GTlADUl\\TE
TIIHOUGIl 'l'JlEln
SISTEI1S'
F:yr:;~~:
TilE m: PHES Ell'l'!~TI ON OF ULt.CI\\. '·j[::n III 'I'1Il'; I J0V 1;;I,S OF
TOHI
HORRISOH,
ALICE W\\.Ll\\I.::R,
1'.nn
TOlll
C7',I'1I-:
n_~,y.1l\\!.l~h_
ICONSE!L AFRICAIN ET MALGAC"HE;/
' POUR L'ENSEIGNEMENT SUPERlEUR I
C. A. M. E. S. -
OUAGADOUGOI.! !
by
~rriv~~ ': 02· OCT: ·1995 -... _
':;'l~e-2:s:-~c :;O~!S n~#. '1-6.7.. 5..
._-..
-
0
-
KOt·1Ll\\
r-mSSl,N
NllrHJl\\pn
-
Licence
(Lettres),
U.
D.,
LOnlC,
'l\\)(Jo,
1973
Maitrise,
Ulliversite Je Paris X-Il<lnterl't~, ]~J77
D.
E •. A.
Paris JII-Sorbonne l-louvelJe,
l~.nn
Doctorat de 3eme Cycle,
Paris lII-Sorbonnc ll(ltlvtlle,
19EO
Submitted
in partiul
[uJ.filln~ent uE the
r e qui r 'e III e n t s
for the d e Cl r e e 0 f
Doctor of Ph,losophy
--1987 ---
~ ..

---

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~ ...........:
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Approved by
First Reader
Millicent Bell, Ph.D.
Professor of English
~~'"
-/~
Second Reader
/(.:,.<.: 1<-,,-~~
/ ;
, 1(':;"7
Laurence Breiner,
Ph.b~.----­
Associate Professor of English

---

CONTENTS
Chapter
~
1.
TONl MORR1S0N'S PERSPECTIVES
. 19
The Black Man As A Loser: The Bluest Eye and
S u 1 a
.
.
.
•
•
.
•
•
•
•
.
•
•
20
Choosing to win:
Song of Solomon . . .
. 45
Macon Dead 11,
or
the
Pursuit of
Loneliness
. .
.
. .
45
Milkman or the quest
for
self-
definition
. . . . .
61
Creat.ing a
home:
Guit.ar as a
pOlitical
activist
. . . . .
76
The divorce
from
the material:
Tar Baby
86
11.
ALICE WALKER'S BLACK MEN
109
Manhood redefined:
A study of Alice Walker's
110
The Black Man
in an Inter-racial
Relationship . . .
135
Humanizing the black man
. . • .
158
111.
BLACK MEN IN THE FICTION OF TONI
CADE BAMBARA
182
-
1
-

---

INTRODUCTION
Althougtl wi.l}ial~ Stanley Braithwaite's
statemellt
is evi-
dently true
that • ... the Negro
was in
American literature
generations before
he was
part of
it as
a creator,·'
it
fails to take note of the fact that it took the black Ameri-
can woman even
longer than it took the black
man to emerge
as a creative writer.
As far
as fiction is concerned,
by
the time the first novel by a black woman was published--ar-
guably f.
E. W.Harper's Iola Leroy in 1892--black male writ-
ers had already established a tradition of their own.
wi 1-
liam Wells Brown initiates black fiction,
in 1853,
when he
publishes his first
novel Clotel or the
President'.§. Daugh-
ter, and the l:oundation of the new tradition is soon consol-
idated by Frank J.
Webb's
Garies and their Friends (1857),
and Martin R ..
Delany's Blake:
or the Huts £f. America, pub-:-
lished serially from 1859 through
1861.
In all three nov~
eIs,
black men are depicted as
the victims of a socio-eco-
nomic
system,
and
black
women,
as
their
dedicated
companions.
I suggest, here,
that the first generation of black women
novelists--frances E. W.
Harper and Pauline E.
Hopkins,
to
name but two--joined this
tradition without questioning the
premises upon which it was founded.
Black American men and
I
William Stanley Braithwaite.
·The Negro in American Liter-
ature"
in Addison Gayle,
Jr.,ed.
Black Expression (New
York, Heybright and Talley), 1969, p. 169
..
1 -

---

·
.
-~,-.~
w6men were v~ctims of the same history; granted.
And Trudi-
er'Harris is
certainly right to regard that
history as the
major source of inspiration for Afro-American creative writ-
ers in general.
In her opinion:
"It)he
intensity of the
historical experiences which the black
people have lived in
America I .•. ) has understandably so penetrated their litera-
ture that
there are times when
the two cannot
be separat-
ed."' As a
matter of fact,
many black
authors readily let
find their way into the plots of their fiction,
accounts of
actual events.
'I'he presence,
in the Afro-American text, of
those--creatively speaking--unprocessed
"facts" bears
eVl-
dence of the American Blacks' ability to design a wide range
of strategies destined
to emphasize the nessecity
for them
to humanize
the hostile
environment where
they have
been
living.
In the preface to Pauline E.
Hopkins's Contending
Forces (1899),
the author reminds the reader that "the inci-
dents portrayed in
the early chapters of
the book actually
occurred.
Ample proof of this may
be found in archives of
the courthouse at Newberne,
N.C.,
and at the national seat
of government, Washington,D.C."' This' way of dramatizing the
plight of the community gives the concept of realism a whole
new meaning.
By
making accounts of reality
part of their
fiction,
black writers clearly
express an obsessive aware-
"
'I'rudier Harris.
Exorcising Blackness.
(Bloomingon: Indi-
,ana University Press}, 1984, p.
ix
, Pauline E. Hopkins.
Contending Forces.
1899, 1900;
re-
,printed IMiami, Fla: Mnemosyne Publishing Co;
Inc.), 1969,
p.
14.
-
2 -
'~ .
.; ... '

---

.,_
~~~;~{~,~~:':j, ",~,
:A"7~-;- '~;n·, ~ •.,- ....~ "-'''·~-'''''''_7''·-'....;=~--,.- ~- _.__ ••---.=__,=, _:
;;tf~~·~;~iness of the condition of their people, and, consequently,
:.,: .'
.
," "
'-'
/" .'
.
,,' underline the
little control Blacks
still have
over their
';
own lives.
To a large extent,
to survive as a black person does not
mean anything unless it implies surviving as a member of the
black community.
Ironically enough,
despite the fact that
the majority of black men and
women in slavery were treated
',' in the
same way,
the
existence of
conflicting functional
classes among the slave population
made it impossible for a
, .
. :
.., "
unicity of perspective to prevail, among the slaves,
on is-
sues of importance
to them.
Among the
very first African
,American fiction writers there existed, however, a tacit un-
i-derstanding of the
necessity for them to
harness the ener-
~. 'oO
gies of the
various interest groups in order
to generate a
new spirit.
Little wonder that a
kind of consensus can be
:identified in most
of the first literary
works produced by
'them.
William Wells Brown's Clotel
is not only a scathing
;criticism of slavery,
but also an attempt
to teach fellow
:,
;Blacks to unite as brothers and sisters.
The same rhetoric
, i
of black brotherhood permeates all other novels by Blacks in
, ,
,'
::slavery.
Even several decades after emancipation,
when F.
:
i.
E. W. Harper wrote Iola Leroy,
the prevailing strategy among
:black writers was still sustained
by a philosophy of action
~hich Houston A.Baker,Jr., in a different context,
referred
,to as
"Integrationist Poetics."' Black writers,
both male
• Houston A. Baker,Jr. "Generational Shifts and Recent Crit-
-
3 -
.,",
~ i .
"
.~.

---

and
f~;:nale,
h'cre
t.hen commiltec1 to the same
gOul that ",as
the pulling tDgether
of
the bits and pieces
of their shat-
tered ~acial digllity.
To some extent,
black Americun fic-
up
to PauJinE 8. :Iopkins'
C0.I~tendin9. Fors:~~
( :1.8 9 ~r ) ..
is hIlt it vJri~tion on
the t~lin thel~es of white ra-
cisln and
block .brot.!''lerhQod.
1'0
s<>y
this
i 5
no~
to imply
that
black fiction,
then,
n~ver deaJ.t
\\/ith friction within
the black communit.y.
The novelists,
especially the female
ones, \\J2re a~are of some of the illternal, contrarlic;tions with
wchich the gr01Jp was plagued.
In that
respect,
r.
E.
W.
Ha ::pe r' S
is unquestionably
a
fenlinist perspective.
She
writes:
"ThJ"ough weary,
wasting years,
men
hove destroyed,
dashed in pieces,
and overthl:own,
but today we stand on the
threshold of woman's era,
and
woman's work is grundly con-
structive."' Oddly enough,
she dismisses sexism in the bluck
COffil;lun i ty uS iJ
"lesser questioll" because,
in
her opinion,
:'being black
J~;
[nore precarious t113n beirl9
a woman."~ This
last propcsjt~on was valid then,.
Not any more;
that is if
I.oaks at
\\t
irl
Ijg~t of tIle cl:eative works of Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Banlba~a.
"icisrll in l',ft"o~-l\\mc~·ican Literatllre,"
in Black American Lit-
erat~~~ £~S~~;
Vol. 15, Nov.
I,
Spring-1981.-
5
F~
E.
W.
Haepcr,
quoted
jn
Hazel
v.
Carby,
!l'On
the
Threshold ot \\~oman' s E~a': Lynching, Empire, and Sexuality
in Blac:k Feminist: Theory."
Cri tical J~.i-'=.Y..
Volume 12,
Nllmber I, Autumn 1985, p.262 .
• r. E. ;-i. darper, quoted .in Gloria Wade-Geyles.
]:10 Crystal
?_~~L'::.,. (Ne'! Vor](: the pi] gr j m Press i, 1984, pp. 10--11
-
~l
-

---

Emancipation certainly met the
expectations of some for-
mer slaves.
However,
it also generated more confusion among
many black men.
As a matter of,fact,
the objective condi-
tions that governed the latter's
lives did not change much,
if at all.
In addition,
not many of them were psychologi-
cally prepared--or even allowed by the prevailing social and
political
structure--to be
competitive in
the context
of
capitalist America.
Last of all, and as a result,
the pat-
tern of manhood provided by
the dominant culture was almost
impossible for them to follow.
The full measure of the psy-
chological
trauma that
these
unfortunate
black men
went
through in slavery and after,
is not too hard for black wo-
men to appraise
because the latter have
always been around
'black men.
One may arguably
suggest that the slave system
equipped black women, much better than it did black men,
to
adjust themselves to life after emancipation.
In any case,
black men and black women in
slavery,
it seems to me,
did
not learn to evaluate their personal worth in the same ways.
This partly accounts for the
covert bipolarisatio~ that has
informed the black American charaoter
since the turn of the
century.
Black people still have the same culture but black
men and
black women no
longer emphasize the
same beliefs,
opinions, concepts, values, and norms.
Economics, politics,
and most important,
gender have become crucial
factors in
splitting the community into sub-groups.
-
5 -

---

I
r
In the field of creating
writing,
the new situation has
accelerated the individualisation of talent among women.
By
generating,
in the
late 1920s and early
1930s,
a dynamic
that prepared the ground for
a fairly positive reception of
Afro-American fiction
by American
and world
readers,
the
Harlem Renaissance overshadowed an ironical situation where-
by the "successful" creative writings
inspired by the black
experience were by white
authors.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom'~ Cabin is a case in point.
Black American women
eventually seized
the opportunity offered by
this dynanmic
and started overtly
ignoring the black male
canons.
Zora
Nea1e Hurston takes the lead by publishing,
in 1937,
Their
Eyes Are Watchi.f13 God.
To some extent,
I regard as Z.
N.
Hurston's spiritual daughters,
the
three women whose works
are discussed in this dissertation.
My objective
is to analyse
the representation
of black
men in the novels of Toni Morrison,
A1ice Walker,
and Toni
Ca de Bambara.
More specifically,
my intention in writing
this dissertation
is to focus
on the various
moments when
black men,
turned into an object of scrutiny by these three
"sisters,· are "dissected"
in front of the
reader.
To be
sure, many books have so far been written--most1y by B1acks--
-on the American black man but they are either psychological
analyses like W.
H.
Grier's and P.
M.
Cobbs's Blac~ Rage
(196B),
or
psycho-philosoph~cal investigations
like
The
Black Self (1974) by M. D. Wyne, K. P. White and R. H. Coop,
-
6 -

---

or sociological
studies like Robert Staples's
Black Mascu-
- - -
linity (1984).
In American
critical circles there exists,
however, an obvious interest in the literary images of black
men.
Although the
dissatisfaction of
black people
with
their image, as portrayed in most white (American)
fiction,
is the
core theme of Sherley
Ann Williams's Give
Birth to
Brightness (1972),
the subject has been considered by almost
every Afro-American
literary critic.
In
a 1953
essay by
Ralph
EIHson called
"Twentieth- Century
Fiction and
the
Mask of Humanity,'"
the author of
Invisible Man has this to
say about the portrait of the
black man as seen through the
eyes of white novelists:
"Seldom is he drawn as that sensi-
tively focused process of opposites, of good or evil, of in-
stinct and
intellect,
of passion and
spirituality,
which
great literary art has projected as
the image of man.'"
El-
lison's observation goes beyond a
mere rejection of one-di-
mensional black
characters and posits
that only
through a
balanced apprehension of the
black experience can novelists
lend a human face to the Blacks in t~leir fiction.
In James
Baldwin's estimation, the fact that so many American writers
fail
to see this simply reflects
" ... with a kind of fright-
erling accuracy the state of the
nlind of the country.'"
What
in Ralph
Ellison,
Shado·"
and Act,
(New York:
Random
House), 1964, pp.24 44.
, ibidem, p.26.
,
"Notes for a Hypothetical Novel",
in James Baldwin,
The
Pr ice of
the
:rick~!,
(New Yo!:k:
Saint
Martin's Mare~
1985, P-:-238.
-
7 -

---

James Baldwin calls "the mind of the country" has been rede-
fined by Addison Gayle,
Jr.
as "the roots of oppression""
and dialectically
accounts for the
emergence of
"the con-
scious black rebels""
that can be easily identiEied in most
contemporary black America!l novelists.
Consciousness of oppression, however, does not necessarl-
Iy translate
into an identical
set of attitudes
among all
black writers in America.
In
this respect,
the following
point by Seymour L. Gross is worth underlin~ng:
To have had it established that in literary criti-
cism that the Negro was,
in Dunbar's phrase,
"more
human than African," was a necessary victory,
but
hardly decisive insofar as literary image was con-
cerned.
In the insistence upon the Negro's simi-
larity to all other men--which had been the rally-
ing
cry
of
the battlers
against
the
literary
stereotype--there
lay
the ironic
danger
of
so
bleaching out
his personal and
cultural identity
that he would be stripped of his unique and tragic
history,
which
is to
say his
particular human-
ness,. l2
The black man,
just like any other human being,
is the meet-
-ing point of a "general" and
a "particular".
