Vol. I (Summer, 1965) 501-525. Rpt. in Robert Penn Warren, ed., Faulkner A
Collection of Critical Essays. 20th Century views (Englewood Cliffs, N J. Prentice Hall
Inc. 1966) 251-271.
16

In this discussion of black characters Warren reiterates again and again that

Faulkner is concerned with man rather than with the concept of Negro. In novels like
Light in August. Go Down Moses and Intruder in the Dust where Negroes have central
or important roles, what Faulkner does "is to make the character transcend his suffering
qua Negro to emerge not as Negro but as men-man. The final story is never one of
social injustice, "but of an essential struggle against fate, for identity, a demonstration
of the human will to affirm itself" (263).This essay shows how critics like Warren
deliberately downplay, the centrality of race in Faulkner's fiction while seeming to give
it importance.

As late as 1967 critics were still trying to cover up, and make excuses for
Faulkner's contradictory statements regarding the question of race. Charles D. Peavy
in "Faulkner and the Howe Interview13 believes that too much importance is placed
on the Howe interview, published in 1965. He feels that this interview might have been
given when Faulkner was on one of his drunken bouts. Peavy feels that Faulkner's
repudiation of his statement should be given more importance. However, the author
fails to prove conclusively that Faulkner was inebriated when he made such damaging
statements. Peavy tries to down-play the objectionable statements made by Faulkner.
This kind of reading simplifies the complex, contradictory attitude to race that Faulkner
displays in his fiction.

In "Faulkner and the Status Quo", Robert A Smithey14 analyses the passage

13 Charles D. Peavy, 'Faulkner and the Howe Interview." CLA Journal. Vol. XI, No. 2
(December, 1967) 117-123.
14 Robert A Smithey' "Faulkner and the Status Quo". CLA Journal Vol. XI, No. 2
(December, 1967) 109-116.

17

in Go Down Moses where Roth repudiates Henry. He feels that Faulkner has failed to
depict the total picture, because he has stated and tried to prove that Roth's prejudice
is impelled by forces below the level of consciousness. Prejudices, after all, are "not
innate. Evidence against such beliefs is overwhelming. They are taught or acquired"
(111). Roth's repudiation of Henry is to be seen as a result of careful and prolonged
indoctrination. Henry's retreat from friend to the role of Sambo, Smithey feels, is an
acceptance of a way of life. He thinks that Henry's withdrawal is not a result of
humiliation or a means of self-protection, because that would ascribe to "Henry a
sensitivity his way of life and heritage rendered him incapable of knowing" (113).
Smithey feels that Faulkner has failed to come to grips with the complex ramifications
of the Southern tradition because neither Faulkner, Henry or Roth want to know why
this action of Roth is inevitable. Smithey's dissatisfaction with Faulkner is finally that
he has failed to accept that times are changing in the South.

John V. Hagopian's15 analysis of Absalom. Absalom! is extremely simplistic.

Every reader of the novel according to Hagopian must come to terms with the race
issue and the most useful approach would be to enquire which of the principal
characters are racist and whether the action of the novel as a whole, confirms or
condemns a racist ideology.

Hagopian fails or refuses to see the complexities of the relationships, or, the
implicit and overt racism in the novel. His final conclusion is that Sutpen is forced to
accept a code antithetical to his own humanity after his humiliating experiences in a

15 John V Hagopian, " Absalom. Absalom! and the Negro Question. " Modern Fiction
Studies. Vol. 19 (Summer, 1973) 207-211.
18

plantation home. This experience "became his nemesis, ruining his grand design...
Faulkner's message is that such is inevitably the consequence when a man deliberately
repudiates his innate sense of humanity in an ambitious drive for power and status. The
novel as a whole clearly repudiates Southern racism (210-211).

In William Faulkner's "Joe Christmas : A Rage for Order"18, after taking a brief
look at the different ways the character of Joe Christmas has been interpreted, Charles
E. David comes to the conclusion that Joe seeks a certain system of order. "Joe's
system of order, then, is based upon a fatal attempt to completely secularize Calvinist
doctrine, and it is that attempted secularization that determines his attitudes towards
race and sex and leads him ultimately to his death (63). The teaching of Hines and Me
Eachern convey to Joe perverted definitions of Calvinism, Negro blood and womankind.
He grossly oversimplifies religious abstractions centered in God, Heaven and Hell. Davis
feels that if this frame work is kept in mind Joe's actions and reactions become
remarkably consistent. It is interesting that the author in seeking a consistency in Joe
imposes a certain set of white male values on him.

Darwin Turner17 points out that Faulkner was no conventional conveyor of the
plantation myth. Faulkner's presentation

of slavery suffers from the duality of

consciousness which caused him to "perceive the injustice of slavery but venerate the
society which practiced it" (65). Turner analyses Faulkner's attitude to slavery in Go

16 Charles E. David, "William Faulkner's Joe Christmas, A Rage for Order". The Arizona
Quarterly. Vol. 32 No. 1 (Spring 1976) 61-73.
17 Darwin T. Turner, "Faulkner and Slavery" ptd. in E. Harrington and Ann J. Abadie, ed.,
The South and Faulkner's Yoknaoatawpha. The Actual and the Apocryphal.
(Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississipi, 1977^62.-^519

Down Moses and points out that the attack on slavery by Ike Me. Caslin has the
"bloodless abstraction f a scholarly recluse".(68). He also feels that the attack on
slavery is weakened by voicing it through Ike Me. Caslin who is ineffectual as an adult.
Faulkner also presents the plantation owners as kind and paternalistic, he presents no
instances of physical brutality to slaves. The affectionate interrelationship of master
and slave is extended to other black and white relationships as well. Turner finds it
interesting that a black Mississippian, Richard Wright, never suggests even a possibility
of such relationships. He, however, does not pursue the contrast between the authors.
Turner points out that Faulkner's depiction of the emancipated educated black also
leaves much to be desired. According to Turner only the sin of sexual exploitation,
mixed with miscegenation and incest aroused Faulkner's horror.

The fact that some critics still venerate Faulkner's views on blacks and blackwhite relationship according to Turner is "evidence that, despite the black insurrections
of the 1960's, many white Americans still snuggle in the security blanket of their
delusions that black Americans want nothing more than occasional paternalistic
revelations that white Americans love them" (85).

Jenkin's "Faulkner, the Mythic Mind and Blacks"1* is an interesting discussion

of the character of Joe Christmas and his claustrophobic sense of entrapment. He reads
Joe's dilemma as an attempt to assert his integrity of being without reference to
artificial categories of race. Since, however, Joe does not think of himself as a black
person there is always that part of him which seeks self-respect even though the white

18 Clinton Lee Jenkins, "Faulkner, the Mythic Mind and Blacks" Literature and Psychology,
No. 2 (1977) 74-91.

20

part writhes to escape from it. Jenkins in his essay concludes that Faulkner's
presentation of black "xenophobia, adequately renders the obsessional quality, from the
white point of view, in Joe's mind, but it does not grasp sufficiently the defiant
presentation of the yearning for integrity of being that would be appertaining in the
black part of Joe's mind" (80).

Jenkins sees the interpenetrability of the past and the present as paraNeKng the
nature and functioning of the unconscious mind. He studies some basic psychiatric
formulations that seek to explain the functioning of the mind such as doubling, incest,
narcissism, the castration complex, sameness and difference etc. In doubling can be
found antagonism and ambivalence as well as love for the image of the self in the
other. Jenkins tries to prove that doubling can offer an explanation for antagonism
between the white and black races. The whites project their ow n unacceptable qualities
upon the blacks as the shadow self and this injures the hater as much as the hated. Joe
Christmas's warring selves and Quentin Compson's assessment of the blacks in
Harvard re-inforce this point of view.

This interesting essay studies the psychology of the white mind in Faulkner's
characterization but makes no attempt to study the Mack mind except in so it far sheds
some light on the white mind.

M . Alexander18 counters the charge of critics who condemn Faulkner's racism

with a specious argument. Faulkner "w as in fact a racist, b u t .... he knew and knew

19 Margaret Walker Alexander, " Faulkner and Race ptd. in E. Harrington and Arm J .
Abadie1, ed., The Maker and the Mvth. Faulkner and Yoknaoatawoha 1997. (Jackson
: Univ. Press Mississippi, 1 9 78 )1 0 5- 1 21 .
21

it thirty-five or forty years before anyone much talked in such terms... And finally... he
did not conclude that this realization (that

to be racist is to be human) removed any

of the guilt and responsibility from the perceiver" (107-108). This logic leads Walker
to make a series of contradictory statements. On the one hand, she insists that
Yoknapatawpha and the characters who inhabit it are not merely figments of Faulkner's
imagination, but are based on Faulkner's own experiences of the South. Yet she states
that "Individuation and characters in the round are rarely to be found in Faulkner"
(108).

The American myth of race is built on ideas of racial superiority and inferiority
and Walker advocates the idea that the slave race is naturally childlike and primitive.
It is because the author accepts wholeheartedly this "whitewashed version of racial
discrimination that she can see Sam as "a man at peace" (106) and Lucas as a man
'who approaches if not achieves humanity" (113). She sees nothing wrong in the idea
that Faulkner "extols the ideal of racial purity

regardless of the particular color, red,

white and black" (118).

Walker's simplistic reading of race leads her to the final conclusion that Faulkner
rises above the "racist limitations of his society into a world in which human values and
universal truths take precedence over the provincial and philistine notions of bigoted
minds" (119).

22

In Faulkner's "Grecian Urn and Ike Me Caslin's Empty Legacies"20 Douglas J.

Canfield explores the legacies of Ike Me Caslin. He argues that Ike has many father
figures, the foremost among them is Sam whose legacy he unquestioningly accepts.
Ike rejects Carothers Me. Caslin's empty legacy symbolized by the great House which
is an edifice to the white man's vanity, greed and fanatical belief in racial purity. Ike's
legacy from his maternal uncle is equally useless. Canfield makes the interesting
observation that black Sam Fathers is mystified because Faulkner does not want to
dwell on the fact that Fathers is already defeated because of his race.

In "Social Time in Faulkner's Fiction 21 Wesley A. Kort points out that time has
always played a major part in Faulkner's fiction. According to the author, time in
Faulkner's fiction is more social than personal or natural. The blacks are associated
with paradigmatic moments where movement and the meaning of human time are
unified. Kort discusses three instances where blacks are involved and comes to the
conclusion that they "provide within the text points from which the social time
characteristic of Yoknapatawpha can be judged as unfortunate" (114-115).

The essay is important because it deals with an important aspect of Faulkner's

technique. However, what is significant from my point of view is that Kort points out
that the kind

of social time in which blacks

are involved, is also the kind which finally

has no major impact on society. Faulkner's ambivalent attitude to the Negro is reflected
in the treatment of time itself.

20 Douglas J. Canfield "Faulkner's Grecian Urn and Ike Me Caslin's Empty Legacies".
Arizona Quarterly. Vol. 36, No. 4, (Winter, 1980) 359-384.
21 Wesley A Kort, "Social Time in Faulkner's Fiction". The Arizona Quarterly, Vol. 37
(Summer ,1981) 101-15.
23

In Faulkner and Black-White Relations. A Psychoanalytic Approach22, Jenkins

develops some of the ideas put forth in his essay published in 1977, and embarks upon
a perceptive analysis of Black-White relations. He uses certain psychoanalytic tools, but
the focus is finally on the novels of Faulkner. It is a book which has to be read for a
deeper understanding of the complex issues governing Black-White relations. Jenkins
bases his analysis on the assumption that Faulkner believed that the twin evils of
slavery and ownership of land permeated all human and social relations of the South.
Connected to this is Faulkner's view of the necessity of personal responsibility of the
consequences of one's actions.

According to Jenkins Faulkner's white characters had to assert themselves to

achieve human integrity, this was because they were placed in the context of the
mythical South where such self-assertion was valued. Faulkner also held that "man
must resist stasis and actualize himself in a State of becoming" (18). His black
characters seen within this context are limited because they do not strive but endure.
Endurance implies stasis and an acceptance and recognition o f man's imperfect nature
and life's imperfections without desire for perfection, simply a desire to live (18). Such
critical insights are invaluable because Jenkins succeeds in establishing that endurance
which is generally seen as a virtue may be more negative than positive.

Jenkins holds the view that Faulkner is unable in his fiction to conceive of blacks
as the human equals of whites. He also points out that Faulkner's presentation of the
longing of the white to live in harmony with the blacks is a projection of the time when

22

Clinton Lee Jenkins, Faulkner and Black-white Relations. A Psychoanalytic Approach

(New York : Columbia Univ. Press 1981).
24

he "existed in harmonious acceptance of that part of himself which made the

comradeship possible" (24). Jenkins argues that there is an outrageous naivete in this
vision of lost paternity.

Chakvvjn'Si23 essay seeks to prove that Absalom. Absalom! can be easily

understood once the reader accepts that the theme and the overall design of the novel
is based on Faulkner's belief in the "renovating power of the imagination with its
heightened moments of illumination in a world of suffering and death" (116). Focussing
on the spots of time yields a better understanding of the text than a dependence upon
traditional analytic tools. All the spots of time that are studied reveal harmful
manifestations of racism. The novel according toChakwinis affirmative, because it
elaborates the ability of Quentin's imagination to "understand a complex reality in
contrast to the one-dimensional racist approach of Sutpen" (1 25-26).

Loren F. Schmidtiberger24 makes a concerted attempt to discover what Clytie

knew and the reason behind her attempt to shield Henry. Schmidtiberger takes great
pains to prove that Clytie and even Charles Bon were unaware of Bon's black blood till
the end. She, therefore, sees Clytie'jdevotion to Bon's child and her shielding of Henry
as a way of protecting her family. According to the author all Clytie's actions were a
result of her fervent family loyalty. It was family and not race, which made Clytie
protective towards Charles Etienne who might otherwise have revealed his relationship
to the Sutpens.

23 Allan Chakwin, "The Imagination as the Alternative to Sutpen's Design." The Arizona
Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2, (Summer, 1981) 116-1 26.
24 Loren F. Schimidtiberger, " Absalom. Absalom! what Clytie Knew". Mississippi
Quarterly, Vol XXXV, No. 3 (Summer, 1982) 255-263.
25

In her essay, however, Schmidtiberger makes no attempt to see any lapse in

Faulkner's depiction of Clytie. It does not seem strange to the author of the essay, or
Faulkner himself, that Clytie should be so overwhelmingly and fiercely protective of her
half-brother, Henry. Schmidtibrger does not see Judith practicing racial discrimination
*

neither is she interested in Henry's reason for killing Bon.

Walter Taylor's Faulkner' Search for a South25 is seminal for an understanding

of Faulkner's relationship to the South and his attitudes to the question of race. In his
book Taylor shows how Faulkner keeps returning to the South in his novels in an
attempt to understand himself. Taylor's perceptive analysis of some of the stories and
the novels of Faulkner shows how Faulkner's attitude towards the blacks was shaped
by his vision of the South.

Faulkner's early stories and novels were influenced by his own family. That is
why Soldier's Pav which is ostensibly about the return of an ex-British flier to his home
town turns out to be more about the blacks and paternalism than the Lost Generation.
Taylor feels that Faulkner's attachment to the world of Sartoris also stemmed from his
yearning for the South of his childhood. The comic and simple characters in the world
of Sartoris seem to exist to illustrate the heroic potential of the Cavalier life-style.

Taylor's study of The Sound and the Fury breaks new ground because he links
the narrative method Faulkner uses to his vision of the South. The point of view of
Benjy, Quentin and Jason highlight the decadence of the old South. The Dilsey Section,
according to Taylor, attempts to provide an alternative. Faulkner's attempt is not to

25 Walter Taylor, Faulkner's Search for a South (Urbana : Univ. of Illinois Press) 1983.
26

create another planation darky in the character of Disley, but to show that the center
of the novel lies with her, her spirituality throws the decadence of the white aristocrats
into stark relief.

Taylor points out that in Light in August. Faulkner is able to separate himself
from the blind racism of the paternalist

aristocrats. By placing Joe within the ambit

of Rednecks and Puritans like the Burdens Hines and Me Eacherns, Faulkner is finally
able to probe the intricacies of what being black in a white world meant. Taylor
compares Faulkner's treatment of Joe to Richard Wright's treatment of Bigger. This is
one of the few times that an attempt is made to study these two writers together,
albeit sketchily. According to Taylor both Wright and Faulkner attempt to show how
white American society has shaped black character. Wright's novel was dependent
upon Max's argument and this was simplistic. Faulkner showed up the inadequacy of
such a treatment through the character of Gavin Stevens. Gavin Stevens makes
Faulkner face the unpalatable truth that the paternalistic South might be as responsible
for shaping black character as the Puritan white society.

By probing the ramifications of miscegenation in Absalom. Absalom! Faulkner

no longer had to romanticize the relationship between blacks and whites. But as Taylor
recognizes there are no characters in Absalom. Absalom! who basically identify
themselves as black. "Faulkner had once again avoided the meaning of growing up
black in a white dominated society and this had a direct bearing on the authenticity of
his part black figures" (116). Absalom. Absalom! attacked the views of the system
without attacking the basic assumptions of the aristocrats who had created it.

27

Taylor's discussion of Go Down Moses shows how Faulkner used the Me

Caslin's to grapple with every aspect of the curse of slavery. Isaac's repudiation of his
heritage held out a faint hope for the white South. Faulkner peoples Go Down Moses
with two kinds of blacks the childish ones who needed the institution of slavery to
protect them and those who were better and stronger than the whites and for whom,
therefore, the planation was a travesty.

With Intruder in the Dust Taylor feels, Faulkner instead of resolving the
questions he had raised in Absalom. Absalom! and Light in August, sidesteps and
undermines them. Finally in The Reivers. Faulkner seems to come back to the South of
his youth. Taylor suggests that with Intruder and The Reivers Faulkner finds a South
where" aristocrats and blacks understood each other as aristocrats had always been
sure they did" (197).

Doreen Fowler28 reads Light in August in terms of the light and dark images.
Light, according to Fowler, stands for values that are "Southern, protestant, white and
regrettably racist." Darkness connotes the private world, the individual and the world
of the unconscious, "and to this dark realm are consigned all those whom the dominant
white class fears and rejects; all outlaws, madness, rebels, nonconformists, dreams,
and a whole scorned and repudiated race.... a race dark in color" (307-08). After
analyzing the minor characters Fowler turns to Joe, Byron, Joanna, Lena and
Hightower. In Joe she sees a character who is always fleeing from the light of society.
It is only as he dies that "Joe is more closely linked to other human beings". Fowler

25 Doreen Fowler, "Faulkner's Light in August"; a Novel in Black and White." The Arizona
Quarterly Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter, 1984) 305-324.
28

sees this moment as positive, however she does mention that with Joe the price of "re
admission is extinction as an individual" (324).

Esther Alexander Terry27 reiterates the often repeated idea that the Negro" is
the center, "the core, of any traditional Southern myth making" (304). According to
Terry, Faulkner clearly recognized the evils inherent in slavery but at the same time he
always tried to find a qualified moral justification for the system that provided the
corner posts upholding the Southern tradition. In his fiction Faulkner is constantly
working out this dilemma, and he keeps returning to his Southern past and the role of
the slave and ex-slave. Terry examines the black characters in the Sartoris stories to
see whether Faulkner's narrative logic is ever sacrificed to this larger motive of
justifying the South.

In The Unvanauished Faulkner makes a serious attempt to show that questions

of class and race are superseded in the relationship between Bayard and Ringo.
However, Terry sees Faulkner's presentation of pastoral love between Ringo and
Bayard as contrived and agrees with Howe that the slave's side of the story is never
told and that Faulkner does not develop character. In Faulkner's treatment of Loosh and
Caspey, Terry sees a refusal to portray "modern black sensibility, because to do so
would compromise his original intention of shoring up the Southern tradition" (313).

27 Esther Alexander Terry, "For blood and kin and home : Black Characterization in William
Faulkner's Sartoris Saga ptd. in Arthur F. Kinney, ed.. Critical Essays on the Sartoris
Family. (Boston : G K Hall and co. 1985) 303-317.
29

Faulkner and Race : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. 1986 28 is an important

collection of papers presented in the Faulkner conference of 1986. Abadie and Fowler
have put together current scholarship on the issue of Faulkner and race. The papers
presented in this collection are a good indication of the sophisticated and complex
approaches that critics apply to questions dealing with Faulkner and Race from the late
1980's.

Eric J. Sundquist's "Faulkner, Race and the forms of American fiction" 29is
particularly interesting with regard to my study. Sundquist notes that the improvisatory
character of Jazz has influenced the modern black literary tradition in vital ways. He
sees the tradition of texts dealing with race in America as a "series of responses and
counter responses in which black and white writers critically improvised upon one
another, in some cases undermining their "masters or exposing the enslaving figures
and forms with which they have been burdened" (2). According to Sundquist the
literary and historical traditions in which Faulkner's central novels are to be placed have
received comparatively little attention. He notes that Faulkner's novels bring to a pitch
the "literary confrontation with race hatred in the early twentieth century" (3).
Sundquist points out that neither classic American literature or Afro-American literature
adequately defines the problem of race. According to him "the two traditions must be
read together for their interactions and conflicts, their revisions of one another (3).

28 Ann. J. Abadie and Doreen Fowler, ed. Faulkner and Race : Faulkner and
Yoknapatawpha. 1986 (Jackson; London : Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1987).
29 Eric. J. Sundquist, "Faulkner, Race and the forms of American fiction", ptd in Faulkner
and Race : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 1986. 1-34.