If it may be
relatively easy,
even between people of different
ideologi-
cal persuasions, to agree on the "general", the "particular"
for
its part is
much harder to define and owes
a lot,
Eor
I .
Addison Gayle,
Jr,
The Way of the
New World,
(Garden
City: Doubleday),1975, p.167
11
ibidem,
p.167 .
•
2
Seymour L.
Gross and John Edward Hardy, eds.,
Images of
the Negro in American Literature,
(Chicago: The UniversT="
ty of Chicago Press), 1966, pp.12-13.
- 8 -

---

its meaning,
to the goals
of the defining individual.
To
portray the hlack man in fiction is,
therefore, to delineate
one possible form that this "particular" can take.
Toni Mortison, Alice Walker, and Toni Cade Bambara belong
to the same "identifiable
literary tradition""
which,
un-
derstandably,
functions as a " ... matrix of literary discon-
tinuities that partially articulate
various periods of con-
sciousness in the history
of an African-American people."'·
This tradition owes its very
existence to the determination
that has
consistently sustained black American
women's ef-
fort
and desire
to tell
their own
stories.
As
Barbara
Christian puts it,
"Their novels
are the literary counter-
parts of
the communities'
oral t.aditions,
which in
the
Americas have become
more and mo.e the
domain of women.""
In other words,
their creative writings are sustained by the
same decided effort to scrutinize the black community's past
and present on the one hand,
and their ability to use their
insightful
findings
to
redefine black
womanhood
in
the
American context,
on the other.
I suggest here that these
three women's portrayals of
their "brothers" represent just
., Barbara Smith:
"Toward a Black Feminist
Critcism",
in
Elaine Showalter, ed.
The New Feminist Criticism,
(New
York; Pantheon),1985, p.170-.--
"
Hortense J.
Spillers:
"Cross-Currents, Discontinuities:
Black Women's Fiction",
in Marjorie Pryse and Hortense J.
Spillers, eds., Conjuring.
(Bloomington:
Indiana Univer-
sity press), 1985, p.251.
"
Black
Women
Novelists,
(Westport,
Conn. ;
Greenwood
Press) ,-T9S0, p. 239.
- 9 -

---

three slice,s of the Black Experience.
These portrayals make
more sense when
considered against the background
of their
authors'
"project"
for,
as
Albert Hofstadter
points out:
"Properties by virtue of which
we value objects esthetical-
ly--,e.g.
beauty, grace, charm, the tragic,
the comic, bal-
ance, proportion, expressive symbolism, versimilitude,
pro-
priety~-always require
some reference
to the
apprehending
and valuing person •.. ""
Parts of this study
will,
there-
fore,
read like
portrayals of black women
because most of
the time the
(black)
men Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker and
Toni Cade
Bambara depict in
their novels depend
for their
images on
the female charaters' hopes
and disappointments,
on their dreams and insecurities.
From F.
E.
W.
Harper up to the
three writers studied
here,
the black American women writers' growth has been from
self-erasure to self-assertion.
since the end of the Harlem
Renaissance black
female writers
,n America
have made
it
known that, given the perspectives on American society which
they inherited from their mothers ana1§randinothers,
they do
k~~lr~
not belong
unconditionally to the~~ide
of bl~ck men
or to
,that of
white women.
~8 (CAME \\ '':' .
In
other w6'rds-otney_) perceIve them-
-, \\
. j
1.\\
la,
:,selves neither as
BLACK women or blac:.k WOMEN\\~/but rather as
''(,'1\\
- - -
",,"'4'
""":J,",,
f.;..>y
:BLACK WOMEN.
The very name
"BLACK'WOMEj:f~;z"-which is not to
be mistaken
for "Black and
Women"--suggests a kind
of ex-
, 1 •
in Houston A.Baker, Jr.
Blues,
Ideology, and Afro-Ameri-
can Literature.
(Chicago:
The
university or--chicago
Press), 1984, p.78.
- 10 -

---

perience that both
black men and white people
are far from
familiar with.
It stands for
a perception of America that
has been developed over the centuries by a specific group of
Americans.
Elizabeth v. Spelman emphasizes this specificity
in the following terms:
To say that the image of woman as frail and depen-
dent is oppressive
is certainly true.
But
it is
oppressive to white women in
the United States in
quite a
different way
than it
is oppressive
to
black women,
for the sexism
that black women ex-
perience is in the context
of their experience of
racism. 11
A most important factor often evoked when black women un-
derline
the specificity
of
their
American experience
in
slavery is
physical rape
and its
psychological aftermath.
As horrifying as it is,
rape never prevented them from play-
'ing a crucial.
role ln the slave community.
More than any-
thing else, what black women say they are experiencing today
is emotional,
psychological,
as well as intellectual rape.
And their
"brothers" are
not exonerated.
Calvin Hernton
calls black men's hostility towards their "sisters" a "sexu-
al mountain." In his opinion " ... black men have historically
defined themselves as sole interp~eters of the black experi-
ence.
They have set the
priorities,
mapped out the strat-
egies, and sought to enforce the rules.""
Now,
black women
Elizabeth v.
Spelman:
"Theories of Race and Gender: The
Erasute of Black Women",
in Quest:
a feminist guaterly.
vol. V, No. 4 (p.58)
-
11 -

---

do realize that as a group in present day America,
they have
some more alternatives than their grandmothers back in slav-
ery. On the whole they choose to fight back and consequently
put up the appropriate intellectual and psychological resis-
tance.
Black feminism as an ideology has unquestionably be-
come the
background against which black
history,
American
politics and the fiction of
black American women are er it i-
cally evaluated.
Quite expectedly,
no single
theorist of
I
black feminism has so far managed to express the full
impli-
cations of their object of study. Although for the layperson
women like Barbara Smith, Audrey Lorde,
and Bell Hooks,
to
mention but a few,
are authorities on the subject,
the truth
bf the matter is that they even
do not always seem to agree
on the essential.
No wonder.
Ideology
as a rule does not
-exist in a
vacuum.
The ideology of a group
is more fully
expressed in the daily. relationships of its members with non
members.
This is where creative
black women writers of fe-
~inist persuasion
step in.
By
appropriating language--de-
fined by Kimberly W.Benston as
"that fundamental act of or-
ganising the
mind's encounter with an
experienced world""
black feminist novelists express the necessity for them
and their ability,
to give a structure of their own to their
"
Calvin
Hernton,
"The
Sexual Mountain
and Black
Women
Writers",
In Black American Literary Forum.
Winter B4,
Vol.IB No 4.
1 .
Kimberley W.Benston:
"1
yam what
1 am:
the
topos of
(un)naming in
Afro-American Literature," in
Henry Louis
Gates,
Jr.,
ed.
Black Literature and Literary Theory.
(New York: Methuen), 19B4, p.152
- 12 -

---

chaotic existence.
In the process of reclaiming their dis-
course simultaneously from two dominant cultures,
they suc-
cess fully define
themselves as the
cultural minority
of a
disinherited minority and consequently
commit themselves to
making their hidden history the
ultimate source of the psy-
chological strength
they need if they
are to grow
both as
individuals and as a group.
Most black female writers will
probably agree with Alice Walker's point that "I am preoccu-
pied with the spiritual survival,
the survival whole of my
people.
But beyond that,
I
am committed to exploring the
oppressions, the insanities, the loyalties, and the triumphs
of black
women.""
Black women novelists,
therefore,
are
producers of
a new set
of values
and the (black)
men in
their stories
are just one
of the many
structural devices
used by these authors to promote their critical awareness of
who black American women actually are.
James Baldwin's ob-
servation that
the black
American writer
"is here
to de-
scribe
things
which
other
people are
too
busy
to
de-
scribe,""
consequently
takes
a whole
new
meaning
when
applied to American black women
writers.
They explore the
psyche of their characters in
the context of their fiction.
MOre importantly, each of the three women studied here has a
story of self
creation to tell.
Toni Morrison
sums up the
black woman's unexpected emergence in her much quoted obser-
l. :z 0
in John
O'Brien,
ed.
Interviews With
Black Writers.
(New York: Liveright), 1973, p.192.
"
The Price bf the Ticket, p.244.
-
13 -
,:
;.

---

vation:
" ••• ,;1".12 llad nothing to
raIl back on;
not maleness,
not whi teness,
not ladyhood,
not anything.
And out of the
profound desclation of
her reality,
she may
well have in-
vented herself."
In the same
vein,
reviewing--in the pre-
face to The Black Woman: An Anthology-- the huge scholarship
produced on the black experience by "experts" in the various
domains of the sciences of man,
Toni Cade Bambara dismisses
most of what male psychologists, biologists, biochemists and
historians have always had to
say about black women.
Even
the available
fiction fails to
meet her expectations
as a
black woman. She says:
I
don't know
that literature
enlightens us
too
much. The "experts" are still men,
Black or white.
And the images of the women are still derived from
their needs,
their
fantasies,
their second-hand
knowledge,
their agreement
with
the other
ex-
pe r t 5 • 2 :
Black women
are,
therefore,
the sole
custodians of
any
first-hand knowledge of their own experience.
As a result,
only in their own
novels can the real story
of their self-
creation be told.
Toni Morrison also sounds positive about
this when she
says that "(b)lack men don't
write very dif-
ferently from white men.""
About whom or what, she does not
specify.
At
least about black
women,
one
should guess.
This opinion of hers is in perfect harmony with the implica-
"
Toni Cade,
ed.
The Black
Woman:
An Anthology.
(New
York: New American" Library), 1970, p.9:""
"
in Claudia Tate, ed.
Black Women Writers at Work.
(New
York: Continuum), 1983, p.122.
-
14 -

---

r· .
tions of
what Alice Walker refers
to as "the
Ignorance of
black men about black women.· Elaborating on this basic idea
the author of
·In Search Of Our Mothers'
Gardens· has this
to say:
Black women are
called,
in the folklore
that so
aptly identifies
one's status
in society,
·the
mule of the
world·,
because we have
been handed
the burdens that
everyone else--
everyone else--
refused to carry.
We have also been
called ·Ma-
triarchs·,
"Superwomen·, and ·Mean and Evil Bitch-
es.· Not
to mention ·Castraters·
and ·Sapphire's
Mama."
When
we pleaded
for understanding,
our
character has been distorted;
when we have asked
for simple caring,
we have
been handed empty in-
spirational appellations,
then stuck
in the far-
thest corner. When we have asked for love,
we have
been given children.
In
short,
even our plainer
gifts, our labors of fidelity and love,
have been
knocked down our
throats.
To be an
artist and a
black woman,even today,
lowers our status in many
respects,
rather than raises it:
and yet, artists
we will be."24
In assessing the plight of the black woman in America, Alice
Walker understandably points an accusing
finger in many di-
rections including the black man.
Black
American women
write
unquestionably against
the
background of the above mentioned set of experiences. Little
wonder their representations of the
black man rival and of-
ten conflict with the latter's self-portrayals.
In light of
the foregoing,
one could infer
that Paul Lawrence Dunbar's
mask metaphor,
often
used by critics to
account for white
authors' difficulties
in getting • ... an
intimate knowledge
,. Alice Walker.
In Search of
Our Mothers' Garden.
(New
York: Harcourt Brace and JovanOVlch) , 1983, p.237.
- 15 -
\\

---

of the Negro's character.
mind.
or tastes.··· can apply to
intra-community relationships
as well and
reveal a
lot to
black people about each other across the gender gap.
On ac-
count of the
historical bond of intimacy
between the black
man and the black woman.
the latter likes to think that she
knows the former much more than he is prepared to admit. How
accurate her (second-hand?)
image of him is.
depends on the
perspective from which one looks.
Such a question is beyond
the scope
of this dissertation,
but it is
interesting to
note
that on the whole,
black women writers avoid stereo-
typing their male Blacks.
I break Toni
Morrison's male characters into
three cat-
egories.
In The Bluest Eye the author inverts the power re-
lation that
traditionally exists
between husband
and wife
and puts Cholly Breedlove in an economic dependency the con-
sequences of
which he was
not psychologically
prepared to
handle;
by contrast, BoyBoy in Sula seeks to strengthen his
power
position and--because
of
his wife's
silence--turns
in~o a child.
I refer to both characters as ·losers·.
In
Song Of Solomon I see three outstanding men who were able to
give shape to
their own dreams despite
their difficult be-
ginnings.
Although, psychologically speaking, each of them
at some point
of his development proves off
balance in one
way or another,
I regard them
as ·winners".
I see Son in
•• Nancy M. Tischler.
Black Masks.
(University Park: The
Pennsylvania State university Press). 1969, p.15
- 16 -

---

the same light in Tar Baby
where the complex relatedness of
class,
race, and gender is scrutinizeq by Toni Morrison.
Unlike Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker
most of the time de-
picts socially maladjusted black men.
In The Third Life Of
Grange
Copeland
the oppressive
socio-economic
conditions
governing the lives of the
Cope lands eventually give way to
a keen
consciousness of
their plight
and the
realization
that they have
more "power" than they
ever give themselves
credit for.
Truman in Meridian
goes back and forth across
the psychological boundaries
between his own race
and that
of his wife in an attempt
to discover where he stands.
In
The Color Purple oppression,
i . . e.
"the absence of choice"
as Bell Hooks"
defines it,
is experienced by
a number of
female characters
as a
result of
men's inability
to keep
their domination instinct in check.
In Toni Cade Bambara's fiction in general and in her nov-
el The Salt Eaters in particular,
I see black men very much
aware of the reasons why black women need to push them aside
in order to have acknowledged black women's contribution to-
ward the promotion of a new
order within the black communi-
ty.
"
Bell Hooks.
Feminist Theory:
From Margin
to Center.
(Boston, Mass.: South End press), 1984, p.5.
17 -

---

I--
I
I
Although
1 irltend
to
focus on
their
images of
their
"brothers", 1 also mean to take a close look at the underly-
r
ing manipulations of
situations and characters each
of the
three authors engages in in order
to portray her men. There
seems to exist
a tacit commitment of
all female characters
in the three authors'
works to help each other mature and as
they strive
~o bring forth their
new selves,
many
a time
they come up against black men with broken spirits.
-
18 -

---

Chapter l
TONI MORRISON'S PERSPECTIVES
Toni Morrison,
in my opinion,
does not represent in her
fiction a stereotypical image of
black men.
However,
her
major black male characters have
something in common:
they
all are
psychologically crippled.
Although most
of them
start out purposive,
the
representation they usually have,
at first,
of
their objectives in life
emphasizes the neg-
ative nature
of some
of the
forces at
work around
them.
Now, as Monte M.Page points out:
"goals function in relation
to one another and in relation to
subgoals as part of a hi-
erarchicallyorganized
structure or system.""
Toni Morri-
son's men
are too
often caught up
in complex
networks of
goals and subgoals over which, most of the time,
they do not
'have much control.
The original
hierarchy may be of their
own design
but,
as is
the case
in The Bluest
Eye,
they
quickly exhibit
a cognitive and/or behavioral
inability to
mobilize
the
energy they
need
if
the
goals are
to
be
reached.