30

Sundquist concentrates on the central themes of miscegenation, rebellion,

sacrificial justice and gothic historicism. He shows how conventional treatments of
'passing' as in Charles Chestnutt's The House Behind the Cedars (19001. Nella Larson's
Passing (1929) and James Welden Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured
Man (1912) are "subsumed into the texture of Light in August (5). Sundquist shows
how Light in August like Twain's Puddnhead Wilson and Chestnutt's Black No More
gives "expression to forces that destroy narrative coherence" (13).

In his discussion of Gothic historicism Sundquist discusses Faulkner's Light in

August with O' Neil's 'Emperor Jones' Richard Wright's Native Son and William
Stvron's The Confessions of Nat Turner. Sundquist shows how each of these writers
supplements and reinforces ideas that are thrown up for discussion in different novels.

In Faulkner's Negroes Twain"30, Blyden Jackson maintains that Faulkner's

environment and family background were designed to present Negroes in a most
unfavourable light. He shows how the Negroes of Soldiers Pav and Mosquitoes fitted
into the pattern of racist stereotypes. Jackson through his reading of Go Down Moses
seeks to prove that Faulkner did not "blink his eyes either at the utter nastiness of color
caste itself or at the casuistries resulting from it in the work of artists who supported
it: (69).

30 Blyden Jackson, "Faulkner's Negroes Twain" ptd in Faulkner and Race : Faulkner and
Yoknapatawoha. 1986, 58-69.
31

Walter Taylor 31 in his essay uses Ralph Ellison's idea of the "masking joke"
as the center of American identity. The joke was a "ritual disguise whose central figure
was a smart man playing dumb" (111). The Black American could and did "slip the
yolk of bondage" and changed the joke that supported it. Taylor believes that Faulkner
inThe Reivers makes the masking joker the focal point of his novel. At the same time
he reads the novel as a "paradigm of the paternalistic ethic of Faulkner's youth" (113).
Taylor shows how there were pressures on Faulkner to write something affirmative
about the South and Faulkner's tone is nostalgic as he composes The Reivers The
Priest family resembles Faulkner's

own family and Lucius is initiated into the

paternalistic world of the Southern gentleman.

The essay carefully analyses the various masks Ned uses to turn the tables on
his white masters but what is important is the final statement that Taylor makes about
The Reivers. According to him it is one of Faulkner's "funniest books" In writing it
Faulkner had enlisted humour in "praise of a regressive society. Written at the end of
one South, published on the threshold of another, Faulkner's mellow reminiscence
beams the very loud political message that Jim Crow was not so bad" (1 28).

Noel Polk32 probes Faulkner's attitude to liberal Southerners. Faulkner's

depiction of Gavin Stevens in Intruder in the Dust and his subsequent statements that
Stevens was "not speaking for the author, but for the best type of liberal Southerner"
(131), leads Polk to ask a number of questions. He wonders whether by delinking

31 Walter Taylor, "Faulkner's Reivers : How to change the Joke without slipping the
Yoke", ptd in Faulkner and Race : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. 1986. 111-129.
32 Noel Polk, 'Man in the Middle " Faulkner and the Southern White Moderate." ptd in
Faulkner and Race : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. 1986. 131-151.
32

himself from Stevens Faulkner was simply putting on a novelist's mask of anonymity
or whether he was trying to make some sort of statement about the liberal Southerner,
Polk sees Stevens verbose statements as a kind of cover up for his failure to act.
Although Faulkner himself veered towards the moderates, his attitude towards Stevens
in Intruder in the Dust is reasonably clear. "The novel provides sufficient evidence of
Stevens' shortcomings to make us wary of accepting his words at their face value"
(135). Polk feels that Faulkner makes Stevens resemble, the Faulkner critic who
"homes straight in on the easy, the simple, the clever, and avoids the hard and even
dangerous complexities of a tragic situation (144).

To the question was Faulkner a racist ? Polk answers yes and no. No if 'racism'
means a hatred or fear of Negroes. Yes if 'racism' means a belief in the inferiority of
Negroes. Polk in his final analysis of Faulkner's attitude to the black says that Faulkner
acted quite "responsibly toward the Negro, both in his fiction and in the public forum
(146). After a penetrating analysis of "The Evening Sun" and Go Down Moses, Polk
asserts that Faulkner's position is closer to the deputy's in "Pantaloon

in Black"

because like the deputy, "he doesn't have any answer, but at least he is beginning to
ask the right questions" (150).

Phillip M. Weinstein33 bases his argument on Derridas views on marginality. He

believes with Derrida that the center does not merely 'permit' the margin to exist at its
side; rather it is constituted by the very notion of marginality. Take away the margin
and you have lost the center; it is that outside the center which allows us to conceive

33 Phillip M. Weinstein, "Marginalia ; Faulkner's Black Lives", ptd. in Faulkner and Race
: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha 1986. 170-190.

33

of 'center'; "Faulkner's blacks are in this sense the key to his whites how could you
have whites without blacks to silhouette and make salient their whiteness"? (170).
Though the marginal can be used as a key for interpreting the center, the marginal
remains marginal and that is why the blacks "as represented by Faulkner are truncated
figures.... These figures have no access to their own incandescence, their importance
is for others alone (171).

Weinstein makes an interesting point when he considers why the realization of

truncation or otherwise of the black marginal figures is important for the reader. The
reader, who is not black, absorbs the attitudes of the fictive world and it is important
for the reader to know what shaping images of blackness he is absorbing. With this
premise in mind the author concentrates his attention on The Sound and the Furv
(1929), Light in August. (1932), Absalom. Absalom1 (1936) and Go Down Moses
(1942).

Through his analysis of Rider, Lucas and Samuel Worsham Beauchamp

Weinstein seeks to prove that despite Faulkner's remarkable portraits of black
character, he fails to project the black as being capable of creating a world for himself.
This inability on the part of Faulkner leads Weinstein to believe that it will take a
Richard Wright to see in his "denatured corpse the seed of escape of Big Boy leaving
home" (1 89).

Bluestein in "Faulkner and Miscegenation"'4 begins his essay with a cautionary

34 Gene Bluestein, "Faulkner and Miscegenation". The Arizona Quarterly. Vol. 43, No. 2,
(Summer, 1987) 151-164).
34

word. Miscegenation according to him is a misnomer because it means'a mixture of

races' and both blacks and whites belong to the same race. However, miscegenation
as a social construct continues to hold sway. Faulkner seems to be convinced that
miscegenation ultimately breeds alienation, ugliness and mental deprivation.

Bluestein counters Brooks's argument that it is not proven that Joe Christmas
has any black blood with the argument that what is important is the fact that he thinks
he has Even Sam Fathers, a result of notable miscegenation finally shows his black
inheritance. Despite his special role, Sam's humanity is diminished because of his black
blood which taints him forever. At the end of Absalom, Absalom! Shreve's prediction
of the long range consequence of miscegenation is absolutely damning. It is the half
witted Jim Bond's who are going to conquer the world. Bluestein's argument that we
cannot discuss Faulkner's work without correcting the assumption of an outmoded and
prejudiced ideology" (162-163) seems justified.

Doreen Fowler's essay "Joe Christmas as "Womanshenegro,"35 is a good

example of the increasing importance of feminist criticism. This approach was
becoming increasingly successful during the 1980'sin throwing fresh light on canonical
texts. Fowler points out the misogyny apparent in Faulkner's novels and examines Light
in August to try and answer three questions. What is the reason for the masculine
aversion to the feminine? What is the context for it? And finally does Faulkner's
rendering of anti womanism accept or critique this attitude?

35 Doreen Fowler, "Joe Christmas, as 'Womanshenegro,". ptd. in Doreen Fowler and Ann
J. Abadie, ed Faulkner and Women : Faulkner and Yoknapatawhpa, 1985. (Jackson :
Univ. Press if Mississippi, 1987) 144-159.

35

Fowler feels that Joe's rejection of women is related to his attitude towards
blacks. The society of Light in August is patriarchal where the strong are male, adult
and white and the weak are women, children and blacks. Fowler analyses incidents in
the novel to prove her point that each time Joe lashes out at women or blacks he is
lashing out at, and trying to suppress corresponding characteristics within himself. In
the end Joe acts passively and meekly and seems to give up the male attitude of force.
He finally stops running from those qualities in himself which ally him with women and
blacks.

To the tw o crucial questions of how Faulkner portrays this social order, viz. does
he accept or elaborate the patriarchal society? Or does he succumb to the white-male
superracist values of his culture? Fowler answers with an emphatic no. Light in August
is an indictment and a warning" (159). With Joe Christmas, Faulkner implies that
male/female, black/white distinctions are not irreconcilable opposites, but rather the
opposing ends of one continuum.

In "The 'Joint' of Racism : Withholding the Black in Absalom. Absalom0

James A Snead breaks new ground when he studies the narrative method of Faulkner,
not just to expose complications or to show how history or time is represented but to
show what the main 'joint' of the novel is. The 'joint' is obviously racism and is the
place where the "racial plot of the South holds together and threatens to fall apart"
(129). Snead points out that racism or difference is difficult to gauge because more
often than not racial divisions break down. Sutpen himself is the most striking example

36 James A Snead, "The 'Joint of Racism : withholding the Black in Absalom, Absalom1"
ptd. in Harold Bloom ed., William Faulkner Absalom. Absalom! Mod. Critical
Interpretations, (New York : Chelsea House Publishers, 1987) 129-141).
36

of this breakdown, because Faulkner leaves the question of his ancestry vague, and
there are constant reminders of the black side of his personality.

Snead finds the greatest structural weakness in the absent black. Sutpen's story
makes no sense until Quentin and Shreve bring back the repressed black into the
picture. .Snead feels that Absalom. Absalom! is not primarily about Sutpen or the
Jefferson of 1909, it is a "sort of induction rite, testing the novitiates ability to learn
and tactfully transmit the secret sleight of hand upon which racial classifications are
based". The story both hides and exposes "two hundred years of oppression and
exploitation {of the black) (141).

Phillip M. Weinstein37 uses Jacques Lacan and Althusser to study the problem
of identity in Faulkner's novels. In this essay Weinstein first of all accepts that there
are no universal texts and no universal readings of them. He then draws on Lacan's and
Althusser's formulations of a human subject "inextricably and irrationally permeated by
social networks., a human subject who lives his identity both through primordial
imaginary merges with the others that surround him" (182-183), to study Absalom.
Alsaloml. Weinstein feels that individual identity in this novel remains incomplete, each
version of a character's identity is revised with another. The views of the identity of
different characters is what gives this novel its richness.

37 Phillip M. Weinstein, "Thinking I was Not who was Not was Not who?: The Vertigo of
Faulknerian Identity." ptd. in Dorean Fowler and ann J. Aladie. ed., Faulkner and the
Craft of Fiction : Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha. 1987 (Jackson Univ. of Mississippi
Press, 1989) 172-73.
37

In an analysis of the narrative method of Absalom. Absalom! Charles Sherry38

seeks to prove that each narrator and listener struggles to make visible the story and
vision behind Sutpen's Hundred. Sherry's essay makes a novel point about the way
Absalom. Absalom! can be read. According to him the Sutpen tragedy is an outcome
of the way Sutpen takes possession of the earth and the tragedy manifests itself as
miscegenation. Sutpen seeks to acquire an identity through the possession of land, and
this ownership of land makes it possible for one man to own another. What Sutpen fails
to comprehend is the fact that possession of the land inserts him into a historical
process. As long as the history of possession occurred as slavery there was always the
possibility of its amelioration. But when this injustice happened as miscegenation, then
it could not be undone. Sutpen's story in all its telling and retelling remains inexplicable
until miscegenation is included. "The absence of miscegenation makes the story
tolerable but meaningless, its presence gives it an intolerable meaning" (70). Sherry,
therefore, sees/reads Absalom. Absalom! as a way of reading the history of the South
itself.

Keith Clark39 does not agree with the view of Lee Jenkins and Charles H.
Nilon, who see a marked improvement in Faulkner's depiction of blacks in Intruder in
the Dust. Clark argues that by alienating Lucas from the black community, Faulkner
effectively reduces him to a Sambo like figure who needs the help of whites to
extricate him from the tight spot he finds himself in. Clark notes that Lucas's voice in
the text is silenced and he is completely marginalized. Faulkner cannot grant his few

38 Charles Sherry, "Being Otherwise : Nature, History and Tragedy in Absalom. Absalom?
The Arizona Quarterly. Vol. 45, No. 3, (Autumn, 1989) 47-75.
39 Keith Clark, "Man on the Margin": Lucas Beauchamp and the Limitations of Space".
The Faulkner Journal Vol. VI, No. 1 (Fall, 1990, Pub. Fall 1992) 67-79.
38

black male heroes their full humanity "as unequivocally black men until he removes
them from their own community and places them on the edges of a hostile white one...
the closer Lucas's ties to whiteness the closer he comes to rightness and manhood"
(69). Lucas is completely divorced from a black community and Faulkner assures the
reader that he is proud of it. Clearly Faulkner wants this to be seen as a mark of
strength, but what it actually succeeds in doing is marginalizing him even further.

Clark's analysis is thought provoking because he does not read Intruder in the
light of Faulkner's public statements but assesses the narrative strategies which
dehumanize the black hero in a text usually considered to profess anti- racist
sentiments.

Cedric, Gael Bryant40 in a perceptive essay bases his argument upon Mikhail
Bakhtin's formulations about 'dialogical discourse" which provides a way to explore
Faulkner's attempt in The Sound and the Fury to construct the 'other'. Brayant agrees
with Bakhtin that our tendency to assimilate the 'other's' discourse determines the
basis of our behaviour. Bryant shows how both Deacon and Quentin are forms of
behaviour. Deacon's ability to "assume different roles is predicted upon a sense of
himself as a projection of white people's desire" (32). If Deacon has a positive self it
is submerged beneath all these masks and faces. Quentin feels a sense of closeness
to Deacon because through him he can touch a vanishing reality, the reality of Roskus,
Dilsey and the Negro astride the mule. In short the Deacon provides for Quentin links
to the antebellum South.

40 Cedric Gael Bryant, "Mirroing the Racial 'Other' : The Deacon and Quentin Compson
in William Faulkner's The Sound and the 'Fury' The Southern Review. Vol. 29, No. 1,
(Jan. 1993) 30-40.
39

According to Bryant both Quentin and Deacon are aware that Deacon proiects
what the whites expect of him but both of them do not shatter the illusions of
Deacon's roles because in different ways their identities depend on this illusion. Bryant
also points out that Deacon allows Quentin to glimpse his authentic self when he tells
Quentin about the scheme that will give him greater social status. The Deacon's faith
in Quentin is finally misplaced because Quentin is immersed in the idea of racial
stereotypes. Quentin eventually fails to penetrate Deacon's masks just as Deacon does
not understand Quentin's inability to see in him anything beyond what he sees in Dilsey
and Roskus.

Diane Roberts4 seeks to show the ce ntral p o sitio n that w o m en held in the
creation of the South as a different social entity. The stereotype of Southern women
fall into four major categories, the Belle, the Confederate Woman, the tragic Mulatto
and the Mammy. Roberts studies the way Faulkner dealt .71th md m.ed thesn
stereotypes in his fiction. Roberts sees in Faulkner's treatment of women a recognition
of their threatening otherness. Women in Faulkner's fiction break down the boundaries
that the South tries to impose on them.

In her treatment of women Roberts first deals with the representation of each
type in Southern culture, the context in which the type appears before she moves on
to Faulkner's texts and the conditions of the South in which he produced the texts. Her
analysis of Mammy and the Tragic Mulatto are interesting and shows how Faulkner
was often unable to transcend his own race and gender when he dealt with them.

41 Diane Roberts, Faulkner and Southern Womanhood (London -.The Univ. of Georgia
Press, 1993).
40

An analysis of more than three decades of criticism of Faulkner and race shows
distinct changes in attitudes from the 1960'sto the 1990's. The 1960's and '70's saw
critics looking at Faulkner's treatment of race in basically two ways. There was more
or less, an agreement among critics that Faulkner's attitude towards blacks as shown
in his characterization was positive and moderate. Dissenting voices were few and far
between. Most critics held that in the final analysis Faulkner was more interested in the
basic humanity of blacks or that the black in Faulkner could, and very often did,
symbolize the absurd situation of 20th century man.

The 1980'sand 1990'sshow a more sophisticated and critical attitude. Recent

critical theory helped to overthrow simplistic assertions that any final word was ever
possible on a text. The complex and often contradictory positions Faulkner took in his
fiction came in for close analysis The increasing importance of fe m in is t s tu die s
highlighted aspects of Faulkner's treatment of women and blacks which had not earlier
come in for critical analysis. Earlier positions were, and are being constantly challenged,
the result is criticism which is constantly opening up fresh avenues for study. However,
it must be pointed out that even though the interdependence of white and AfroAmerican literature is increasingly being stressed except for brief mentions, there is no
comprehensive work where Faulkner and Richard Wright are studied together.

Richard Wright's work attracted serious literary criticism only form about the
second half of the 1960's. The earliest reviews of Uncle Tom's Children in the 1930's
swung from extravagant praise to complete denunciation. Malcolm Cowley favourably
reviewed Uncle Tom's Children and found it both heartening, as evidence of a vigorous
new talent and terrifying as the expression of a racial hatred that has never ceased to

41

grow and gets no chance to die"12. In an editorial just a few days later, Uncle Tom's
Children was dubbed as propaganda for the NAACP and Wright was castigated for
ignoring the "peace and harmony" of race relations in the South and the book
dismissed as "slush. Slop and drivel"11

The publication of Native Son in 1940 was greeted in a similar fashion. A

section of critics hailed it for depicting for the first time a truthful picture of the
oppressed black. Wright's was praised for his powerful indictment of white society and
for his ability to probe the mind of the Negro. His realism, lack of sentimentality
narrative skill and clarity of interpretation also came in for a fair amount of praise
Unfabourable reviewers felt that Wright's portrayal of the bestial, treacherous and
unlovable Bigger would only lead to more white repression. Wright's narrative was seen
as weak, especially the last section which seemed to be mere propaganda. The clear
headed Bigger of the last section according to these critics, was not a logical
development of the earlier Bigger. Wright's portrayal of both blacks and whites,
according to early reviewers was too one sided. Wright's detractors felt that the
depiction of Bigger was a tacit admission of the inherent savagery of the blacks ' The
impact that Native Son had on the reading public can he gauged from the cudgels that
were taken up on behalf of and against the book.

42 Malcolm Cowley, "Long Black Song", The New Republic, 94 (6th April 1938), 280. rpt
in Kenneth Kinnamon, et, al, A Richard Wright Bibliography : Fifty years of Criticism
and Commentary. 1936-1982). (New York : Greenwood Press, 1988) 17.
13 Anonymous, 'A Garbage can Book". Jackson : Mississippi Daily News 26th April'
1938) 0.6. rpt in Kinamon et al. A Richard Wright Bibliography. 9.
44 Kinnamon, et, al, A Richard Wright Bibliography 85-92.
42

The publication of Black Bov in 1945, The Outsider in 1953, Savage Holiday in
1954 and The Long Dream in 1958 similarly aroused mixed reactions. Reviewers saw
Wright's novels as works of racial protest or as naturalistic or existential novels. It was
only after the first reactions to Wright's novels had died down that critics turned to
serious criticism of the novels. The trend was set by James Baldwin's Essay" Many
Thousands Gone"45 which was the first detailed consideration of the structure, artistry
and impact of Native Son. Baldwin discusses how Wright, writing in a context of social
struggle, conveys with rage the monstrous stereotype of the black man that exists in
the white mind. Baldwin feels that Wright divorces Bigger from the complex reality of
black group life and that is why Native Son is unable to explore fully the issues it
raises. Nevertheless, Native Son is the "most powerful celebrated statement we have
yet had of what it means to be a Negro in America (30). Baldwin's essay was followed
by a number of scholarly articles which discussed Wright's works from different
perspectives.

Esther Merle Jackson45 compares Native Son extensively to Light in August

and briefly to Crime and Punishment. She reads Wright's novel as an existential
exploration of human responsibility rather than as a study of racial and social injustice

45 James Baldwin, "Many Thousands Gone". Partisan Review 18 (Nov-Dec, 1951). 665980, rpt. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1955) 2454.
46 Esther Merle Jackson, "The American Negro and the Image of the Absurd". Phvlon 23.
(fourth Quarter, 1962.) 259-71.
43

Irving Howe in 'Black Boys and Native Sons,1 discusses the impact of Native
Son:

"The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed

forever. No matter how much qualifying the book might later
need, it made impossible a repetition of the old lies. In all its
crudeness, melodrama and claustrophobia of vision, Richard
Wright's novel brought out into the open, as no one ever had
before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may
yet destroy our culture" (63).

According to Howe, Wright for the first time pointed out that Blacks were not always
patient or forgiving, they were scarred by their experiences and held the white men
responsible for their plight. Another important point that Howe makes is that Wright
differs from the traditional Naturalist novelists because he is not a detached observer
piling up evidence, but rather a participant in Bigger's perceptions. "Naturalism pushed
to an extreme turns here into something other than itself, a kind of expressionist
outburst, no longer a replica of the familiar social world, but a self-constrained realm
of grotesque emblems" (65).