At times,
they are made the custodians of a power
'they either misuse (Sula,
and Song
of Solomon)
or fail to
"
in Monte M.Page, ed., Personality: Current Theory and Re-
search,
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press), 1983, p.
11
- 19 -

---

20
use (Tar Baby).
Whether she portrays them as losers, or as
winners,
or even when she disconnects them from the materi-
al,
this handicap
still shows in the various
ways she has
them handle their lives.
1.1
THE BLACK MAN AS A LOSER: THE BLUEST EYE AND SULA
During slavery
Black culture
in its
popular expression
emphasized the slaves' material
deprivation by artistically
describing the hostility of the environment around them.
It
is no exaggeration,
therefore,
to suggest that--apart from
the church--most slaves, as a result,
learnt to look inside
themselves or in each other's hearts for more lasting values
to cherish.
This humanism
wh~c_l]."r.;:1;',~~r Hanis calls
a
6~\\'-'
::1'-1......,,-
"code of ethics"
is what,
"dj2f:eJ?rfi-r-;:;e0m'8aels
for love and
,sacrifices that are willinglyf~j;e"'f'o'rEQ\\1;~)s.""Commitment
~(,\\---~ / S6
to the group,
either directIJ'r, indirec~J~y,
lies at the
'"""~~-'-~
,
'"'V
root of this set of new values. ':II1:~:~?,~~t>ne black community,
to fail to live up to the expectations of
(a member of)
the
~roup is to devolve from Black to "nigger".
The meaning of
the term "nigger" depends on who uses it and when.
By Afro-
~merican standards, though,
it means,
most of the time,
a
•• Trudier Harris:
"The Black
Women Writers and Humanism";
in R.
Baxter Miller, ed.
Black American Literature and
Humanism, 1981, p.52

---

21
loser.
In that sense, two outstanding losers in Toni Morri-
son's fiction are Cholly,
in The Bluest ~' and Boy Boy, in
Sula.
In The
Bluest Eye,
the first
conversation the
author
makes Claudia the young narrator recall as the story unfolds
brings together her
mother Mrs McTeer and some
of the lat-
ter's women friends,
and although their "dozens"
focus on
the facts of their everyday lives,
it soon becomes apparent
that the problem
with which one of their
"sisters" is cur-
rently plagued can be traced to a black man called Henry and
whom the narrator refers to as an "old dog",
i.e.
"that old
~~azy nigger
she married
up with.""
The text
then moves
s~iftly from the particular to the more general when one wo-
man, speaking evidently for the rest of the group, makes the
point that "some men just dog."lp.15)
A sense of a communi-
ty of critical black women anxious to share in their indi-
'.1:
vidual experiences is created right away by the author,
and
'~he very fact of its existence is an indication of the wo-
..
men's willingness
to learn to
see the world
through their
own eyes.
The stage IS set and no sooner does the "case" called Pe-
r,.• _\\
.qola appear
in the picture
than she provokes
Mrs McTeer's
anger .
Although Mrs McTeer is
raising two young daughters
. ' ;
., The
Bluest Eye,
New York:
Washington Square
Press,1
1970),
1972,
p.15.
All subsequent quotations are from
the 1972 edition.

---

22
as a single
parent,
she has just
been appointed temporary
foster mother to
Pecola the daughter of
Pauline and Cholly
Breedlove.
The long lecture their mother gives Claudia and
Frieda before Pecola's
arrival is meant to
prepare them to
accept the newcomer and make her
feel at home and comforta-
ble.
But Mrs McTeer intentionally
tells her children much
more
than they
need to
know about
Pecola's family
back-
ground.
Toni Morrison
clearly proceeds
to delineate
her
project:
"Cholly Breedlove,
then,
a renting Black,
having
put his family outdoors,
has
catapulted himself beyond the
reaches of human consideration.
He
had joined the animals;
was,
indeed,
an old dog,
a snake,
a ratty nigger."(p18-9)
The house is clearly presented as an index of humanity.
The
'~~alth that it
synedochically stands for
is
the measure of
To own a
house is
to be able
to process
'wealth into the power without which,
in Morrison's fiction,
tJ ~ .
black men disintegrate into nonentities.
As the set of met-
i~hors (" old dog, a snake, a ratty nigger") suggests,
only
16sers have no home.
By narrowing down the concept of "nig-
'~er" to the
image she draws of Cholly,
the implied author
'nks
created a
new frame
of reference
which insists
that
j
I-
Cholly's status as a human
being depends exclusively on his
~erformance as a provider.
Cholly
Breedlove's purchasing
power does not
enable him to pay for his
membership to the
community of humans.
As a result,
he is perceived by the
narr~tor as an unintelligent
person who fails,
psychologi-
',~ ,
. ," .,

---

I
23
cally speaking,
to bring the world around him under control.
He is the
symbol of the worst
kind of failure one
can ex-
perience and this symbol takes different shapes at different
stages of the story.
Little wonder that Pecola arrives with
nothing.
The fact of the matter is that she is the daughter
of a
"nobody" and
as a
result,
she
is perceived
by Mrs
McTeer as
the painful
presence of
an unbearable
absence.
Pecola, consequently,
has no right to drink three quarts of
milk in her foster home:
Three quarts of milk. That's what was in that ice-
box yesterday.
Three whole quarts. Now they ain't
none. Not a drop.
I don't mind folks coming in and
getting what they want,
but three quarts of milk!
What the devil does anybody need with three quarts
of milk!(p.22)
",In her comment on her mother's observation, Claudia candidly
n,notes that "the' folks'
my mother was referring to was Peco-
. la."(p.22)
The author's voice lurking behind Mrs McTeermay
,,' be indirectly
talking to
Pecola here
but as
a matter,
of
; r-
fact,
the most important implication of the message is that
Claudia's mother is talking about Pecola's father.
..
The end
of the monologue,
not surprisingly,
sheds a
more crucial
light on Cholly:
.'
Folks just dump they children off on you and go on
'bout they business.
Ain't
nobody even peep~d in
here
to see
whether
that child
has
a loaf
of
bread.
Look like
they would just peep
in to see
whether I
had a loaf of
bread to give
her.
But
naw. That thought don't cross they mind.
That old
trifling Cholly
been out of
jail two
whole days
and ain't
been here yet to
see if his
own child
was 'live or dead.(p.23)

---

24
Although Cholly's irresponsibility
is posited as a
fact at
,
the very beginning of the novel,
the author keeps piling up
the reasons why he should be regarded as a failure.
In the
foregoing quotation,
the narrator allows for the implied au-
thor's project
to be seen through
the eyes of a
woman who
h~s
to
carry
the
burden
of
Cholly's
mistakes.
Mrs.
McTeer's,
however,
is
not
just another voice
telling the
same story;
instead,
she is
portrayed as
the authorized
voice of many black women and to her,
Cholly is just a des-
picable absentee father.
Her presence in the narrative and
the
discourse she
subsequently generates
aim to
validaYe
both the
experience of
the people she
stands for
and the
language in which the latter
feel more comfortable express-
'lng that
experience.
Depicted
in this
language,
Cholly
stops being
a vague concept
and becomes a
concrete living
'~eality that Mrs. McTeer and Pauline Breedlove have to put
up with.
The image we see of Cholly is mainly of a father.
But he
is also a husband.
In either case he is bound by a contract
the transgression of which once again
turns him into a los-
r,' •
,er.
In most novels by black
male writers,
the failure of
'~black male characters to live up
to their own or other peo-
~le's expectations
is usually depicted
as the result
of a
concatenation of
situations in
which society
and/or other
men (both black and white)
in
one way or another deny them
,the r~ght to succeed.
Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Na-

---

25
tive Son and the invisible
man in Ralph Ellison's Invisible
Man are two cases in point.
Each of them is portrayed as a
product of
a political and
economic system
or represented
through the consciousness
of males who are
in positions of
power-- a
power they are
unwilling to lose.
By contrast
Toni Morrison's black men -- thanks to the way their strate-
gically conceived biographies are articulated in her works--
acknowledge the existence of black women in their lives.
In
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison
allows Cholly to turn childish
as a result of his manipulation
by his wife.
Even in Song
of Solomon where Macon 11,
the tireless provider,
is por-
trayed neither as a great husband
nor as an outstanding fa-
ther to his daughters, most of his life is structured around
his wife.
As a matter of
fact,
in The Bluest Eye,
Sula,
• Song Of
Solomon and
Tar Baby the
portraits of
black male
characters are, not surprisingly,
often painted against the
background of
female sensitivity.
In
The Bluest
Eye and
SUla, when black men turn out to be losers,
they do so main-
ly as women's partners.
When Pauline and
Cholly start out they
love each other.
Her mental representation of Cholly
prlor to their marriage
.~s informed by
the dialectic of a shared
love.
Because he
,loves the woman who is in love with him,
he is perceived by
her to be lively, kind,
funny,
and str~ightforward. And yet,
the narrator's account of those
bygone days with respect to
~holly's new attitude sounds
characterized by a camouflaged

---

26
uncertainty.
The narrator makes the point that "He seems to
relish her
company and even to
enjoy her country
ways and
lack of knowledge about city
things."(p.92)
If Cholly is a
dedicated lover when he first
meets Pauline,
it is because
the implied author has endowed Pa~line with "qualities" that
appeal to him in his future wife.
The couple's marriage and
their journey up
to Lorain for better
conditions of living
constitute a key moment in the development of the character.
In retrospect,
Pauline
cannot tell exactly "what
all hap-
pened"(p.93).
What happened is that the author has allowed
Cholly's wife to develop a
new psychological self in Lorain
'~'hile Cholly remains stuck with his old rural perspectives.
, ,
The one thing Pauline does know,
though,
is that up north
black people are "no better than whites' for meanness. "'(p.'93)
'fhe author
seems to be implying
many things here,
on'e of
them being that there are conditions prevailing in the South
\\;hich make it "easy" for Whites
to be racist.
When Blacks
are exposed to
similar conditions in the
North,
they lose
the SEnse of committed brotherhood
they "easily" develop in
'the South 1n response to collective oppression.
.
In Lorai'n,
;,
'Ohio,
Pauline is made to miss the brother- sisterhood feel-
ing.
Her conviction that they "make you feel like no-count"
defines the social and
psychological environment prevailing
1n the North which, at the same time,
though, stands for ec-
,onomic and psychological freedom. The closeness of the North
,to "the
cold but receptive
Canada" emphasises some
of the
,contradictions that the concept of freedom implies.

---

27
In Lorain, as Pauline becomes the incarnation of both the
citizen's sophisticated appearance and
the individual's al-
ienation from the community in the city,
her husband strug-
gles the best way he knows how,
to keep abreast, but eventu-
ally desintegrates
into a
failure.
Important
as it
1S,
Pauline's self-fulfilment in Lorain is
a "subgoal" in re la-
tion to the happiness of the couple , which was the original
goal they came up north to achieve.
By letting the woman's
subgoal outgrow the couple's goal,
the author has created in
Cholly a
psychological imbalance.
Watching Pauline
grow
from an innocent country girl
into a sophisticated city wo-
man, one understands the opinion that in The Bluest Eye Toni
Morrison "dramatizes
the destructive power implicit
in the
control of various symbolic systems.""
At the very beginning, money is depicted by the author as
a maJor concern.
Cholly's attitude toward Pauline's pursuit
.of city
happiness is sustained by
the fact that she
is an
individual capable of reacting to
society's pressure in her
'.
,own way.
To stick
to the old way is to
refrain from dis-
. rupting the order that serves Cholly's purpose.
Confronted
by sex
and gender as
sophisticated city
people experience
them,
he
displays his ignorance
about both.
The author
,e I
.~akes him perceive the culture drilled into women by society
-','
0~nd tradition as the "normal" order of things.
This is why
,. Keith Bayerman.
Fingering the
Jagged Grain.
(Athens:
"
University of Georgia Press), 1985,. p.185
, ~'

---

28
he reacts to the
change in his wife at first
as a confused
man losing ground.
No wonder.
In the process of learning
to become a city lady Pauline proves to be a burden to Chol-
ly who finds her new ways rather expensive.
Her preoccupa-
tion with her external looks
contrasts with the moral decay
she allows to take place inside her.
Her new self is a cyn-
ical combination of a desire to attract black women's atten-
tion in
Lorain and the
willingness to use
manipulation to
achieve this goal.
Cholly Breedlove is the first victim of
this strategy.
The only resistance he
can put up at first
in order to slow down
Pauline's rapid transformation origi-
nates
from his
position
as the
only
wage-earner of
the
couple.
In that respect,
by seeking and finding employment
Pauline has attained
the same power as
her husband.
Once
again,
th~
author gives
Pauline both
the chance
and the
means to achieve more visibility
while the old symbols from
which Cholly used to derive
his power and authority command
less and less respect.
When he was the only wage-earner in
'the home,
he could afford to be
the head of the family and
dictate to his wife.
Viewed from this angle,
their journey
'~p north--almost against her will--is
a kind of psychologi-
~al rape that
Pauline was put through.
As a wage-earner,
Cholly'a wife
has engaged in
reversing what
Madonne Miner
calls • ... the
powerful dynamics behind (the)
allotment of
presence/absence,
language/silence,
reason/madness
along

---

29
sexual lines.""
In
the narrator's presentation it
is men-
tioned that
"Money became the
focus of
their discussions,
hers for clothes,
his for drink."(p.94)
The
character of
Cholly as the author now sees him is under stress.
That he
opts for alcohol as a "cure" for it is indicative of a defi-
ciency in his
behavioral and cognitive coping
system.
As
his will to keep his life
under control dwindles,
his por-
trait as seen by Pauline reads progressively as the story of
her own insecurities.
"Cholly",
she claims "commenced to
getting meaner
and meaner
and wanted to
fight me
all the
time."
By processing Cholly's stress into anger,
the author
indicates that the
character feels treated unfairly
by his
wife.
This realization,
however, does not lead him to take
any positive action likely to help
him to recover his human
dignity.
While her
helplessness is presented as
both the
cause and the
result of his newly
developed drinking prob-
lem,
his meanness
is quickly confirmed by
his attempts to
depend financially on
his working wife.
In
contriving the
plot the way she does, Toni Morrison prepares the ground for
a
further disintegration
of Cholly
as Pauline's
husband.
Her white mistress's advice to Pauline
that it is her "hus-
band's duty
to pay the
bills ..... constitutes
an important
shift in the point of view.
The issue under discussion is
,. Madonne Miner:
"Lady
No Longer Sings the
Blues:
Rape,
Madness,
and
Silence in The
Bluest EYE;'"
In Marjorie
Pryse and Hortense J. Spiller, eds.
ConJuring: Black Wo-
men, Fiction, ~ Literary Tradition,
Bloomington,
unI-
versity of IndIana Press, 19B5,
p.lBL

---

30
considered from the
perspective of a representative
of the
dominant culture. The author suggests an alternative Pauline
is not
prepared to opt
for because
it does not
serve the
purpose of the author's project.
Not only is Pauline unable
to see any
similarity between her own
addiction to clothes
and her husband's addiction to alcohol but the fact that she
15
now being advised by a white woman not to let her husband
depend on her financially leads one to believe that both wo-
men,
to a certain degree,
have the same idea what a husband
must be like.
The white woman's alternative solution to the
situation is divorce whereas Pauline prefers to stay on with
Cholly.
From the choices Morrison imposes on the two women,
one can easily
infer that she intends to
carry her project
one step further:
Pauline stays
married to Cholly in order
for the author to finish off
establishing that he is a los-
er.
In either
caseCholly is perceived as
a deviant hus-
band.
Oddly enough, when she tells him about her pregnancy,
he surprises
her" by
being pleased."
One may
wonder why
Cholly the alcoholic and the woman beater is,
all of a sud-
den, happy to have a child.
This surprising attitude which,
at first,
contrasts sharply with all
that has been said so
far about
Cholly has a
temporarily positive effect
on the
couple's married liEe in the sense
that it brings both hus-
band and wife
together by sustaining the sudden
hope Eor a
better common Euture.
Needless to wonder ,though,
why the
author destines this couple to
have children while there is

---

31
every indication already that the
would-be father
is a psy-
chologically crippled man
who cannot even handle
life with
his wife.
It becomes clearer that the author means to have
Cholly reach the bottom of the ditch.
Viewed from that per-
spective,
Cholly's happiness at the "good" news fully makes
sense.
The
narrator insists that
"the aspect
of married
life that dumbfounded him and
rendered him totally disfunc-
tional was the appearance
of children."(p.126)
The scien-
tific language used here situates Cholly, once again,
below
the norm.
Fatherhood is,
therefore, meant to bring his psy-
chological confusion to the fullest.
The same psychological
confusion is expressed through
indifference towards his own
son by Louis--another
black man--during his very
brief ap-
pearance in the novel.(p.72).
The children, Sammy and Peco-
la Breedlove, are later on used by their mother to put their
father further down.
Her callous
decision to "avenge her-
self on Cholly
by forcing him to indulge
in the ~eaknesses
she despises" testifies to her preoccupation with projecting
her fears
into a despicable "other"
on whom she
can blame
most of her own shortcomings.
She actively participates in
his desintegration
by carefully
monitoring her
own social
activities.
As a result of
her determination,
Cholly be-
comes the
ultimate "model of
sin and
failure."(pl04)
In
fact Cholly
is dragged into
a personality conflict
by his
wife who progressively manages to reduce him to a nonentity,
He is
the "case" married to
a woman with a
strategy which

---

32
consists in
using every asset at
her disposal to
show the
whole world how sharp the contrast is between them:
All
the meaningfulness
of her
life
was in
her
work.
For her virtues were
intact.
She was an
active church woman, did not drink,
or smoke,
or
carouse, defended herself mightily against Cholly,
rose above him in every way, and felt she was ful-
filling a
mother's role conscientiously
when she
pointed
out their
father's faults
to keep
them
from
having them,
or
punished
them when
they
showed any
slovenliness,
no
matter how
slight,
when she worked
twelve to sixteen hours
a day to
support them. (p.102)
Pauline's shallow preoccupation with appearance now goes be-
yond her original taste for nice clothes.
Just as she shows
off her new dresses,
so has she to exhibit moral and social
values that make
her an attractive woman--only
on the out-
side.
Her ultimate
goal being to dwarf
her husband while
seducing the world around them,
she makes endurance a price
she is fully
prepared to pay.
Motherhood has
glven her a
unique chance to articulate in a whole range of ways her ha-
tred for herself and for Cholly.
Pauline's active contribu-
tion to the
disappointing image of Cholly
1S
so emphasised
we
eventually see
him as
the reflection
of her
negative
thoughts.
Considering that Cholly himself was once a victim
of child
abuse,
the irony here
is that his wife
has been
making every effort to reproduce the cycle of paternal irre-
sponsibility.
While Sammy and Pecola are growing up Pauline
makes sure
they see their father
as the living
example of
what they must not become.
Cholly
is portrayed in term of

---

33
his shortcomings.
As an outcast in his own home,
there is
no way he can connect and communicate with his own children.
Despite his wife's strategy to isolate him,
however,
their
children in general and Pecola in particular love him.
But
Cholly is not even equipped--either emotionally or morally--
to respond to his daughter's love.
When the narrator probes
into his mind
one day right before he
sexually abuses her,
Cholly
is confronted
with his
own uncertainties:
"What
could his
heavy arms
and befuddled
brain accomplish
that
would earn him his own respect,
that would in turn allow him
to accept her love?"
(p.127)
The irony of the whole story
takes up a most shocking form here.
Cholly has turned into
a monster and
his transformation has been
monitored exclu-
sively by
his wife whose commitment
to the pursuit
of the
values of the dominant culture
has prevented her from fully
grasping the consequences of her
endeavors.
She runs away
from her old self for the
same reason Pecola wishes she had
blue eyes.
Lagging far behind his wife's new self,
Cholly
continues groping for the woman he
used to be in love with.
For a
few moments,
the
author makes
him find her
in his
daughter.
To
claim,
as one
critic does,
that Pecola's
" ... father's life
is a
study in
rejection and
limitation
caused and
intensified by poverty
and blackness,""
is to
overlook the very
active role played by
Pecola's mother in
•• Dorothy H.Lee,
"The Quest for Self:
Triumph and Failure
in the Works of Toni Morrison" in Mari Evans, ed.,
Black
Women
Writers(1950-l980),
Garden
City,
N.Y.,
Anchor
Press/Doubleday~8~.347.

---

34
the disintegration of Cholly's character.
Despite the moral
transgression he
is guilty of,
his
image as a
villain is
simply the appearance behind the reality of Pauline's misuse
of power and authority.
Whatever
the perspective
from which
one
looks at
the
character of Cholly in The.Bluest~,
he is portrayed as a
psychologically handicapped man.
To call him a
loser who
has no
control whatsoever over his
own life is to
look at
him from
Pauline's perspective.
Cholly's
limitations are
depicted in
the context of
female manipulation,
which is
~hat distinguishes The
Bluest Eye from novels
like Richard
Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
Cholly's life in Lorain,
Ohio is a metaphor for the com-
munity's inability to
sense the full implication,
for its
survival, of the personal tragedies involved In too quick an
identification with
the dominant culture.
In
Sula,
Toni
Morrison carries the analysis one step further by giving her
black male
characters the
chance to
experime~t their
own
ideas.
This experimentation, however,
takes place in an en-
yironment polluted by racism and prejudice, which places se-
rious limitations on the characters'
performance as individ-
.uals.
The opening chapter of Sula is a romanticized description
,of the
Bottom prior
to its destruction
in order
"to make
room for the Medallion City Golf Course."(p.3)
This is not

---

35
to suggest that
the Bottom used to be
a sorrow-free neigh-
borhood.
The black people living up there simply managed to
turn it into a celebrated place where the sense of stability
that they
derive from
the long
history of
their survival
justifies their attachment to it.
On the whole,
the lives of the black men in Sula are de-
signed by the author in the image of the township.
Each of
them is not satisfied with
the stability that characterizes
their beginnings.
As a result,
change has to take place.
Like the
road and
the golf
court which
testify to
man's
willingneSs
to achieve
something concrete
and lasting
by
taming the forces
of nature,
Morrison's black
men,
here,
long to
depart from their old
selves in an attempt
to get
rid
of the
sense
of
worthlesc.ness that
the
environment
drills into them.
Jude's personal odyssey is just an illus-
tration of
one aspect of
the psychological
imbalance from
which they suffer
as a result of the
frustrations they ex-
perience on
different planes.
When
he waS
twenty,
Jude
"wasn't really aiming to get married"
and the reason as ar-
ticulated by the narrator is that
" ... although his job as a
waiter at the Hotel Medallion was
a blessing to his parents
and their seven other children,
it wasn't enough to support
"a wife."(pp.80-8l)
In view of
the context of Jude's life,
the author's masculinist idea that a
wife needs to be "sup-
ported" by her
husband can be traced only
to the influence
of the dominant culture that
Morrison partly depicts in her

---

36
fiction.
The narrator,
therefore,
conveys the sense that
there 1S a side lo Jude that
is committed to the "old" val-
ue.
To this arguably caring,
"old" Jude who has been work-
ing so far
to other people's satisfaction,
Morrison opposes
a
"new"
Jude who ~~nts to
achieve
some kind of
lasting
rec-
ognition by
attaching his name to
the new road
under con-
struction:
Along with a
few other young black
men,
Jude
had gone down to the shack where they were hiring.
Three old colored men had already been hired,
but
not for the road work,
just to do the picking up,
food bringing and other small errands.
These old
men were close to feeble,
not good for much else,
and
everybody was
pleased
they
were taken
on;
still it was a shame to see those white men laugh-
ing with the grandfthers and
shying away from the
young black men who could tear that road up.
The
men like Jude
who could do the
real work.
Jude
himself longed more than anyone
else to be taken.
Not
just for the good money, more for
the work it-
self.
He wanted to swing
the pick or kneel down
with the string
or shovel the gravel.
His arms
ached for something heavier than trays,
for some-
thing dirtier than peelings;
his feet wanted the
heavy work shoes,
not
the thin-soled black shoes
that the
hotel required.
More than
anything he
wanted the camaraderie of the road men:
the lunch
buckets,
the hollering,
the body movement that in
the
end produced
something
real,
something
he
could point
to.
"I built
this road,"
he could
say.(pp.81-82)
Through the use of allegory,
Morrison establishes that the
hiring white
men feel
threatened by
black men
like Jude,
which is why they prefer the old,
feeble
"grandfathers" over
the "young black men who could
tear that road up."
The job
satisfaction that Jude could have
derived from the position

---

- 37
he is denied
is crucial to his self-fulfilment
as an indi-
vidual.
In other words,
not only does the prevailing social
and
economic system
aim to
confine Blacks
to the
menial
jobs,
but
in the process,
young
black men like
Jude are
stripped of their manhood.
Building the new road is the ul-
timate affirmation of
manhood as Jude sees it.
To be ex-
cluded from
this manly
adventure is to
be reduced
to the
status of
"a waiter
hanging around
a kitchen
like a
wo-
man."(p.B3)
By suggesting this kind of comparison,
the au-
thor
seems to
insinuate
that Jude
regards
women as
the
worthless other.
Paradoxically enough,
Jude survives his
rejection--as
a
psychologically
diminished
person
fully
aware that he must compensate
for his low self-esteem--only
by turning to a woman.
Women mean a lot more to him than he
IS
aware of.
Morrison portrays him
as a wounded self who,
more than
anything else "wanted
someone to care
about his
hurt."(p.B)
By creating
a discrepancy
between the
young
man's real intention in marrying
Nel and the latter's genu-
ine desire "to
help" and "to soothe"lp.B3),
Toni Morrison
not only makes
Jude the right partner for her
but,
at the
same time,
she
allows for Nel to be violated
by a callous
Jude Green who, as his name seems to indicate, has some more
growing to
do if he
is to
understand the true
meaning of
Nel's commitment to
him.
Jude's ultimate goal IS
to be a
man among fellow men no matter the conditions imposed on him
by white-controled society.
As a result of the author's ma-

---

38
nipulation of the
context,
his "frustrations
become self-
pity which Nel is expected to nurse,
in both senses of heal-
ing ard feeding.""
To put it more bluntly: "he wants Nel to
enlarge his lif~,
even if
it means diminishing her own.""
In this respect,
both Jude's affair with Sula,
years later,
and his resulting departure from
Medallion make him a fail-
ure, although of a different type than BoyBoy.
BoyBoy,
Eva's husband and the
father of her three chil-
dren, has been known to be a hard working father and husband
until he
decides unexpectedly one day
to get away
from it
all.
During
the five years of
what the narrator
calls a
"sad and disgruntled marriage,"(p32)
the character of BoyBoy
as the author sees him is but a patchwork of negative behav-
ior patterns.
Just like Nel's husband, Eva's spouse is por-
trayed in terms of his limitations.
During the
time they
were together
he was
very
much
preoccupied with
other women
and not
home
much.
He did whatever he could that he liked, and
he liked
womanizing best,
drinking
second,
and
abusing Eva third.
(p.32)
As in The Bluest ~e where,
soon after the beginning of the
-
~ -
story,
the reader is told what
(s)he should perceive Cholly
as,
so 1S
BoyBoy's psychological and social
image in Sula
clearly defined and
communicated by the author
even before
"
Keith Bayerman Fingering the Jagged Grain,
Athens,
Uni-
versity of Georgia Press, 1985, p.197
,. Gloria Wade-Gayles No Crystal Stair,
New York,
The pil-
grim Press, 1984, p:T91

---

39
he appears
on the scene.
The narrator's
conviction that
BoyBoy
does whatever
he likes
identifies immediately
the
character as an unusual person in
the sense that his behav-
ior conflicts with
his wife's expectations in
terms of the
rules and social conventions married
people are supposed to
live by.
To go around trying
to have one's way is,
some-
times,
to Ignore not
only that one IS a member
of a given
society but also
t hil t one interacts with other
people on a
daily basis.
The narrator's emphasis on the bad things Boy-
Boy does and her silence about whatever good things he might
do at least once in a while convey the author's intention to
represent BoyBoy as a loser.
At some point, his status as a
loser is even quantified when the narrator uses the language
of mathematics to describe it:
"When he left in November,
Eva had $1.65,
five eggs,
three beets and no idea of what or
'how to feel."(p.32)
Boyboy's refusal
to stick to the terms
of the initial contract finds
expression In his triple role
as an unfaithful
husband,
an alcoholic and
a wife beater.
"But his status
as a three-time loser only
prepares him for
an even more degrading role,
that
of a run-away father not
very much concerned about the plight of his children.
Just
as in the case of Cholly in The Bluest Eye,
the portrayal of
Boyboy in Sula heavily depends
on his relationship with his
spouse and children.
The fact that Boyboy
runs away from
home effectively
whereas Cholly
does the
same thing
only
symbolically testifies to two
different male behaviour pat-

---

40
terns exhibited by two men who,
despite the similarities of
their social conditions in their
early married lives,
have
not faced their new reality in the same way.
This variation
on the theme points to the fact that in Sula,
black men see
marriage as a
prison they have to evade.
The
irony of it
all is that prior to their
marriage,
they tend to view the
subscription to this institution not
only as a victory over
themselves,
but also as a key to their self-fulfilment.
Boyboy's return to the Bottom
is another opportunity for
the character to reiterate in a most distant way his detach-
ment from his former family. The narrator describes his vis-
it with Eva against the background of a big ambiguity.
Fi-
nancially
speaking,
the
former
loser
came
back
as
a
self-fulfilled person--at least in
appearance.
"He opened
the door and stood smiling, a picture of prosperity and good
will."(p.35)
Boyboy as
seen by
Toni Morrison
evidently
gives primary emphasis to his second coming and this clearly
shows in the
arrogance he displays during
his conversation
with Eva.
He did not leave his children by chance.
On the
contrary,
he did it intentionally
and does not regret ever
doing it.
While away from home,
he goes through a change
~nd becomes a party to a new
deal.