The early sixties also saw Wright being discussed in historical surveys of the
fiction of the forties. Renaissance in the South : A Critical History of the Literature.
1920-1960.48 contains a brief evaluation of Wright, praising his power and thematic

S e r i}

47 Irving Howe, Black Boys and Nativejn Irving Howe, A World More Attractive (New
York : Horizon Press, 1963) 100-110, Rpt. in Houston a Baker, Jr., ed, Twentieth
Century Interpretations of Native Son. A Collection of Critical Essays (New Jersey :
Prentice Hall, Inc. 1968), 63-70.

48 John M. Bradbury, Renaissance in the South : A Critical History of the Literature. 19201960 (Chapel Hill : The Univ. of N. Corolina Press, 1963).
44

seriousness, but complaining of his lack of objectivity and artistry. Chester E. Eisinger
in Fiction of the Forties49 discusses Native Son in relation to naturalism, communism
and the sociology and psychology of race. The author feels that Wright is a literary
survivor from the thirties. According to Eisinger, Bigger turns to violence as a
desperate means of self-realization. In an earlier book Robert A Bone'' shows how
Wright's novels are the first expression of the effects of urbanization, upon the
Negroes. Black novelists lagged behind naturalist writers like Dreiser and Stephen Crane
in depicting the distorting influence of the city upon their characters. Richard Wright
was the fist Black Novelist to deal with ghetto life in the Northern cities.

David Littlejohn51 in his discussion of Wright emphasizes his "Primeval

simplicity" (102). Littlejohn bases his discussion of Black Bov Native Son and Uncle
Tom's Children on the assumption that Wright's theme is race war. He feels that
Wright relies on sensationalism and protest rather than on artistic technique and
psychological or moral insight.

In 1968, Constance Webb62 published the first full length biography of Wright.
Webb's sympathetic memoir brought to light much new information on Wright's
childhood. The biography does not always follow the chronological order of events in
Wright's life. It is more of an interpretation of Wright's personality than an assessment

49 Chester E Eisinger, Fiction of the Forties (Chicago : The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963)
50 Robert A. Bone, The Negro Novel in America (New Haven : Yale Univ. Press. 1958).
51 David Littlejohn, Black on White : A critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes.
(New York : Grossam, 1966).
52 Constance Webb, Richard Wright : A Biography (New York : Putnam and Sons, 1968)
45

of his work.

Edward Margolies53 devotes an entire chapter in his book to Richard Wright.

NatiyejSon according to him was a "milestone in Negro letters., because it expressed
overtly for the first time, the shame, the terror, the rage and the self-hatred" (19) of
many Negroes. Native Son liberated the Negro authors as no single book had done
before. In a comprehensive analysis of Native Son Margolies arrives at important
conclusions. He feels that the last section of the novel is out of key with the earlier
sections. This is because Wright's commitment and emotional empathy is with Bigger's
hatred rather than Max's impassioned plea. "In the final analysis, Native son stands on
shifting artistic grounds. Had Wright' managed to affix a different ending, more in
accord with the character of Bigger and the philosophical view point he seeks to
embody, the novel might have emerged a minor master piece " (851.

1969 was an important year for Wright scholarship. Dan Me Call and Edward
Margolies published two full length studies on Richard Wright. In The Art of Richard
Wright54, Margolies, after an introductory chapter on Wright's life and works, devotes
three chapters to an analysis of the non-fiction and five to the fiction of Wright. The
point of view inclines more to Wright's existentialism and universalism than to his
protest and radicalism. Margolies frequently disparages Wright's Marxism. He examines
Wright's use of the concept of the outsider as an analytical tool that led to incisive,
even prophetic, insights, despite or even because of its extrem e subjectivity

53 Edward Margolies, Native sons. A critical Study of twentieth Century Black American
Authors (Philadelphia : J.B . Lippincott Co. 1968).
54 Edward Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright, Crosscurrents, Modern Critiques, ed
Harry T. Moore (Carbondale and Edwardsville : Southern Illinois Uriiv Press, 1969)
46

Dan Me. Call in The Example of Richard Wright*5 favourably assesses Wright
as a writer and social critic. According to Me. Call, Wright succeeds in creating myths
or archetypes out of stereotypes. He takes a common assumption of the American
culture and elaborates and energizes it in such a way that the culture finds in it the
expression of one of its deepest drives. Me Call finds the confrontation of racism to be
Wright's main subject. Unlike Poe, Hawthorne and Melville. Wright could not establish
a distance between the external world and the creative imagination. The present was
too much a part of him and that is what makes Wright write so powerfully about the
trauma faced by the blacks in a predominantly white society.

George E Kent in his essay "Richard Wright : Black-ness and the Adventure of
Western Culture"56 explores "three sources of Wright's power : his double
consciousness, his personal tension and his dramatic articulation of black and white
culture." (76) in the major works of the author's American Phase, Black Boy. Uncle
Tom's Children. Lawd Today and Native Son.

Donald B. Gibson57 takes Wright's major theme to be the "individual in conflict

with social convention" (344). Gibson discerns in the novels and short stories a
consistent pattern : violation of convention, a consequent sense of freedom, fear of
indifference; and confession, capture or flight. Usually Wright opposes the restraints

55 Dan Me Call, The Example of Richard Wright (New York : Harcourt Brace, 1969).
56 George E. Kent. "Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture. "CLA Journal.
12(June, 1969), 322-343. rpt. in Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture
(Chicago : Third World Press, 1972).
57 Donald B. Gibson, "Richard Wright and the Tyranny of Convention", CLA Journal, 12
(June, 1969) 344-357.
47

of convention. The Outsider is the notable exception.

William Goede68 in his essay compared the invisible men in Wright and Ellison.
This essay is important because it begins with the assumption that Ellison could not in
fact revolt from Richard Wright regardless of his protestations to that effect Richard
Wright depicts a world "which denies Negroes any humanity, and dynamic or racially
shared truths; that is, Wright's world forbids Negroes the life that racists have in fact
been denying them for centuries (490). Ellison's protagonist on the other hand, has
a consciousness which is able to absorb and transmit what is felt. Wright by denying
his hero the wealth of black history dehumanizes him into a raceless abstraction.
Goede's comparison shows not just similarities between the two authors but the
"evolution both of the personal aesthetic of the two authors and of Ellison's revolt from
naturalism" (492).

Lewis A Lauson59 in his article uses the concept of dread to analyse The
Outsider to show that the novel's existentialism is more Christian than aesthetic. The
Concept of Dread and The Sickness Unto Death, according to Lauson constitutes the
primary philosophical sources of The Outsider. For Lauson, and other critics, who read
this novel only as an existential text, the fact that Cross is Black is not taken into
consideration at all.

58 William Geode, "On Lower Frequencies ; The Buried Men in Wright and Ellison Modern
Fiction Studies. Vol. 15,No. 4 (Winter, 1969-70) 483-501.
59 Lewis A Lauson, Cross Damon : Kierkegaardian Man of Dread" CLA Journal, Vol XI7,
No.2 (March 1971) 298-316.
48

Alvin Starr80 discusses the influence of James T.Farrel's ideas on Wright. Starr
builds his essay on the dispute in the Communist Party, during the time Wright was a
member. The dispute was between those members who thought that literature should
be concerned with political ideas and those who felt that art was independent of such
concerns. Farrel belonged to the latter group and was instrumental in influencing
Wright. Starr sees a change in Wright's attitudes from the early poems and stories to
his later work. Farrel's influence can also be seen in "Blueprint for Negro Writing"
where Wright felt that rather than tacking a message on to a piece of fiction, a Black
Writer should make the message an integral part of his work. It is these ideas that
finally make Native Son artistically viable. In the first two sections the Communists are
painted in an unfavourable light. In Book - III where Jan and Max are depicted positively
Wright does not make the mistake of idealizing them. Starr's thesis is tha './right
undercuts, Max's role at the end of the novel by suggesting that Max "like so many
other characters is blind" (49-50).

"Richard Wright's American Hunger""1 is an essay in which G.S.Moore seeks

to pinpoint the reason for its failure. According to Moore the basic fault lies in Wright's
"alienation and estrangement from the rhythm and tempo of the black community" and
his "tendency to place too much faith in the white liberal establishment and its radical
allies (79). Wright continually needs to have his feelings corroborated and validated
by white people and this is the reason for his a m b iv a le n t a tt itu d e to th e C o m m u n is t
Party. According to Moore Wright's heroes remain one dimensional because his ideas

60 Alvin Starr, "Richard Wright and the Communist Party - The James T. Farrel Factor".
CLA Journal. V ol.21,N o.1 (Sept.1977) 41-50.
B

G.S.Moore, "Richard Wrights American Hunger". CLA Journal. Vol 21, No.1, (Sept
1977) 79-89.
49

"were not rooted in his understanding of black people. He tries to impose a system of
ideas on the black experience without attempting to deal with it on its own terms" (80).

Moore

compares

W right's

Black

Bov

and

American

Hunger

to

The

Autobiography of Malcolm X . Whereas the Autobiography of Malcolm X relates to

black social and political context and projects the black man in his encounter and
triumph over the restrictions of racist society". Black Bov "presents the black man in
retreat from his society" (85). Moore sees very little to praise in American Hunger
except for seeing in it W right's last desperate attempt to "wrestle a vision of himself
from the throng of racism" (89).

Nina Kressner Cobb's essay62 seems, at first glance, to be a reworking of well

worn ideas. However, a close reading proves otherwise. Cobb seeks to discover how
Wright emerged as an individual. After a close reading of Black Bov and American
Hunger Cobb concludes that the "very estrangement from the black community was
the source of W right's freedom" (359). Wright like Ellison and Baldwin, saw thp society
of the South as being instrumental in suppressing individuality. This is why Cobb feels
that Wright is ambivalent about his own individualism, "for individualism meant freedom
but also alienation. In life and literature, he sought to transcend alienation by
reconciling individualism with community" (340).

W right's writings show his preoccupation with tw o aspects of individualism.

Freedom, which is seen in his preoccupation with the man who rebels, and alienation,

62 Nina Kressner Cobb, "Richard Wright : Individualism Reconsidered", CLA Journal, Vol
21, No.3 (March, 1978). 335-354.
50

which is brought about by vast social change. Cobb sees most of Wright's fiction and
non-fiction as a working out of these dimensions of individualism.

Ross Pudalaff63 studies Native Son as the presentation of the fate of a young
man who takes his values from a society dominated by movies, magazines, newspapers
and detective stories. "Bigger knows only the self and the world culture presents to
him (3). Wright did condemn mass culture as "trash but at the same time he does not
disregard the effect of that culture on the individual. The implicit subject of "Long Black
song" is the fragility of folk culture when it comes into contact with mass culture. Jake
of Lawd Today, and Bigger of Native Son accept the values presented by the movies.
They both also locate their objects of desire solely within mass fantasies. Pudallof sees
Bigger as trying achieve a kind of identity made "available to him through mass
culture... Bigger's fate is the triumph of the image over the individual (8)." Pudallof
believes that Native Son, through its participation in the world of mass culture,
"prefigures the writings of Thomas Pynchon and Ishmael Reed more than it extends the
literary and philosophical traditions of realism or modernism.

Yoshinobu Hakutani's essay "Creation of the self in Richard Wright's Black

Bov"64 marks another milestone in Wright criticism. Hakutani maintains that Black Bov
is an autobiography despite critics pointing out discrepancies between Wright's actual
life and what is portrayed in the novel. Black Bov is a unique autobiography because
in it "the attitudes and sentiments expressed by the young Wright are not totally his

63 Ross Pudaloff, "Celebrity as Identity : Richard Wright, Native Son and Mass Culture".
Studies in American Fiction. Vol. II, No. 1, (Spring, 1983! 3-18.
64 Yoshinobu Hakutani, "Creation of the Self in Richard Wright's Black Boy". Black
American Literature Forum. Vol. 19, No. 2 ( S u m m e r , 1 9 8 8 ) 7 0 78
51

own but represent the responses of those he called, "the voiceless Negro boys of the
South" (71). Since he sees himself as a spokesman for black youth, Wright has to be
scientific and objective in his observations and Black Bov is, therefore, a convincing
sociological study. Hakutani makes the important point that despite its naturalistic
philosophy, "The miracle of Black Bov is that its hero, by the time he left for Chicago,
had not become the patient, humorous, subservient black man of the white myth...
Throughout the book Wright is at great pains to create a manhood as a direct challenge
to the overwhelming forces of society" (73). In Black Bov Wright succeeds in
portraying the successful struggle of the protagonist in creating a self despite
tremendous odds. This essay is important because it marks a departure from the way
Black Bov was usually read, as a depiction of the sordid reality of black life in the
South.65

An International Symposium was held on Richard Wright from Nov. 21 to Nov.

23 in 1985 at the University of Mississippi to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of
Wright's death. This event was significant on two counts, first, because it was the first
international conference on a major black writer in the United States Second, it was
also the first time Wright's native Mississippi saluted him as a writer. Cailaloo
published a selection of the papers in a special edition devoted to Richard Wright. This
selection is illuminating because it shows up the major-trends in Wright scholarship of
the 1980's. The symposium tried to construct an "appropriate paradigm for looking at

65 Du Bois writes "After this sordid, shadowy picture we gradually come upon the
solution. The hero is interested in himself, is self-centred to the exclusion of everybody
and everything else. "W.E.B. Du Bois, "Richard Wright Looks Back", New York Herald
Tribune Book Review, 4 March, 1945, 2.
66 Callaloo. No. 28, Vol.9 No. 3 (Summer, 1986).
52

Wright, one that examines aesthetic concerns within the context of the social and

realities
political^hat shaped Wright's world and being" (439). There is a shift in emphasis from
the earlier critical writing which viewed the ideological and political issues raised by
Wright separately from its literary and aesthetic features. Critics of the 1980's and
1990's cannot ignore the interpenetration of these aspects. Criticism also shows a
clear emphasis on stylistics and structure.

Robert Bone's67 essay comments upon the intellectual traditions that shaped
Wright's art and life, traditions by which he must ultimately be judged. Bone's essay
also serves as an excellent study of an entire movement that he labels the "Chicago
Renaissance". Of the three arts movements, the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicago
Renaissance, and the Black Arts movement, the Chicago Renaissance, reflects far more
than the others the influence of radical, social ideas on literature. Bone feels that it is
essential to understand the import of the Chicago Renaissance because it provides tfie
link between the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's and tfie Black Arts Movement of
the 1960's. When the Harlem school was confronted with the trauma of the Great
Migration, it looked back with nostalgia to the rural past and celebrated the values of
the Southern folk culture. The Chicago School, on tfie other hand, "looked ahead
toward the future, toward the necessary adaptations and adjustments, toward the risks
and adventures and existential dilemmas of modern life" (467). The Wright generation
was influenced by the evolutionary doctrines of the Chicago School of Sociology. The
work of Park and his associates gave the Wright generation a sophisticated theory for
understanding their own historical circumstances.

67 Robert Bone, "Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance" Callaloo. No. 28, Vol.9,
No. 3 (Summer, 1986)446-468.
53

Thadious M. Davis's "Wright, Faulkner and Mississippi as Racial Memory"

is one of the few essays where Faulkner and Wright are compared. Wright and
Faulkner, according to the author "made themselves what they were, wrote their way
into being by constituting their concrete parts by transfiguring their actual places in the
world. In the process, both affirmed and negated their formative Southern environments
and their Mississippi heritages" (469-70). Davis shows how both authors came to
terms with the familiar landscapes of the South as raw materials for their fiction. Davis
comes to the conclusion that "For neither the white Mississippian nor the black is the
imaginative reconstitution an easy one, because each lays claim to a remembered
anguished birthright despite the difference in the specific pain that is transformed into
creative possibility"(472).

In this essay the different experiences of Wright and Faulkner are stressed.
According to Davis, Wright's fictional vision hinges upon the present and not the past.
"Unlike Faulkner whose characters seek to derive meaning or sustenance from the past
in order to live with the present, Wright desires to shatter the hold of the traditional
society over his people" (470). This is why a number of his characters are shown as
severing their connections with their pasts in order to change their existence. The
movement of Wright's characters is seen by Davis to be largely positive.

Faulkner, on the other hand, chose to "stay within his society, to remain close
to the soil and celebrate agrarian values" (470). Faulkner's position is seen to be
comparable to that of Ike Me. Caslin in Go Down Moses who, "though renouncing his

68 Thadious M. Davis, "Wright, Faulkner, and Mississippi as Racial Memory" Callaloo. No.
28, Vol.9, No.3 (Summer, 1986) 469-478.

54

patrimony and with it the sins of his society, must find a way to be, a state of being
in a complex, rapacious and racist Southern society which values ownership and
property above human beings" (474). Wright and Faulkner in portraying the South were
faithful to their separate racial memories, perspective and observations of the South.

Wimal Dissanayak89 focuses his attention on one aspect of Richard Wright,

"namely his concept of power and its implications for those who are marginal members
of society" (481). He bases his arguments on Michael Foucoult's concept of power and
uses Native Son, and some of Wright's writing on the Third World to illustrate his
points.

Dissanayak feels that the essence of Native Son is Bigger's realization of his
identity. He points out that in order for Bigger "to realize his identity and attain visibility
he has to subvert the cultural discourse into which he has been born. The need for
subverting the dominant cultural discourse in order to create a more satisfying human
one is acutely felt in most Third World Countries which are still struggling with the
forces of colonialism despite their liberation from foreign rule" (483). The connection
that Dissanayak makes between the inhabitants of the Third World and Bigger is
important because it helps to situate readers from the marginalized Third World and
locate the connections between them and Wright. Dissanayak also argues that Native
Son had such tremendous impact upon the American public because it challenged the
dominant and encompassing cultural discourse, and therefore, underlined the need for
the establishment of newer power relations.

69 Wimal Dissanayak, "Richard Wright : A view From the Third World". Callaloo, No. 28,
Vol. No.3 (Summer, 1986)481-489.
55

Dissanayak argues that it is the realization of Wright's identity that is important

for him in Black Bov, this identity can only be achieved by challenging the cruelty and
irrationality of the white world and by rebelling against the aridity and constrictions of
the black world. This is the same argument that fie uses for the Third World countries
because Wright firmly believed that the greatest harm that "imperialism and colonialism
did to the colonized peoples was not in the field of economics... but in the domain of
psychology... the creation of a personality that was unnecessarily submissive, often
servile, lacking in confidence and overwhelmed by a kind of self-abasement (486).

Donald B.Gibson70 assesses Black Bov as an autobiography. In this incisive

essay Gibson shows how Black Bov originates from Wright's experiences in the South,
but is shaped by his experiences in the North. This is so because autobiography's
retrospective character "allowed Wright to imagine that his early experience was
preparing him to be the person he found himself to be after he had been in Chicago and
New York for some years" (492). This fact also accounts for the discrepancies between
the facts recorded in Black Bov and Wright's actual life. The discrepancies exist
according to Gibson because Wright conceived of his experiences as a description of
one who from his earliest times was a strong individualist.

In the very first chapter Wright depicts the distance between the young Richard
and everyone else in his environment. His relatives are not very different from the
menacing white world as they attempt to exert their authority over him. "We learn
finally that Wright resists the attempt of the white South to thrust identity and an alien

70 Donald B.Gibson, "Richard Wright's Black Bov And the Trauma of Autobiographical
Rebirth" Callaloo. No. 28, Vol.9, No.3 (Summer, 1986) 492-498.
56

sense of actuality on him by having learned to resist authority within the confines of
his own family and community" (497-98).

James A Miller71 bases his argument on Bakhtin's "Discourse on the Novel".

He notes how readers and critics confer great im p o rta n c e to th e role o f M a x M a x
seems to articulate Bigger's, and by implication, Wrights' arguments. Bigger himself is
seen as inarticulate and incapable of defining himself. Miller, using Bakhtin's definition
of the novel as a multiplicity of voices cautions a g a in s t " is o la tin g any sing le lan gu ag e
system ( in this case Max's speech) as a direct and u n m e d ia te d e x p re s s io n o f a u th o ria l
intention" (502).

Miller sees Bigger as far from inarticulate within the black community. He points
out numerous instances in the novel where Bigger participates actively in the call and
response pattern of the Afro-American community. Bigger becomes inarticulate and
tongue tied only when he comes into contact with the white world. "Bigger's quest for
voice and audience is essentially other... directed, defined by his need to struggle with
externally determined definitions of the self" (503). Bigger's is a quest for recognition
from the white world. Miller argues that Max's attempt to represent Bigger linguistically
and legally fails. Max, however, does play an important role because through his
relationship with Max, Bigger is able to further de-mystify the power of the white world
over him. Miller points out that Bigger appropriates Max's la n g u a g e fo r his o w n
purpose. By doing this he shakes the authoritative discourse of the white world to its
foundation. In the final analysis, however, Bigger's assertion of "I Am" is not accepted

71 James A Miller, "Bigger Thomas's Quest For Voice and Audience in Richard Wright's
Native Son". Callaloo. No. 28, Vol.9, No.3 (Summer, 1986), 501-506.
57

by Max or the black community.

The essays by Miller and Marian De Costa Willis:^ open up new and exciting
ways of interpreting Wright. If Miller recognizes and proves convincingly that Bigger is
an articulate and responsive member of the black community by using hitherto
unexplored Afro-American linguistic traditions, De Costa Willis applies a feminist
approach to his work, an aspect which had been curiously neglected.