He makes this known to
'Eva by telling her his desire
to negate not only their com-
mon past but also the common future they both had decided to
build.

---

41
Their conversation was easy:
she catching him up
on all ti,e
gossip,
he asking about
this one and
that one,
and like anybody else avoiding any ref-
erence to her leg.
It was like talking to somebod-
y's cousin who just stopped by to say howdy before
getting on back to wherever
he came from.
Boyboy
didn't ask
to see the
children,
and
Eva didn't
bring them into the conversation.(p.36)
Once again,
the subtle opposition between what Boy Boy wants
and what he doesn't sheds a powerful light on his personali-
ty.
What he
is prepared to discuss makes him
look like a
nice outsider
whereas what he
refuses to talk
about makes
him a heartless,"
irresponsible husband and father.
By re-
fraining from
bringing the children into
the conversation,
Eva actively participates
in the depiction of
the portrait
of her husband as the narrator wants him perceived.
Morri-
son's intention
seems to
portray BoyBoy--another
metaphor
for
immaturity--as an inhuman man who can stoop so low as to
disown,
if symbolically, his children.
The couple's collec-
tive construction
of meaning is
the result of
a technique
used by the author.
It
consists 1n making one character's
s:lence read like a self-revealing discourse produced by the
other.
The marital relationship is displaced by Boyboy and
"the situation is accepted by Eva
who is not even shocked by
the fact
that the
whole picture
is presented
against the
background of
anew love affair
between her husband
and a
"woman in pea-green
dress.'!
Two conflicting images
of the
character of Boyboy
emerge from his performance
during the
visit.
On the one hand what
he says about himself and the

---

42
way he accordingly acts in Eva's presence,
and on the other
hand what the author makes Eva choose to see him as the sign
of.
He is a formerly poor man whose newly acquired purchas-
ing power makes him lose sight of the identities of the oth-
er people
around him--everybody,
including the
new girl-
friend.
The fusion of the spoken word and the body language
are captured by the narrator and the coming together of both
representations of
Boyboy contrasts with the
reified image
of the unnamed girlfriend:
"Talking about Ilis appointments
and exuding
an odor of new
money and idleness,
he danced
down the
steps and
strutted to~ard
the pea-green
dress."
But to defeat
BoyBoy's purposes by destroying
his self-im-
age, Morrison shifts to Eva's perspective.
In the author's
presentation,
Eva is
aware that the picture
her returning
husband is trying to promote of himself
is a mere appearance
that must be processed
by her if she IS to
have a truthful
idea what Boyboy is actua].].y about.
So she scrutinizes him
as best she can, and the conclusion she reaches confirms the
claim that the author intends to
portray Eva's husband as a
failure.
As the narrator puts it,
"She looked at the back
~t Ilis neck
and the set of his
slloulders.
Underneath all
that shine she saw
defeat in the stalk of his
neck and the
curious tight way l,e held his shoulders."(p.36)
Boyboy rep-
resents a conscious attempt to question the concepts of mar-
'riage and parental responsibility as
elaborated by the com-
munity of
which he is
a member.
When viewed as
part of

---

43
American society in general,
the black community to which he
belongs means even less to him.
The perception of that com-
munity by
White America
is imagined by
the author
in the
Chicken Little episode.
When the body of Chicken Little is
found by
a white bargeman,
the latter cannot
believe his
eyes:
He would have
left him there but
noticed that it
was a child,
not an old black man, as it first ap-
peared,
and he prodded the body loose,
netted it
and hauled it aboard.
He
shook his head in dis-
gust at the kind of
parents who would drown their
own c~ildren.
When, he wondered,
will those peo-
ple ever be anything but animalS,
fit
for nothing
but substitutes for mules,
only mules didn't kfil
each other the way niggers did.(p.63)
The narrator's point is that the white man proves humane and
takes care of the body because it is that of a child.
As a
'diminished presence,
a child needs attention and protection
'on the one hand,
and represents
no threat to the "adults",
on the other.
The bargeman's caring-- although a selective
one--at
first makes him a responsible "father".
At the same
time,
however,
his gesture is sustained by a sense of duty
prompted by what Morrison presents
as his commitment to the
"truth" that all Blacks are animals
pure and simple.
As a
.matter of fact the language used by the narrator to describe
the
white man's
next
move indicates
that
he does
treat
Chicken Little's corpse like the
carcass of a cheap animal:
"He dumped Chicken Little .into a
burlap sack and tossed him
next to some egg crates and boxes of wool cloth."lp.63)
The

---

white man
IS
then
mythically made
to stand
for the
con-
sciousness of the
whole of his race when
the narrator pic-
tures him •.. . sitting down to smoke,
on an empty lard tin,
still bemused by God's curse and the terrible burden his own
kind had of elevating Ham's sons ... •
Ip.53)
BoyBoy prefers
to ·elevate· himself.
By
asserting his
commitment to himself,
he reaffirms his choice of the indi-
vidual over the group.
Toni Morrison portrays him as a per-
son who unquestionably believes that might is right.
Unlike
in The Bluest Eye where,
because of his poverty.
the author
lets Cholly
allow himself to be
treated as a
nonentity by
his wife, BoyBoy in Sula is made to turn into an irresponsi-
ble man because of his wife's
silence in the context of his
gursuit of money.
Black men in
The Bluest ~ and Sula
are clearly repre-
sented in terms of their limitations.
They live in environ-
ments where the white-dominated
social and economic systems
constantly remind them of the
little control they have over
.their own existence.
The frustrations they experience. as a
result.
turn their inner lives into a replica of the limit-
,ing world around them.
In the process,
the gap gets widened
between the expectations of the women
in their lives on the
one hand and what they can afford
to offer them on the oth-
. er.
,.
In the two novels considered here. Morrison establishes
,a correlation between poverty and
the black man's inability
I·"

---

45
to. generate in
himself the confidence he needs if
he is to
meet the expectations of the black woman as his wife.
1.2
CHOOSING TO WIN: SONG OF SOLOMON
1.2.0.1
- - - -
Macon Dead JI,
or the Pursuit of Loneliness
Toni Morrison's creative writings have the black communi-
ty as their focal point and
quite naturally,
she draws ex-
tensively on both the folklore and the culture of her people
in her attempt to explore the
profundities of the world she
invents.
At the same time,
though, the narrative strategies
that she uses enable her to
create characters who are often
different,
in terms of their personalities,
from those tra-
ditionally depicted by black male writers.
~ Song 21 Solo-
mon --more than in any other
novel by her--she exhibits her
ability to use and subvert the Afro American canon.
The re-
suIt is not only a whole range of outstanding female charac-
ters such as Pilate,
her daughter and her nieces,
but also
some relatively
important male characters like
Macon Dead,
Milkman and Guitar.
Just like the major black male charac-
ters in The
Bluest Eye and Sula,
Macon
Dead,
Milkman and
Guitar in Song 21 Solomon are, each in his own way,
success

---

46
oriented.
Unlike the former,
though,
the latter are achiev-
ers.
In other words,
In their perception of things,
it is
not enough having a goal; one has to reach it.
Unfortunate-
ly,
like Cholly and Boy Boy all three are psychologically off
balance.
The character
of Macon Dead
11
as conceived
by Morri-
son--it seems to me-- is the incarnation of the central idea
that
"Money
is
freedom ( ... 1.
The
real
freedom
there
is"{SOS,pI631.
Although this
philosophical articulation of
his truth by himself
understandably highlights the culmina-
tion of his psychological development,
the fact of the mat-
ter remains that ever since he was sixteen,
he has actually
lived by this
principle.
No wonder that as
the story pro-
. gresses,
his commitment to amassing
more and more material
wealth at any cost is re-inforced while he seems prepared to
remove every single obstacle that might emerge in the way of
self-fulfilment.
By five,
Macon Dead 11
is portrayed as a
very hard working
child helping his father
on the latter's
farm and at
sixteen he is a witness to
his father's murder
by greedy· property-loving people who
wanted Macon
Dead 11
out of their way. This death,
for one thing,
forces upon the
young Macon the
realisation that his home village
is but a
jungle where the
strong can gun down the
weak for whatever
reason and get
away with it.
From his
new conviction pro-
ceeds a most logical move:
knowing that he belongs with the
weak,
Macon prefers to leave the
overtly savage world of a

---

47
countryside
which eventually
becomes
a
metaphor Eor
the
whole South.
On his way
to "freedom"--another name for the
more sophisticated jungle oE
the northern cities--the young
man goes through an experience worth underlining here. He is
too energetic by up-bringing,
and
his sister,
too wild by
nature for them both to "bear the stillness ( ... 1, the bore-
dom ( ... 1" (p.167)
in the room where,
Eor days,
Circe has
been both
hiding and
protecting them
from their
father's
murderers.
Their young minds as depicted by the author can-
not picture anything
harder on them "...
than walking all
day on carpeting,
than eating the soft bland Eood white peo~
ple (eat),
than having to sneak a
look at the sky from be-
hind ivory curtains"(p.1671. At this stage oE Macon's devel-
opment as a person,
whiteness--no matter what form it comes
'in--generates in the character a mixed Eeeling oE fear,
ha-
tred, and helplessness.
On the one hand,
the memory oE his
father's assassination as presented by the narrator is still
too fresh in his mind Eor him to stand the idea of living in
a world designed,
Eenced-in, and nourished by Whites. On the
other hand,
though,
he cannot deny the fact that no matter
"how "white"
the world of that small room 15,
it guarantees--
"if temporarily --the security that
he needs.
The conEusing
result is
that he is Eorced
by circumstances to
like that
which he has some good reason to run away from.
Macon appears,
for the time being,
as a displaced person
lost in
a strange land where
there is no role
model whose

---

48
behaviour he can pattern his own
after.
He is the helpless
victim of a concatenation of
facts leading progressively to
the erasure of his people.
Toni Morrison presents the epi-
sode as
a symbolic
attempt by
white America
to wipe
out
black Americans.
It all
started when
the drunken
white
clerk who was to issue the first Macon's identification doc-
ument made a
series of mistakes.
It is
written down that
the first name of the newly-freed slave is Macon. He is mis-
named after
a town.
He
is given
a first name
he never
meant to bear.
His last name,
Dead,
goes much further in
that it most definitely conflicts with his evident desire to
live and prosper. His untimely death,
therefore, comes ~s no
surprise.
And
if they eventually prove
successful,
Macon
I,
II'S efforts
to pick
up the pieces
of his
shattered life
~~uld be perceived as leading "to the resurrection of ~ Dead.
I "
Macon,
Jr knows that for him to survive in his native coun-
try,
the only person he can rely on for inspiration and any-
thing else is himself.
He is portrayed, understandably, as
the custodian
of a displaced
dream.
Despite
his father's
..; ,
short life,
Macon learnt a lot from him because of the for-
mer's commitment to creating a space
where he can erect his
own monument.
His efforts to create
a strong new self re-
sult,
later on,
In a bizarre "parricide".
The "father" who,
incidentally,
looks like a white
ghost reminds Macon 11 of
whatever his
previously mentioned hiding place
stands for.
Killing him is
challenging that world,
playing
by its own

---

49
rules.
It is interesting to note that he discovered the gold
because
he killed
his "father".
And
his newly
acquired
wealth holds
the key to the
same white world
which,
this
time,
comes without
the fear Macon 11
once experienced in
the room provided by Circe. As the narrator puts it:
Life,
safety,
and luxury fanned out
before him
like the tail-spread of a peacock, and as he stood
there trying to distinguish each delicious colour,
he saw the dusty boots of his father standing just
on the other side of the shallow pit.(p.171)
Macon
Dead is
consistently portrayed
as an
over-focussed
person.
Not surprisingly.
the gold he has
just found )s
said to stand for life,
safety and luxury.
The difference
'in him and a Cholly lies in the material achievement.
Sur-
prisingly enough,
the very first project the l6-year-old Ma-
con
wants
to
spend
part
of
the
gold
on
IS
"another
farm"(p.172).
Toni Morrison makes the son pick up where the
father left off.
His unconscious desire to carry on his fa-
ther's dream
cannot be denied
and Pilate's refusal
to let
him take the
gold away from the cave sheds
a crucial light
on the differences in their personal perspectives on materi-
al
wealth.
There
is
no doubt
about
the second
Macon's
'choice:
the more property he has,
the more he will wish for.
Macon's start,
up in the North,
IS
depicted by the narra-
tor as a very difficult one.
Strange as it may sound,
the
business world all over the country is subjected to the laws
,of ethnicity,
religion,
race and many more categorisations

---

50
and the young man
was aware oE
it:
"He knew
as a Negro he
wasn't going to get a big slice
of the pie.
But there were
properties nobody wanted,
or little edges oE property some-
one didn't want Jews to have, or Catholics to have, or prop-
erties nobody knew were oE any value yet"(p.631.
The narra-
tor
represents Macon
In
the
larger context
oE
American
society where
the socio-philosophical
evaluation oE
black
people by Whites admittedly places the former at a disadvan-
tage in every aspect oE their lives.
The pressure resulting
Erom this
realization by Blacks
is not impossible
to han-
dle--in Toni Morrison's estimation.
As her style suggests
here,
for Black Americans to make
it in business they have
to either engage
in opportunism or outsmart
everyone else".
Macon Dead stands Eor a
shrewd combination oE both alterna-
tives.
Not only does Macon 11
have a very clear idea what
~e wants but in addition
he is characterised throughout the
novel as
both a fast learner
and a determined man
who in-
tends to stay in business. Quite expectedly,
the author con-
fronts him with the fact that struggling to stay in business
at whatever cost has some disadvantages to it, especially if
one is a
black landlord with black tenants.
By moving the
setting from the rural South to the urbanized North,
the au-
thor anticipates new
problems her black community
must now
prepare to Eace.
The town is seen as a place where physical
nearness in
most cases
comes inevitably
with social
dis-
tance.
Macon soon develops a
reputation as a callous land-

---

51
lord with no sympathy at all for his destitute clients.
"A
nigger in business
1S
a terrible thing
to see"(p.22)
says
Mrs Bains a black woman tenant of his.
Once again,
the se-
mantic field covered here by
the term "nigger" clearly goes
beyond the derogatory
connotation that it has
when used by
white people.
Its usage here relates Mrs Bains to the black
oral tradition and illustrates what
Henry Louis Gates,
Jr.
terms "(t)he ironic
reversal of a received
racist image of
the
black as
simianlike,
the
Signifying Monkey--he
who
dwells at
the margins of
discourse ... ""
Mrs Bains
is the
voice of the destitute Blacks suffering from an unforgivable
~uthlessness that qualifies Macon 11
for dismissal from the
poor section of the black
community--in Mrs Bains'
opinion,
that is.
In Toni Morrison's presentation,
the poor Blacks'
~erception of
the successful businessman places
Macon Dead
'11 one step closer to a white
world he is more than glad to
identify with"
if only because
it compensates for his era-
sure elsewhere. The story about his office substantiates his
invisibility.
Is
this space
actually his?
Originally he
thought it was:
But the
plate-glass window contradicted
him.
In
peeling gold letters arranged
in semicircle,
the
business establishment was declared
to be Sonny's
Shop.
Scraping the previous
owner's name off was
,.
"The blackness of blackness:
a
critique of the sign and
the Signifying Monkey~
in Henry Louis Gates,
Jr.,
ed.
Black Literature and Literary Theory, New York,
Methuen,
1984,
p.286

---

52
hardly worth the trouble
since he couldn't scrape
it from
anybody's mind.
His store-
front office
was never
called anything but Sonny's
Shop,
al-
though
nobody
now could
remember
thirty
years
back,
when,
presumably,
Sonny
did something or
other there(p17).
In fact,
Macon 11
as the author
conceives him
is strong
enough to ignore whatever people think about him.
More ex-
actly,
he is strong enough to pretend that he does not care
what people in general and fellow Blacks in particular think
about him.
The truth of the
matter is that throughout the
narrative he
is portrayed as
someone who
needs attention.
Viewed from that perspective, his inability to have his name
associated with his office in
people's mind causes him psy-
chological dissatisfaction
more than
anything else.
The
fact that "he defines himself
and others by accumulation of
alienated property""
accounts for his preparedness
to en-
.dure whatever it takes to get
his message across.
As long
as
his business
is thriving,
his
preoccupation is
with
strengthening his position,
enjoying the
fruit of his "la-
born, and internalising middle-class social values. Once, he
even did all three at the same time by marrying Ruth Foster.
Macon seduced "the
most
important Negro in
the city"(p.22)
into marrying off
his daughter to
him because
at "twenty-
five,
he was
already a
colored
man of
property"(p.23).
Structurally speaking,
the
author uses this marriage
as a
device to boost
Macon's ego by winning
him some attention.
,. Keith Bayerman, Fingering the Jagged Grain,
Athens,
the
University of Georgia Press,
1984, p.201

---

53
The background of
the doctor whose daughter is
at stake is
partly painted as
the victory of ethnic
determination over
national politics.
Throughout the novel.
the author empha-
sizes the role
of money in boosting black
ego.
The black
community in town name a street for DR.
Foster:
they call
it Doctor
Street and later on
rename it Not
Doctor Street
when
the city
administrative authorities
issue a
warning
that the street Dr. Foster works on is not to be called Doc-
tor Street.
This
determination in the black
community to
celebrate at all
cost a successful member of
the group has
turned Dr.
Foster into a myth.
For Macon,
he is a lion.
And he knows that he can tame this lion by means of material
wealth.
The lion metaphor swiftly turns Macon who tames the
"animal" into a folk hero In the narrator's words:
"to lift
the lion's paw
knocker;
to entertain thoughts
of marrying
.the ~octor's daughter
was possible because each
key repre-
~ented a house
which he owned at
the time."(p.22)
Macon's
'property
provided him
with
the
psychological courage
he
"needed the day
he approached DR.
Foster
for permission to
date Ruth.
The lion's response
--"I don't
know anything
about you other than your name,
which T don't like.
but I
'will abide by my daughter's
preference."(p.23)
at first
~ounds contemptuous although not discouraging.
But when one
scrutinizes it against the background
of the narrator's ob-
servation that
"In
fact the doctor
knew a good
deal about
him and
was more grateful
to this
tall young man
than he
. r

---

54
ever allowed himself to show,"
(p.22)
it becomes clear that
material success means the same thing
to Macon Dead and Dr.
Foster.
That
the author
makes the
young man
"tall" is,
maybe,
not a coincidence.
Both men seem happy about this marriage but obviously for
different reasons:
not only is Or Foster very pleased by the
fact that he is not giving
his daughter to a failure--which
spares him a lot of embarrassment--but
in addition,
he does
not have to find out about the nature of a confusing attrac-
tion to his
own daughter.
As for the
self-taught Macon 11
who can use,
in a most creative way,
the language of acqul-
sition that nobody
ever had to formally teach
him,
he did
not marry
up for the
sole sake
of climbing into
a social
class he was not born into.
He married Or Foster's daughter
because,
more
than anything else,
he wanted
a Or Foster
among his business relations.
Ruth's marriage is presented
as a transaction between two men
,i.e. a deal she is no par-
ty to.
The issue of women's invisibility--a recurrent motif
in Morrison's works-- is raised again.
The fate of the com-
modified Ruth is shown to be at the mercy of two men.
In the
Erie Lackawana episode
(p72)
it
appears quite clearly that
Macon II's hatred
for his wife can be traced
to Ruth's re-
fusal to influence
her father
into lending
her husband the
money the latter needed then for
the transaction.

---

55
So far,
Macon 11 has been characterised by the author as
a callous,
selfish man who loves to cause things to happen.
He symbolises
the inventiveness of
the needy on
their way
from the periphery to the core of mainstream American socie-
ty. The character's psychology unfolds along the hazy divid-
ing line
between the black
community as a
cultural entity
and the rest of American society.
Macon engages in an irre-
versible pursuit of loneliness and
he feels comfortable us-
ing everybody as
a means to his selfish
end.
Almost every
aspect of his lifestyle testifies to his alienation from the
black community.
His public life
is like a
show-room.
A
show-room with a
backyard to it.
The
strange thing about
Macon 11
is that even in the privacy of his married life, he
tends to live up to his public standards. He dutifully hides
'his true self from his family
by developing a cold and dis-
tant attitude everybody is supposed to put up with. Although
his wife is
the major focus of his
disdain,
his children,
time and time again,
are also characterised as mere instru-
men~s in his tool box. The weekly rides in his Packard gives
him the opportunity to exhibit his unchallenged success:
These rides that the family
took on Sunday after-
noons had
become rituals
much too
important for
Macon to enjoy.
For him,
it was a way to satisfy
himself
that
he
was
indeed
a
successful
man.(p.310)
Both the car
and the rides evidently read
like old symbols
progressively acquiring
new meanings
and values.
Macon's

---

•I
I
56
commitment to creating and promoting
these new values over-
I
looks the fact
that for
the latter to materialise,
the price
to be paid is a further disintegration of the black communi-
I
ty.
Ironically enough, as a nouveau riche, Macon is not re-
jected by the entire black community.
Instead,
some of them
r
are impressed with him because his very existence emphasizes
the fact
that Blacks also can "make it"
in America. They ev-
I
idently claim
him as one of
them and readily turn
a blind
eye to the clever way in which he manipulates the symbols of
his success in view of conveying a sense of his newly estab-
lished difference.
Some of the
black people who saw
the car passing
by sighed
with good-humored
envy at
the classi-
ness,
the dignity of it.
In 1936 there were very
few who lived
as well as Macon
Dead did.
Others
watched the family
gliding by with a
tiny bit of
jealousy and a whole lot of amusement,
for Macon's
green wide Packard belied what
they thought a car
was for.
He never went over twenty miles an hour,
never gunned
his engine,
never stayed
in first
gear
for a
block or
two to
give pedestrians
a
thrill.
He never had a blown tire,
never ran out
of gas
and needed
twelve grinning
ragged-tailed
boys to
help him
push it
up hill
or over
to a
curb.
No rope
leaped on his running
board for a
lift down the street.
He hailed no one and no one
hailed him.
There was never
a sudden braking and
backing up
to shout or
laugh with a
friend.
No
beer bottles
or
ice
cream cones
poked from
the
open windows.
Nor did a baby
boy stand up to pee
out of
them.
He never let rain fall on
it if he
could help it and he
walked to Sonny's Shop--tak-
ing the car out only on these occasions.(p.32)
In the above passage,
the semiotically coded socio-economic
status of the Blacks and
the resulting practice they engage

---

57
in is used by the narrator as the chaotic background against
which Macon is writing his success story.
From the confron-
tation between the individual and the group emerges the cer-
tainty that only
the community stands for
life.
The back-
ground is
all the
noisier and
livelier as
the successful
Macon wants
to detach himself
from it.
By
stepping back
from the black
community,
he creates a space
where he can
write only the story of his cultural disconnection.
Part of
the picture
has something
lifeless to
it that
close scrutiny reveals.
Even the motion of the
car is but
faked life.
Earlier on,
in Macon's married life,
Lena and
First Corinthians--more precisely
"their roving eyes"(p.32)
as the
narrator suggests--were the
only source of
life in
the whole picture.
Both daughters are also regarded as non-
entities.
The fact of the matter is that he wishes to have,
instead, a son that he can shape into his alter ego. It took
him fifteen years
to see this dream come true
and the mis-
teryaround
Milkman's conception as
well as
his nickname,
spoils the father's joy.
By refusing to let Macon know why
his son
is called "Milkman"
by everyone,
the
author once
again creates a psychological imbalance
in the cl,aracter of
Macon, Jr ..
To give names is to give structure to what oth-
erwise would be chaotic existence.
It is to construct and
reinforce a reality by designing an order and designating in
specific terms the people as well as the things who go where
and when within that order.
In summary, through her action

---

58
which leads to the cOining of the name "Milkman" Ruth defies
not only
Macon ll's history but
also the very
language by
which he keeps his world in order.
The difficult father-son
relationship that the narrator dwells on eventually leads to
an important
turning point in
the novel when
Milkman hits
his father for physically abusing his mother.
"Macon was so
shocked at being assaulted he could
not speak.
He had come
to believe,
after
years of being the tallest
man in every
gathering,
that he was impregnable."(p.67) Just like in Sula
where Toni Morrison
calls Jude a "woman"
because he cannot
afford to exhibit "manhood" as she understands it,
the "new"
Macon is
"reduced"
to
an "impregnable"
person.
The
de-
piction of
human frailty and
the energy humans
in general
and men in particular devote to hiding it are signs of Milk-
~an's future rise and fall.
Prior to this major event,
the character of Macon is de-
picted as a man of action,
full of life and energy.
He was
constantly in control
and his people,
back
then,
used to
crawl and tremble before him.
Things have just changed.
"Now he
(creeps) along the wall
looking at a man who is as tall as he (is)-- and forty years
younger"(p67).
Despite the narrator's
emphasis on the age
difference,
there is every indication that Macon could have
hit his son back--on the spot that is.
But he knows better.
Despite all the influence he had
on Milkman,
Macon used to

---

59
feel that his wife robbed him of his son.
And unexpectedly,
the latter has just taken a stand as a mature man.
Through
that act,
"his only one"(p.l20),
Milkman reminds Macon that
his son is not a total
failure.
As a father,
Macon cannot
help appreciating his
son's statement although he
knew for
sure that Milkman operated the way
he did through mere lack
of knowledge.
Just
as
the father
brimmed
with
contradictory
feelings as he crept
along the wall--humiliation,
anger,
and the
grudging feeling of pride
in his
son--so the son felt his own contradictions. There
was the pain and shame
of seeing his father crum-
ple before any man--even himself.
Sorrow in dis-
covering that the pyramid was not the five- thoun-
sand-year old of the civilised world, misteriously
and
permanently constructed
by generation
after
generation of hardy men who
died in order to per-
fect it,
but that it had been made in the backroom
at Sears,
by a clever window dresser,
of papier-
mache,
guaranteed
to
last
for
a
mere
life-
time.(p.68)
By creating the
confrontation between Father and
son,
the
author has set
the stage for a silent
dialogue between the
two charcters.
"Listening" to the dialogue,
the reader has
an idea what kind of psychological trauma both sides are go-
ing through.
Milkman wishes he had not lived to see the day
everything his father ever stood for must collapse. But con-
trary to what
the son was anticipating,
the father trans-
forms in a most creative
way the difficult situation facing
him into an opportunity to win his son back.
Instead of re-
sponding physically to Milkman's aggression,
he hits his son
back with his (Macon's)
truth.
The lecture he gives Milkman

---

60
is concisely summed up in the opening statement:
"You a big
man now,
but big ain't nearly enough. You have to be a whole
man.
And if you
want to be a whole man,
you have to deal
with the whole truth"(p.70).
The language of straightfor-
ward communication is
used here to convey
the message that
when human action is sustained by a conscious recognition of
"the whole truth"
it produces more lasting
fruit than when
it is
impulsively carried
out on
the spur
of situations.
Milkman's
audacity,
however,
helps his
father open
up.
Throughout the novel
he is portrayed as a
lonely man.
He
has neither friends nor social life.
His family life is all
the less
exciting as it is
a boring repetition
of rituals
ihat do not mean much to the rest of the family.
with this
incident,
things have suddenly changed.
He has now in his
house somebody worth talking to and
he intends to seize the
opportunity.
Macon Dead 11 then
continues to release onto
Macon De~d Ill's young shoulders the burden of his long-kept
secret.
In so
doing,
he imposes on Milkman the
role of a
truth-carrier.
In other words,
Milkman becomes the meeting
'point of the
past and the future.
His father
has just in-
formed him so he can,
later on,
inform another generation of
people.
It is important to note that
this event marks the begin-
ning of a new era in the lives of all people concerned.
Ma-
,con 11 and understandably opens the avenues of communication
between himself and his son.
Oddly enough,
the crucial con-

---

61
versation between
the men also
marks the beginning
of the
erasure of Macon 11 from the novel.
No wonder.
As a
rule,
Toni Morrison's
male characters are
psychologically malad-
justed and Macon is no
exception.
His confrontations with
his son has
made him gain back his
balance.
The nickname
"Milkman" pushed
aside the young
man's real
name "Macon."
Consequently,
it also dismissed as unworthy of attention the
father who wanted his own dreams for the future reflected in
his son.
In brief,
by winning back his son,
the father has
brought forth Macon Dead Ill.
In many respects,
Song Of Solomon is about people caring
about themselves as much as it
is about people caring about
(their) people.
The novel seeks to strike a balance between
both poles of attraction,
namely
loving oneself and loving
one's people, and despite their radically different perspec-
tives on how
to go about loving one's
people,
Milkman and
Guitar, among others, are also committed to that same ideal.
1.2.0.2
Milkman or the quest for self-definition
-
- - -
In many situations,
Toni Morrison has suggested
In her
novels that the lack of
(good?)
role models in their homes

---

62
during their younger years partly accounts for
the deficien-
cy of the coping mechanism of many of her black male charac-
ters. To a large extent, Song of Solomon is dedicated to all
fathers.
The opening statement:
"The fathers may soar/ And
the children may
know their names" seems to
convey the ur-
gency of
the duty of black
men in America with
respect to
the up-bringing of their children
in general and their sons
in particular.
In Toni Morrison's novels to date most black
sons have been deprived of the
crucial support system a fa-
ther is traditionally supposed to provide. They grow up in a
society--American society as a
whole--which tacitly expects
them to do a great job of raising themselves.
The self-made
individual commands
a lot of
respect in almost
all tradi-
tions the
world over;
b~t a
person who
"makes it"
from
'scratch is not
necessarily more of a ]Iero
than someone who
manages to move
out of an imposed frame of
action in order
to develop
a self
of Ilis/her
own choosing.
Milkman has
tried to do just that.
Unfortunately,
when he eventually
decides to free himself
from his almighty father
in order to
stand
of his
own
feet--psychologically speaking--he
gets
taught between two
warring factions with each
side seeking
to impose a type
of truth on him.