De Costa Willis offers

a very

convincing

interpretation

of

Wright's

characterization of women. She shows how Wright's experiences as a young boy might
have turned him against women. Despite his personal hostility toward black women,
he was fascinated by the "dramatic possibilities of the female persona, but women are
marginal creatures in his violently masculine, patriarchal and machoistic fictional world"
(542). De Costa Willis details how Wright's women characters became symbols of
Mother in her "myriad forms of (1) Avenger, (2) Sufferer and (3) Earth Mother" (543).
The Black Southern women in Wright's fiction are not real people. Phantoms of
Wright's childhood nightmares, these avenging women, shadow figures and mute
mothers represent the dark side of a Southern womanhood that has been violated and
distorted in the crucible of sex and racism" (548).

James C. Trotman ed. Richard Wright Myths and Realities71 is another

collection of essays. These essays were first presented in the Richard Wright literary

72 Marian De Costa Willis, "Avenging Angels and Mute Mothers : Black Southern Women
in Wright's Fictional World", Callaloo. No.28, Vol.9, No.3 (Summer 1986) 540-549.
71 James C.Trotman, ed. Richard Wright : Myths and Realities (New York
Publishing Inc., 1988).

58

G a r la n d

symposium in Oct.' 1 985 on the campus of West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

Robbie Jean Walker in "Artistic Integration of Ideology and Symbolism m Richard
Wright's "Fire and Cloud"74 maintains that Wright's ideology was often couched in
sees
carefully wrought and compelling imagery H^Fire and Cloud"as a dramatization of one
dimension of Wright's evolving ideology at a particular time in history. The title "Fire
and Cloud" makes a connection between the Israelites' deliverance from Egypt and the
quest for freedom from racial oppression of the blacks. Walker uses the difference
between consecutive and consequential functions, in Narrative put forward by Ronald
Barths in "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative" to analyse the use
of symbolism in the narrative pattern of "Fire and Cloud".

Stephen Soitos76 interprets "The Man who Lived Underground" as a synthesis

of the Eurocentric myth of Orpheus and Afro-American sensibilities. Daniels like
Orpheus descends into darkness, but unlike Orpheus he has no sense of commitment
to partner or community. Daniels in his quest does not find revelation and rebirth, only
insanity, meaninglessness and death. This essay is crucial for Wright criticism because
Soitos underlines the interconnections between white myths and Afro-American
sensibilities. The essay successfully demonstrates that the Afro American experience
cannot be forcibly divorced from the white, Both enrich each other.

74 Robbie Jean Walker, "Artistic Integration of Ideology & Symbolize in Wright's "Fire and
Cloud;" ptd. in Trotman ed. Richard Wright : Myth and Realities.
75 Stephen Soitos, "Black Orphaus Descending", ptd. in Trotman ed. Richard Wright :
Myths and Realities. 15-25.
59

Joseh Brodiziock's "Richard Wright and the Afro-American Gothic"7' and

Michael Atkinson's "Richard Wright's Big Boy leaves Home' and a Tale from Ovid : A
Metamorphosis Transformed"77 also show how Wright has imaginatively used the
white western tradition to portray the Black experience.

Brodziock

points out the

gothic elements in Native son and dwells at length on the gothic aspect of the Dalton
household. However, it is the American gothic not the European gothic tradition that
Wright subcribes to. In America blackness had entered the American consciousness as
a metaphor for sin, corruption and moral depravity. However, what Wright could do
that Hawthorne could not was know the gothic dread of white from the inside As an
American black man, Wright was the dread, he was in a position then, to re-write the
American gothic mode to suit an Afro-American context. "Through the character of
Bigger Thomas Wright tried to force blacks back into the white mind and create a story
in which we can see the pathology of race and racial hierarchies as a self willed
creation of an American white psyche desperately wanting to hold on to its power"
(35).

The essays collected in Richard Wrights : Myths and Realities show a significant
shift in Wright criticism. From reading Wright's novels as merely works of protest there
is a serious attempt to assess the literary value of Wright's novels and stories. His
works are being subjected to careful scrutiny and as a result there is a fruitful
assessment of the ideology as well as the technical aspect of his work.

78 Joseph Brodziock "Richard Wright and the Afro-American Gothic" ptd. in Trotman, ed.
Richard Wrioht : Mvths and Realities. 37-42.
77 Michal Atkinson, "Richard Wright's Big Boy Leaves Home' and Tale from Ovid." ptd.
in Trotman, ed., Richard Wright : Mvths and Realities, 43-57
60

Nagueyalti Warren's essay "Black Girls and Native Sons

Female images in

Selected works by Richard Wright"78 is a reflection of the growing importance of

feminist criticism. Warren notes that criticism has not stressed the importance of the
portrayal of black female characters in Wright's fiction. Her contention is that "Beyond
color, a general indictment of women is expressed in Wright's work (72). Wright
according to her, rejects only certain aspects of the West, "for he embraces wholly the
Western ideas of male chauvinism"(72).

Warren points out that image Wright creates of black female characters in
Native Son. Black Bov. The Outsider. The Long Dream, and "Long Black Song" is
unwholesome, stereotypical and a degrading collection of bitches and whites. The
image of the mother in his fiction far from being loving. Ego-boosting and maternal is
insensitive to the male ego and castrating. There are innumerable examples of such
images of the mother in his fiction.

The other set of images are those of women who are sex objects, Gladys and
Dot in The Outsider. Gladys in The Long Dream. Sarah in "Long Black Song" and Bessie
in Native Son belong to this category. "The depreciated sex objects serve as egoboosters, tension relievers and tranquilizers. When they have served their purpose they
no longer have any value and are discarded.... The ideal sex object represents no
challenge or threat, emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise" (66). The stunted,
stereotypical images of women in Wright's fiction serve to highlight how Wright has
internalized so much of chauvinistic white male attitudes.

78 Nagyelti Warren, "Black Girls and Native Sons : Female Images in selected works by
Richard Wright", ptd. in Trotman, ed. Richard Wright : Myths and Realities
61

In "The Function of Violence in Richard Wright's Native Son" Robert James

Butler79 seeks to prove that critics try to probe the roots of violence in Native Son.
The violence in Native Son far from being gratuitous and compulsive is used by Wright
as a "necessary and powerful reflector of the deepest recesses of its central characters'
deeply divided nature" (10). Butler argues that there are two Bigqers in Native Son, one
who is trapped by environmental determinants and the other who is softer and has a
humane side to his personality. Bessie and Mary represent the extreme poles of
Bigger's divided self. Butler tries to prove that Bigger and Mary share a common
humanity and this is dramatized by their strong sexual attraction for each other. He
comes to the conclusion that Bigger's "tangled duality had damaged him at the very
centre of his being. Because the opposed aspects of his divided self are at such odds,
his drives towards love have been ensnared with his impulses towards hate" (24).

Butler's reading of the use of violence in Native Son is a refreshing departure

from earlier criticism which only saw the violence as excessive and melodramatic. One
need not accept totally his reading of the ending of Native Son, but it definitely
demands some consideration. Butler feels that in the end, Bigger is no longer divided
into tw o mutually exclusive selves and that is why he can reach out to the world with
love not violence.

Louis Tremaine80 acknowledge the work of critics who have analysed tho Split
consciousness" of Bigger, but according to him "Bigger's essential dilemma is ... his

79 Robert James Bulter, "The Function of Violence in Richard Wright's Native Son. "Black
American Literature Forum Vol. 20, No. 1-2, (Spring /Summer, 1986) 9 25
80 Louis Termaine, "The dissociated Sensibility of Bigger Thomas in Wright's Native Son.
"Studies in American Fiction. Vol. 14 No. 1, (Spring, 1986) 63-76.

62

inability in his daily functioning, to express his emotional experiences in ways that
make its meaning accessible both to his own consciousness and to the consciousness
of those around him" (63-64),

Tremaine traces the cause of Bigger's inability to communicate partly to socio

economic conditions that deny Bigger the tools of language and culture, and partly to
Bigger's fear of whites. Bigger yearns to make himself understood, but is paralysed by
fear of the futility of such desires. Finally other characters in the novel speak for Bigger
and in the process take control over his destiny. Max is the most important figure
who tries to represent Bigger to the world in a way in which Bigger could never
represent himself. The narrator of Native Son also serves the same purpose." The
narrator speaks of Bigger just as Max does, simplifying images to his impulses, mind
to his body" (74). Tremaine, however, feels that all the narrative devices, characters
and events, have somehow failed to express the emotional experiences of Bigger.

Self Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative is a full length study

of the influence of the slave narrative on later black writing and the way the idea of
literacy is used within the tradition of Afro-American letters. The work centers on the
paradox that by" fictionalizing one's life one bestows a quality of authenticity on it
...(2).Smith feels that to consider only the people who could read and write as literate
is to show an inherent bias towards an Anglo-American use of language. She defines
literacy as the "consciousness of the uses and problems of language, whether spoken
or written" (4). Therefore, the unlettered person who can manipulate the meanings and

81 Valerie Smith, Self Discovery and Authority in Afro-American Narrative 'Cambridge,

Mass : Harvard Univ. Press, 1987).
63

nuances of the spoken word can be considered literate.

For Smith unlettered slaves who fled to freedom more than "blacks who wrote
accounts of their bondage and escape demonstrate the link between language and
power" (4). Slaves who meant to escape often assumed postures of docility, "they
learned to read their superordinates' expectations while themselves remaining
inscrutable... the dissembling slave... created a shape for the expression of his or her
will or identity, and seized the opportunity to escape" (5). Smith argues that narrators
master their subject by imposing narrative order upon it, this is a result of the ability to
manipulate language whether oral or written. The oral account of Wright's Bigger and
Toni Morrison's Milkman, seen in this light leads Smith to believe that they are gestures
of liberation equivalent to the written narratives of the former slaves.

Most of Wright's protagonists are outsiders. They occupy worlds closely

circumscribed by racial and economic suppresion and they protect themselves from
"the tyranny of their oppressors by drawing on their resilience, imagination and
perceptiveness" (67). Smith finds fundamental similarities between Richard of Black
Bov and Bigger, Both characters not only rebel against black and white authorities, but
they also rely on their ability to "manipulate language and its assumptions ... as a
means of liberating themselves from the plots others impose on them. Moreover, each
man seeks to alter his relation to language in order to break down the barrier that
separates him from the broader social community" (70). Smith analyses Black Boy and
Native Son in this light and comes to the conclusion that in writing his autobiography
Wright successfully challenged the docile compliant identity that the dominant others'
had tried to foist on him. By fashioning himself in language he succeeds in crating a

64

positive identity for himself. Bigger, on the other hand, articulates a story about
himself. "But his story has its limitations and does not accomplish all that Bigger
intends. At this stage in his life, he like the young Richard Wright, recognizes that
language has power, but he does not know how to use it" (82).

Lucinda H. Kethan82 in her essay further explores the connection between the
slave Narratives and Afro-American Literature. She analyses three slaves narrative and
notes that "In their eye witness accounts of Slavery, the narrative sequence was
arranged to present deepening levels of self-perception through carefully handled tones
of voice, the achievement of voice itself becoming an ultimate stage of perception"
(1 26). She feels that Black Bov and The Autobiography of an Ex-coloured Man both
depend heavily on the narrative strategies of the slave narratives. Black Bov is seen as
the culmination of the slave narrative heritage. Although Wright uses many of the same
kind of scenes that slave narrators used to demonstrate their struggle for freedom and
sense of fulfilled selfhood, "his alienation from his environment is more penetrating, a
more pervasive factor in the make up of his personality" (133). For Wright it is
imagination and a mastery over his own voice that helps to free his imprisoned self
from the distorting limited vision imposed upon it by its culture.

Alan W. France83 point out that in the wake of post-structural literary criticism
it is no longer necessary to limit one's reading by taking into account authorial
intention. Criticism, France feels must break the work out of its authorial mould and

82 Lucinda H Mac Kethan, "Black Bov and Ex-Coloured Man : Version and Inversion of the
Slave Narrators Quest for voice." CLA Journal Vol. 23, No. 2 (Dec. 1988) 123-147.
83 Alan W. France "Misogyny and Appropriation in Wrighfs Native Son". Modern
Fiction Studies. Vol.3 (Autumn, 1988) 41 3-423
65

examine the heretofore hidden impression made by its buried underside. In reading
works of the patriarchal canon, this concealed impression can be conceived as a female
mould that forms the work by its resistance but is absent from it" (414"). Native Son
has been analysed by generations of critics as the struggle between Bigger's desire for
freedom and dignity on the one hand and the oppressive degradation of racism used
as a weapon of domination by the white, on the other. What has not been given
emphasis, even by feminist critics is the "second dialectical struggle underlying the
authorized one : the struggle to appropriate (and thus dehumanize) women by reducing
them to objects of male status conflict " (414).

Alan France notes that both Mary and Besie are seen as commodities to be used
and discarded. The reader is asked by the author to endorse and oyr.ir.rt Bigger's
attitude to women, the narrative however, questions the authorial interpretation time
and again. The author draws a veil over Bigger's 'rape' of Mary but later when Bigger
relates what had happened to Bessie there is less certainty. France analyses three other
episodes where the text seeks to suppress the violence that is done to the women. The
final attempt of the text to "cover the repressed phallocentricity and to achieve some
sort of reapproachment between Bigger and the white male

s o c i e t y t h a t o p p r e s s e s h im

are almost comic against this backdrop of violence against women" (421).

Yoshinobu Hakutani's84 Comparison of Richard Wright's The Outsider and

Camus's The Stranger marks

an interesting departure

from earlier criticism. The

Outsider had often been read as an existential treatise but Hakutani in his comparison

84 Yoshinoubu Hakutani, "Richard Wright's The Outsider and Albert Camus's The
Stranger. "The Mississippi Quarterly. XLIII No. 42 (Fall, 1989) 365-378
66

finds the difference between The Outsider and The Stranger far more valuable than the
similarities. Cross Damon is an existentialist actively in search of an essence in a
meaningless universe whereas Meursault of The Stranger seems a passive existentialist
compelled to do nothing in the face of an absurd universe. Hakutani's main contention
is that the experiences of Wright's protagonist is rooted in the black experience.
Wright's hero according to the author is not "simply an embodiment of a half-baked
philosophy, but that he is a genuine product of the African-American experience" (366).
Cross Damon stands out among black heroes in American fiction because he refuses
to surrender his will to live. Compared to Bigger "Damon stands taller and poles apart
simply because Damon is endowed with an intellectual capacity seldom seen in Afro
American fiction " (377K

Beginning with the latter part of the 1970's a number of essays dealing with
Wright's attitudes to black women were written. The consensus among critics was that
Wright was a misogynist and his treatment of women left much to be desired c Joyce
Ann Joyce's86 essay is a refreshing departure from this point of view. In an interesting
reading of Wrightsshort story. The author feels that the general indictment by feminist
critics of Wright's projection of women in his fiction is extremely biased. She does not
share the views of most critics that Wright was only exploitative in his use of women.
She studies "Long black Song" and shows that Sarah far from having a supporting,
nnyntivn ruin in the story emerges ns tho center of consciousness Joyce sees "Long
Black Song" as Sarah's story and not her husband's, Sarah "emerges as the moral

85 See. Sylvia H. Ready, "Richard Wright's Women characters and Inequality", BALF,
10(1976) 124.
86 Joyce, Ann Joyce, "Richard Wright's 'Long Black Song' : A Moral Dilemma" The
Mississippi Quarterly. Vol. XLII, NO. 4 (Fall, 1989) 379-385

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consciousness that illuminates the insanity of a racist society which confines all forms
of human behaviors within narrow, emotionally stultifying limits(380). Wright by
restricting the reader to Sarah's thoughts succeeds in making him/her understand
Sarah's sexual arousal as well as see the limitations of Silas and the salesman's
reactions to her. Both Silas and the salesman's treat Sarah with arrogance, but because
she is the focus of Wright's moral viewpoint, she comprehends a level of reality that
is outside their male dominated struggle for power. "Sarah alone understands the
difference between what happened and the construct racism put on what she did"
(385). This reading of "Long Black Song" shows a level of sophistication in Wright's
treatment of a woman character which had not been noticed by critics earlier

Patricia D Watkin's87 points out that critics of "The Man who lived
Underground", have stressed its existentialist contents at the expense of the story's
naturalistic elements. Such a focus, according to her disregards a major bias of the
story's paradoxical structure. "At the heart of the paradox is the story's simultaneous
existence as a naturalistic (thus deterministic) fable and existential (thus anti
deterministic) fable. The result of this yoking of fables is a protagonist who is
simultaneously portrayed as an animal, whose fate is controlled by forces independent
of his will and a god whose will becomes in effect, the First Cause of his fate" (767
6 8 ).

In discussing the naturalistic element of the story Watkins comes to the

conclusion that racial identity does not directly determine what happens to Fred

87 Patricia D. Watkins, "The Paradoxical Structure of Richard Wright's The Man who
Lived Underground". BALF. Vol. 23, No.4 (Winter, 1989) 767 783.

68

Daniels. She insists that the environmental factors that shape Daniels are more
specifically social and economic. Such a reading exposes a basic blindness on the part
of Watkin's because when she insists that the story shows a man living and dying like
an animal, the subject of forces over which he has no control, she is describing a basic
fact of the black fact of the black experience.

The 1980's also saw the publication of two very important books on AfroAmerican Literature - Michal G. Cooke's Afro-American Literature in the 20th Century
: The Achievement of Intimacy88 and Bernard W. Bell's The Afro-American Novel and
its Tradition89. The authors of these two books no longer have to prove the existence,
importance and validity of an Afro-American tradition in literature. This allows them
the space to argue for a far more sophisticated approach.

Cooke argues that there is no uniform Afro-American tradition and it is this lack
of uniformity that shows the vitality of black literature. Uniformity would suggest a
crushed stereotyped culture. Cooke in his introduction traces the prevalence of
existential philosophy in the dominant white twentieth century literature and its
consequent emphasis on individualism and experimentation with techniques. Cooke
finds

a passion for "formal invention" (33) in Afro-American literature. According to

him while modernism in "white literature took the form of hothouse virtuosity and
detachment (if not revulsion) from the human, in Afro-American literature it took the

88 Michael G. Cooke, Afro-American Literature in the 20th Century : The Achievement of

intimacy.(Yale : Yale Univ. Press, 1984).
89 Bernard W. Bell The Afro-American Novel and its Tradition, (Amherst : The
Massachusetts Press, 1987).

69

U n iv ,

of

form of a centering upon the possibilities of the human and an emergent sense of
intimacy predicated on the human" (5). Black literature could not afford the luxury of
formal innovations because its interest lay with the basic fabric of experience

Cooke links the emergence of Afro-American literature to the increasing

emphasis and complex use of the 'blues' and 'signifying' in the written discourse.
Cooke notices four major stages in black American literature... self veiling, solitude and
intimacy. Richard Wright's Native Son is placed in the second phase of development
in the Afro-American literary scheme, that is solitude. The black character in the stage
"stands out from the veil and survives, but survives' without sustaining or amplifying
connections" (38). Uncle Tom's Children anticipates the third stage, kinship. "Here
relationship comes into play as the conditions of life become ampler and more varied
for the black protagonist" (39). Kinship means seeing deprivation and pain and at the
same time recognizing endurance and dignity.

Bernard W. Bell discusses major texts in their historical culture and literary
contexts. He seeks to explain the "richness of the Afro-American novel as a hybrid
narrative whose distinctive tradition and vitality are derived basically from the
sedimented indigenous roots of black American folklore and literary genres of the
Western World" (XII). Bell discusses more than 150 novels by approximately one
hundred representative novelists to try and find out what is distinctive about the AfroAmerican novel.

Bell takes a close look at Richard Wright's naturalism and his influence on
novelists of the nineteen forties. He analyses Native Son in detail and comes to the

70

conclusion that the major achievement of the novel is "its stark naturalistic vision of
the social paradoxes that bind white and black Americans..." (166). Bell studies how
other black novelists were influenced by Wright's belief that the character and history
of blacks can be totally explained by biological and socio-economical facts.

Richard Wright's work from the beginning attracted criticism which swung from
adulation to harsh indictment, never indifference. Early reviewers and critics were
initially stunned by the harsh reality of black life as portrayed by Wright. Criticism of
the social aspect of racism is abundant. Concerning the strictly literary qualities of his
novels and short stories, discussions centered around narrative techniques and
characterization, with only a few perceptive observers noting Wright's symbolism and
technical virtuosity. On the other hand, there were critics like Irving Howe, who after
claiming that Native Son had changed American culture went on to speak of its
"crudeness, melodrama and claustrophobia of vision"'3', implying that these literary
defects somehow minimized the power of social statement.

The highly successful international symposium on Wright at the Urn /ersity of

Mississippi held late in 1985 imparted additional impetus to work on the author.
Moving beyond the old debate between protest and art/ecent commentary informed
by new critical theory and perspectives reveals previously unsuspected depth,
complexity and resonance in Wright's vision of black life and his literary resources in
expressing it. The four essays published in New Essays on Native Son91 are a fair

90 Irving Howe, Op, Cit, 63

91 Kenneth Kinnamon, ed. New - Essays on Native Son (Cambridge and New York
Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).
71

indication of the kind of criticism that Wright is being increasingly subjected to.

This detailed survey of more than three decades of criticism on Wright and
Faulkner shows that almost all aspects of their work have been the subject of serious
critical enquiry. However, even a cursory glance would be sufficient to show that
practically no serious attempt has been made to study these two authors together.
Except for a brief mention by Eric. J. Sundquist, essays by Esther Merle Jackson and
Thadious M. Davis critics seem to have ignored this very valuable area of study. My
attempt, therefore, in more ways than one will be breaking fresh ground.

72