To make
the point that
Macon finally finds in Milkman someone worth talking to as I
did earlier on is not to suggest that Milkman is prepared to
give the answer his father anticipated.

---

63
Milkman emerges in his father's life almost as an unwant-
ed child planned for solely by both his mother and his aunt.
And while Ruth
Foster regards her only son as
"the one ag-
gressive act brought to royal completion"(SOS p133)
by her,
there is every
indication in the father's
behaviour toward
him that by
accepting him,
Macon simply wants
to make the
best out of a bad situation. From Macon's perspective, Milk-
man is a problem to which
he (Macon)
is the solution.
The
passing of values
from father to son
requires a scrupulous
selection which,
in the case of the Deads,
conflicts later
on with the young man's
independence of spirit.
Macon does
not value extended family ties;
nor does he believe in col-
lege education for boys.
There was a tinle when education
used to be viewed within
,,
,the black community as one of the
very few ways out of pov-
erty and into mainstream American society.
This trend seems
to have changed over the
generations.
Harold Cruise in his
The Crisis £i the Negro Intellectual traces one of the major
reasons for the black people's loss of interest in education
to the fact that college
education only alienates black men
,from the black community without necessarily giving them ac-
cess to white society.
Educated black men only become me m-
bers of a community of
scholars --black and white-- whereas
educated Whites
can afford to
belong to both
the academic
community and the white community.
This is not,
however,
the d~lemma the
author thinks Macon has to
solve on behalf

---

64
of his son.
He does see concretely what Milkman can gain by
joining him in his business,
whereas whatever he can get go-
ing to college is too abstract and vague.
No wonder he pre-
fers
to take
care of
his daughters'
formal education
by
sending them to college.
When it comes to his son, Macon is
unequivocally for owning things.
As a
young teen-ager,
Milkman knows
from some
of his
peers'
perception
of him that
something is wrong
with his
father's philosophy of life.
Macon's actions put Milkman in
a most uncomfortable position as far
as the young boy's in-
sertion into the black community
is concerned.
The feeling
Rf
frustration
that Milkman
experiences deep
down in
his
heart
is slightly
alleviated by
Guitar's
point that
·He
(Milkman) can't help who his father is.·
Milkman himself
is
brought progressively
by the author
to understand
that he
.,
can,
instead,
help himself.
Nevertl,eless,
this realisation
fails to equip the young
adult with the appropriate psycho-
logical courage he needs if he is to stop being his father's
shadow.
The
fact of the matter
is that,
despite
all his
wishes,
Milkman more than loves
his father.
He • ... feared
his father,
respected him,
but knew ( .. ,)
that he could ne v-
'~r emulate him.·(p.62)
Because Macon is a ·perfect· father,
:he is put too
high by the author for a
son like Milkman to
~ull down. As the saying goes, if you cannot beat them, join
them.
After
joining his
father's
business,
he eventually de-
vises a strategy which ironically
consists in his differing

---

65
from Macon only on issues of minor importance. The result 1S
a pitiful celebration by Milklnan of his own helplessness:
Macon was clean-shaven;
Milkman was desperate for
a moustache.
Macon wore
bow ties;
Mikman wore
four-in-hands.
Macon didn't part his hair; Milkman
had a part shaved into his.
Macon hated tobacco;
Milkman
tried to
put a
cigarette
in his
mouth
every fifteen
minutes.
Macon hoarded
his money;
Milkman gave his away.
But he couldn't help shar-
ing with
Macon his
love of
good shoes
and fine
thin socks. And he did try as his father's employ-
ee.
to
do the
work
the
way Macon
wanted
it
done.(SOS PP.62-63)
The stubborn and conscious effort on
the part of MIlkman to
look different
from his father
shows how vain
the attempt
is.
AS a matter of fact,
he agrees with his father on the
essential,
in that he submits
himself to his father's will
as far as
his job goes.
The juxtaposition
of
the opposi-
tions recorded by the language of
the narrator leads to the
realization that despite all his
apparent efforts to be his
own person,
the young
man likes
walking in
his father's
shoes.
And yet, as the crises add up in Milkman's life,
the
character is seen
reaching out ~or help.
By acknowledging
his own
limitations in a
more responsible way.
he allows
room for in-depth improvement in his life as well as in that
of his people.
The first major crisis--his hitting
his fa-
ther--sets in motion a chain
reaction. Milkman,
right away,
discovers that even
if he 1S not,
physically speaking,
a
changed person,
deep down in his soul something very impor-
tant has just happened. He ...

---

66
stood before his
mirror and glanced,
in
the low
light of the wall lamp, at his reflection. He was,
as usual,
unimpressed with what he saw.
He had a
fine enough face.
Eyes women complimented him on,
a firm jaw line,
splendid teeth.
Taken apart,
it
looked all right. Even better than all right.
But
it lacked coherence, a coming together of the fea-
tures into a
total self.
It was
all very tenta-
tive,
the way he looked,
like a man peeping around
a corner or
some place he is not
supposed to be,
trying to make
up his mind whether
to go forward
or to turn back.(SOS pp.69-70)
The author's timid use of
the language of psychoanalysis is
an attempt to anticipate some of the changes the character's
psyche must go through if he is
to develop a new self.
In
this very brief
moment of
intuition brought
forth by unin~
tended introspection,
the character
has an
insight which
will,
later
on,
prove crucial to
him when he
strives to
bring under
control the
contradictory forces
plaguing the
various aspects of his existence.
The mirror game has con-
fronted him ~ith the reflection of
his unknown self and his
appraisal of the disappointing image has revealed to him how
necessary it is for him to become a coherent whole. From now
on, his efforts to pull his fragmented self together carry a
new meaning
apprehended soon after
by his
father's sympa-
thetic "You want to
be a whole man,
you have
to deal with
the whole truth"(SOS p.77).
Not surprisingly,
Macon's lec-
I ,
·ture leaves
too many
questions unanswered
and Milkman
is
even more
confused when verbally
assaulted by
his sister
Lena for failing
to see a contradiction
between protecting
their physically
weak mother from
a violent father
on the

---

67
one hand,
and on the
other,
preventing their sister First
Corinthians from "seeing" a man he (Milkman)
thinks unfit to
marry her.
By eventually deciding
to date Porter
who is
said to
be "a perfect
example of
the men her
parents had
kept her from (and whom she had also kept herself from)
all
her life ... "ISOS p.202),
First Corinthians is making a most
important statement,
which the author
has her brother fail
to understand.
After decades of submissiveness and her re-
sulting inability to set her own priorities,
she has eventu-
ally matured
into an independent ·woman.
That
Lena proves
able to
understand quite
spontaneously her
sister's inner
change while Milkman misses the whole point is an indication
of the author's
desire to remind the reader
that women be-
long to a community of spirit.
And like Lena,
some of them
are fully aware
of the conditions imposed on
them by their
ruler~ in male dominated society. The long lecture she gives
her brother not only sheds light on men's ignorance--as Toni
Morrison sees it-- of the issue but also clearly brings home
the fact that
women have to invent their
own strategies in
order to free themselves from male domination. The truth be-
~ond the
whole performance is
that women's
rights "exist"
'only to the
degree that their rhetorical
skills can enable
i~em to talk men into changing for .the better.
Lena's ques-
tion
"Where
do
you
get
the
right
to
decide
our
lives?"(p.217)
obliquely underscores the fact that the "un-
fit" man happens to be of
their sister's own choosing.
And

---

6B
her answer
to her own question
leaves no doubt as
to what
she has in mind:
"I'll tell you where.
From that hog's gut
that
hangs down
between your
legs(p.217)."
This
opinion
prompted by the author proceeds
from an over-reductive per-
spective on male/ female
relationships because it overlooks
the
role women
play in
keeping the
tradition going.
It
sheds,
though,
a crucial light
on Lena's double awareness
that not only did their father do a "commendable" job of me-
diating the traditional
values of patriarchy but
also that
her brother proves to be a
most studious and obsequious re-
ceiver of
the paternal
teachings.
In
the last· analysis,
Lena's speech is
a rhetorically structured text
whose cor-
rect
interpretation depends
on the
women's own
inference
rule.
Milkman is perceived here not
only as the replica of
'Macon but, more importantly, as the archetype of the oppres-
sive "other" that needs to be both tamed and educated,
for--
as the animalistic
imagery seems to imply--he
is dead from
the waist up.
Lena is not only her brother's keeper,
she is
also his tea~her.
Beyond the whole ar9ument, a maJor state-
ment by Toni
Morrison runs through the passage:
it is one
thing to be sexist,
it is another to be aware
of it.
The
fact of
the matter
is that despite
his readiness
to side
with the weak
against the less weak,
Milkman
fails to see
that what he intends
to do and what he is
taught to do are
far apart.
He
tries to strike a balance
between these two
poles
of attraction
but cannot
handle
the pressure
from
everybody around him:

---

69
I
just
know that I want
to live my own
life.
I
don't want to be myoId
man's office boy no more.
And as long as I'm in this place I ' l l be. Unless I
have my own money.
I have to get out of that house
and I don't want to owe anyone when I go.My family
is driving
me crazy.
Daddy
wants me to
be like
him. My mother wants me to think like her and hate
my father.
Corinthians won't speak to
me;
Lena
wants me out.
And Hagar wants me
chained to her
bed
or
dead.
Everybody
wants
something
from
me,( ... ).
Something they can't get anywhere else ..
Something they think I got.{ pp.223-24)
The realization by Milkman that he
1S
all alone has put him
in a state of total confusion.
The portrait of the charac-
ter appears now
as a dialectic interaction
between what he
can offer and
what the world around him thinks
he ought to
offer.
What his sister and his lover cousin want is for him
to stop treating them like invisible entities.
Objectively
speaking,
he can no longer stay in his father's house.
To
some extent the
family has prepared the
conditions for his
departure from home.
All things considered,
Milkman--just
like most of Toni
Morrison's male characters--thinks exclu-
sively of himself in his
relationships with women.
He does
not w~nt Hagar chaining him to her bed yet would be most de-
lighted to have her in his whenever he feels like it.
To be
sure,
at times what he wants
is just a woman--any woman at
all.
The narrator notes ironically that at one point during
his epic journey to the South, Milkman ..... needed a place to
·stay,
some information,
and a woman,
not necessary in that
order"{p.268).
The right order--from
the author's perspec-
tive as is
implied in the text--becomes
apparent when Mil-

---

70
man's remark
about the beauty of
the women in
the village
sparks off
only suspicion and
hostility in the
local men.
His thoughts
are well summed up
when the author
makes him
wonder:
"What kind
of place was this where
a man couldn't
even ask
for a woman?(p.268)".
The women's issue
is here
used by Toni Morrison as the starting point of an illuminat-
ing analysis of her male characters'
psychology.
The author
has the
villagers hate
Milkman because he
is a
threat to
their manhood.
Everything he either does
or fails to do is
perceived as an attempt to underrate their masculinity:
They
looked with
hatred at
the
city Negro
who
could buy a car as if
it were a bottle of whiskey
because the
one he
had was
broken.
And
what's
more,
who had said so in front of them.
He hadn't
bothered to
say his name,
nor ask
theirs,
had
called them
"them," and
would certainly
despise
their days,
which should have been spent harvest-
ing their own crops,
instead of waiting around the
general store
hoping a
truck would
come looking
for mill hands or tobacco pickers in the flatlands
that belonged to somebody
else.
His manner,
his
clothes were reminders
that they had no
crops of
their own
and no land
to speak of
either.
Just
vegetable gardens,
which the
women took care of,
and chickens and pigs that
the children took care
of.
He
was telling them
that they
weren't men,
that they relied
on women and children
for their
food.
And that the lint of tobacco in their pants
pockets where
dollar bills
should have
been was
the measure.
That thin shoes and suits with vests
and smooth
smooth hands
were the
measure.
That
eyes that
had seen big
cities and the
inside of
airplanes
were the
measure.
They
had seen
him
watching their
women and
rubbing his
fly as
he
stood on the
steps.
They had also
seen him lock
his car
as soon as
he got out
of it in
a place
where there couldn't be more than two keys twenty-
five miles around. He hadn't found them fit enough
or good enough
to want to know
their names,
and
believed himself too good to
tell them his,
They
looked at
his skin
and saw
it was
as black
as
theirs,
but
they knew
he had
the heart
of the

---

71
white men who came to pick them up in their trucks
when
they
needed
anonymous,
faceless
labor-
ers.(p.269)
The narrator clearly
shows that there is a
code of conduct
among Blacks in
the village.
Failure to act
it out makes
the code
violators "white".
Or "nigger".
The villagers
have a set idea
what white men are like and
Milkman is one
of them.
Milkman came down South
because at some point of
his psychological growth he sensed what Susan Willis calls a
"loss of history and culture.""
Aspects of that culture and
the history that helped bring it
forth are being acted out,
here,
by some of its authentic custodians.
Morrison artis-
tically manages
to create a
disjunction of
the individual
from the community and the effort
to bridge the gap between
the two parties is not as seriously undertaken by them as it
is by him.
The result is a clash
of sef-revealing images
that inform both
the global dimension of
the black experi-
ence and the many faces of black men.
The poor rural South
is at odds here with the relatively rich and urbanized North
and tne
covert ideological confrontation both
sides engage
in puts Milkman at a disadvantage. He is the intruder every-
body is accusing
without caring how he feels
about what he
is thought to be.
The local
men,
instead,
appear as the
victimized heroes whose hospitality, availability,
integri-
ty,
and
manliness are being
questioned--or at
best,
19-
. , ,
Susan willis,
"Eruptions of
Funk:
Historicizing Morri-
son",
in Black American Literary Forum, Vol.16,
Numberl,
Spring 1982, p.35.

---

72
nored--by
someone
they
originally mistook
for
a
fellow
Black.
Milkman is learning the hard way to move "from self-
ish and
materialistic dilettantism
to an
understanding of
brotherhood.""
There appears
a confusion of issues
in the
villagers' appraisal of the situation.
They are men who are
victims of the socio-economic system
but blame it on racism
by promoting
a convenient
definition of
"blackness· which
transcends skin colour
and focuses instead on
both a state
of mind and an attitude of the heart. Milkman is rejected by
Blacks in the South Eor the
same reason his father was once
rejected by other Blacks in the North.
Once again, his de-
"cision to control his own life lands him in confusion.
But
unlike the previous times Milkman,
this time,
is fully pre-
pared to secure victory over his usual self.
Despite his
efforts to detach
himself from
his father,
Milkman is regarded almost by everybody as just Macon's rep-
lica. Why he opts for seeking help outside the family circle
is easy to understand.
Guitar is clearly Milkman's best
friend and it is impor-
tant to note that Milkman consults
him --instead of his own
family--on
so private
an
Issue as
the
story behind
his
(Milkman's)
name.
The politics of naming as is depicted in
~ Of Solomon dramatizes
both the dehumanizing conditions
,. Dorothy H.Lee;
"The Quest for Self:
Triumph and Failure
in the Works of Toni Morrison",
in Mari Evans, ed., Black
Women Writers
(1950-1980),
Garden City,
N.Y.,
Anchor
Press/Doubleday,
1984~353.

---

73
of existence of the people concerned and the discrepancy be-
tween what the latter think they
are and what they are per-
ceived as by outsiders.
There is
no doubt at all that his
name plays a very important role in Milkman's life.
For one
thing,
as a young boy he once considered becoming a medical
doctor but his conviction that no
patient would go see a Dr
Dead made him give up the idea.
In a community where names
tell how
little control the
people have over
their lives,
Milkman's quest for the truth
about his personal beginnings
is a
sound foundation for
his fast growing
willingness to
erase up-rootedness from the history of his family.
Fortu-
'nately,
the
humanism thus developed
by him
is constantly
nourished by
Guitar's availability.
Thanks to
Guitar,
he
'learns to try harder in life than
he used to in his younger
years. This does not imply,
though,
that Milkman is over-in-
'fluenced by Guitar. What the text suggests,
instead,
1S
the
commitment of two personailities to growing together and en~
tiching each other.
Take for
example the discussion on the
similarities between the Haulocaust and its aftermath on the
one hand,
and the Black Experience
in America on the other
hand.'
Milkman's idea
that the Jews who hunt
down the Nazi
criminals do the right thing by
bringing their catch to the
Courts of Justice
is in harmony with his
hatred for people
who like to take the law into their own hands.
That the
author makes Milkman
hate any
commitment that
requires an active
involvement or participation on
his be-

---

74
half is borne
out by his propensity to run
away from what-
ever problem he does not feel equipped to solve. Even on the
unconscious level the character is said to be willing to own
only things that
have to do with speed
and movement.
When
caught dreaming about
what he would do if he
could lay his
hands on the alleged gold in Pilate's house, Milkman is fan-
tasizing for "boats, cars,
airplanes,
and the command of a
large crew."lp.IBO)
He
wants the money as long
as it can
help him flee a past he cannot come to grips with:
He wanted the
money--desperately he believed--but
other than making tracks out of the city,
far away
from Not
Doctor Street,and Sonny's
Shop,
and
Mary's Place, and Hagar,
he could not visualize a
life that much different from the one he had.
New
people.
New
places.
Command.
That was
what he
wanted in his life.lp.IBO)
~hroughout the novel, the discrepancy is underlined over and
over again
between. the
relatively clear
representation by
Milkman the young adult of his own objective in life and the
'extremely limited energy
he is willing to
mobilise to that
end.
One of the
most important decisions Milkman
ever had to
make is to
go to the South
not only for the
gold but also
for his roots.
But the way he anticipates the journey, once
again,
implies a deep--if
unconscious--desire to disappear
from this world of ours where he feels utterly helpless:
The airplane ride exhilarated him,
encouraged il-
lusion and a feeling of invulnerablity. High above
the cloud,
heavy yet light,
caught in the still-

---

75
ness of speedl •.• ),
sitting in intricate metal be-
come glistening bird,
it was
not possible to be-
lieve he had ever made a mistake, or could.(p.222)
Down here, with his feet on the ground, he is like a bird in
a cage whereas up " ... in the
air,
away from life,
he felt
free .•. "(p. 222)
. Not only is the journey important but what makes it still
more crucial is the fact that for the first time in his life
Milkman undertakes something by
himself.
The Southern epic
therefore becomes a series of
rites of passage during which
the character progressively
sheds his old skin
in prepara-
tion for a
new self.
The trying
spiritual experience even
materialises on the physical plane little by little through-
out the journey as Milkman loses his belongings,
especially
"~
his clothes, one after the other. Dispossession is metaphor-
ically depicted by the author
as a prerequisite for posses-
sion.
Milkman symbolically disowns,
so to speak,
his family
in the North in order to join the "tribe" of his other rela-
tives in the South."He didn't feel close to them, but he did
feel connected,
as
though there was some cord
or pulse or
information they shared.
Back home he had
never felt that
way, as though he belonged to anyplace or anybody"(p.
296).
In one way or another,
attention is paid to his inner exis-
tence and as a result,
he feels connected.
Connectedness
generates respect and love.
It
wipes out doubt,
brings in
the reassuring feeling of belonging. No wonder Milkman, lat-

---

76
er on,
returns to the North
as a changed person.
In that
respect he can be called a winner.
The psychological imba-
lance that used
to be constantly part of his
life has also
disappeared.
He no longer sees any point in hating his pa-
rents and sisters
because now he is
a well-balanced person
capable of standing on his own feet on the one hand, and ad-
justing to others on the other hand.
The prospects of a new
and healthier relationship
with Hagar no longer
leave any-
thing to be desired.
Unfortunately,
the change is untimely.
Hagar's sudden death--an irony of
fate--is an indication of
the necessity for
the change to occur as
quickly as possi-
ble. A man who has always lived up to this principle is Gui-
tar.
Creating a home: Guitar as a political activist
Guitar plays a
key role in Song Of Solomon
in the sense
that he is depicted by the
author as the indispensable link
between the hermetic circle of Milkman's family and the rest
of the black community.
His whole existence is based on the
premise that to help fellow Blacks
regain dignity and self-
confidence is
a sacred duty that
must be taken care
of by
all means.
Unlike Milkman who used
to hate his
own name,
Guitar never bothered himself about his.
His perspective on

---

77
the issue
of "slave names"
is
informed by a
philosophy of
action structured on the principle that
it is far worse be-
ing a slave than merely bearing a slave name.
His contribu-
tion toward the collective evaluation of the meaning of what
it feels like to be black in America is all the the more im-
portant as
the alternative the
author makes him
stand for
purports to generate a group dynamic.
Guitar is fully aware that a lot of energy is being wast-
ed on
a daily basis by
Blacks hurting each other.
In his
view,
they all
have been fooled into a game
they were not
appropriately coached to win:
The cards are
stacked against US and
just trying
to stay in the game,
stay alive in the game makes
us do funny things.
Things we can't help.
Things
that make US hurt one another.
We don't even know
why. (SOS p.88)
Instead of actively seeking to change
the rules of the game
or learning hard
to play it as well as
those who initiated
it, most Blacks Guitar interacts with merely develop a rhet-
oric that postpones
action and purports to
promote a semb-
lance of happiness that is experienced on the moment. A case
in point is
what happened after a group of
Blacks had dis-
cussed the murder in Mississipi by
some white youths of Em-
met Till who • ... had whistled
at some white woman,
refused
to deny he had slept with others,
and was a Northerner vis-
iting the South."
Not only is no specific
decision made as

---

78
to what
could be done
ln the
future to avoid
any similar
killings but
the fact
that they did
not wind
up fighting
each other is depicted as a feat
in itself. As if to add In-
suIt to injury,
they end the "meeting" on a funny note:
The men began to trade tales of atrocities,
first
stories they
had heard,
then those
they'd wit-
nessed,
and finally the
things that had happened
to them- selves. A litany of personal humiliation,
outrage, and anger turned sicklelike back to them-
selves as humor. They laughed, uproariously, about
the speed with which they
had run,
the pose they
had assumed,
the ruse they had invented to escape
or decrease some threat to their manliness,
their
humanness.(p.83)
In Guitar's view,
the "Nigger Joke"
as a way of processing
painful experiences into folk culture
should not be used to
delay action ln emergency cases.
He insists,
through his
deeds,
that he does not believe
in this type of coping be-
cause it does not eradicate slave status.
Guitar's politi-
cal commitment and
the way he expresses it
prove right the
opinion that "Morrison develops the social and psychological
aspects which characterize the
lived experience of histori-
cal transition.""
To
him,
black lives are
sacred and the
right thing
to do
is to learn
to value
them by
going to
every possible extreme to protect them.
Although he is, at
times,
sensitive to the point
of sounding patronizing,
he
'has managed to make hitting back
the cornerstone of his po-
•• Susan Willis;
"Eruptions of Funk: Historicizing Toni Mor-
rison",
in Black American Literary Forum,
Vol.16,
Num-
berl, Spring82, p.35.

---

79
litical commitment.
The esthetic of the character relies on
a conception of "fairness" based on an unquestionable rejec-
tion of "coolness".
He combats this ability that his people
have developed over the centuries to
take all kinds of mean
racial treatments and let their aggressors get away with it.
For nothing to be wrong
with Blacks controlling themselves,
the "other people"(pl17)
also--Guitar re-iterates--must be
taught to refrain from killing
Blacks.
He does not believe
in mere rhetoric.
His race consciousness,
as the narrator
sees it,
proceeds
from a Manichean perception
of American
society which identifies
each race as a
homogeneous group.
The practical result, of course,
is that--since unlike Milk-
man he favours fight over flight--he can locate the enemy in
every white
person he runs into.
He holds that
all white
people are "unnatural."
The picture
gets even clearer when
he dismisses
Milkman's point that
not all Whites
are bad.
His assumption
lS
that whenever
a White-on-Black
.crime is
committed,
it does not matter who does the killing:
There are no innocent white people,
because every
one of them is a
potential nigger-killer,
if not
an actual one ... Milkman,
if Kennedy got drunk and
bored and was sitting around a potbellied stove in
Mississippi,
he might
join
a lynching party just
for the hell of
it.
Under those circumstances his
unnaturalness
would
surface.
But
I
know
I
wouldn't
join one no matter how drunk I was or how
bored,
and
I know you
wouldn't either,
or any
black man black man I know
or ever heard tell of.
Ever.
In any world, at any time,
just get up and
go find somebody white to
slice up.
But they can
DO it.(pp.156-57)

---

80
Guitar's expression of racial commitment In an ideologically
charged language records the individual's assessment,
in the
light of history,
of the group
psychology of a whole race.
In Song Of
Solomon though,
the type
of generalisation im-
plied by this Manichean stand on the issue of race relation-
ships is used artistically as
most convenient reason by the
author to justify anti-racist racism--from Guitar's perspec-
tive,
that is.
In fact,
Guitar does not consider himself racist.
To be
sure,
he does not like white people simply because they re-
mind him of dead people
(p60).
The fact of the matter actu-
ally seems to be that he has transferred onto the white race
as a whole his
hatred for the white man who
used to be his
father's employer.
He admits to being
the way he feels at
present ever since he was a kid and more preci~ely "Since my
father got sliced up in a saw
mill and his boss came by and
gave us kids some candy. Divinity.
A big sack of divinity.
His wife made it special for us"(p6l).
At some other point,
he recalls more
vividly in a brief
moment of introspection
not only the full story
but more importantly,
its implica-
tions for his future development:
And he remembered anew how
his mother smiled when
the
white
man
handed her
the
four
ten-dollar
bills.
More than
gratitude was
showing in
her
eyes.
More than that.
Not
love,
but a willing-
ness to love.
Her husband
was sliced in half and
boxed backward.
He
had heard the mill
men tell
how the
two halves,
not even
fitted together,
were placed cut side down,
skin side up,
in the
coffin.
Facing each other.
Each eye looking deep

---

81
into its mate...
Even so,
his mother had smiled
and shown that willingness to love the man who was
respcnsible for dividing his
father through eter-
nity.
It
wasn't the divinity from
the foreman's
wife that made him sick.
That came later.
It was
the fact that instead of
life insurance,
the saw
mill owner gave his mother
forty dollars "to tide
you and them
kids over," and she
took it happily
and bought each of them
a big peppermint stick on
the very day of the funeral.
Guitar's two sisters
and baby brother sucked away at the bone-white and
blood-red stick, but Guitar couldn't.
He held it
in his hand until it stuck there.
All day he held
it...
The others made fun
of what they believed
was his miserliness,
but he could not
eat it or
throw it away,
untill finally,
in the out- house,
he let
it fall
into the
earth's stinking
hole.
(pp.226-27)
Guitar's bitterness with Whites is
not based on an abstract
speculation.
It is sustained,
instead,
by a concrete ex-
perience.
That this
series of events is
presented In the
form of recollections testifies to the
impact it has on the
person who lived
through it.
The experience
has been pro-
cessed into permanent bitterness.
Yet Guitar as he is conceived by the author does not hate
Whites.
He simply does not like them.
To him, between not
liking white people
and hating them,
there
is enough room
for a whole
range of ideologies.
One SUCll
ideology is his
membership of the Seven Days.
He
is delighted to join this
activist group which
consists of " ... a few men
who want to
take some risks"(p155l.
What comes next is a strong attempt
to ethically justify the group's existence:
They
don't initiate
anything;
they don't
even
choose. They are as rain.
But when a Negro child,
Negro woman or
Negro man is killed
by whites and

---

82
nothing is
done about it
by THEIR law
and THEIR
courts this
society selects
a similar
victim at
random,
and they execute him
or her in a similar
manner if they can.
(p.155)
Milkman's utterance
as articulated by Toni
Morrison empha-
sizes the fact that the American
legal system is not always
on the side of
justice.
Instead,
it tends to be selective
in its implementation of the laws of the land and oftentimes
Blacks are the
victims.
His mental representation
of the
Black American condition results in a political choice based
on a philosophy of violence that uses the end to justify the
means.
Little wonder
the narrator calls Guitar
" ... a man
with blood-deep responsibilities."(p.181)
Guitar's vision IS
not limited to his
political commit-
ment.
His
dreams are not
about material things
that can
help him fulfil himself as an individual. On the contrary he
wishes he could
afford a marker for his
father's grave and
provide for his (extended)
family.
In other words,
he be-
lieves in values
dismissed by Macon 11
as irrelevant.
The
plight of
Blacks in general
preoccupies him very
much but
apparently, not as much as that of black men.
In an attempt
to show Milkman
why the black man in America
is finding it
so difficult to exploit all
his potentialities as a person,
he relates the partiCUlar to the general:
Look.
It's the
condition our
condition is
in.
Everybody wants the
life of a black
man.
Every-
body.
White men
want us dead or
quiet--which is
the
same
thing
as
dead.
White
women,
same
thing.( ... ) And black women,
they want your whole

---

83
self.
Love,
they call it, and understanding. 'Why
don't you UNDERSTAND me?' What they mean is, Don't
love anything on earth except me. They say 'Be re-
sponsible,'
but
what they mean
is Don't
go any-
where where I ain't.
You try to climb Mount Ever-
est,
they will tie up
your ropes.
Tell them you
want to
go to the bottom
of the sea--just
for a
look--they
will hide
your oxygen
tank.
Or
you
don't even have to go that far.
Buy a horn and say
you want to play.
Oh,
they love the music,
but
only after you pUll eight at the post office. Even
if you make it,
even if you stubborn and mean and
you get
to the top of
Mount Everest,
or
you do
play and you
good,
real good-- that
still ain't
enough.
You blow
your lungs out on
the horn and
they want what
breath you got left
to hear about
how you love them.
They want your full attention.
Take a risk and you not
for real.
That you don't
love them.
They won't even
let you risk your own
life,
man,
your OWN life unless it is over them.
You
can't
even
die
unless
it's
about
them.(pp.224-5)
One may wonder
why Toni Morrison is having
Guitar sound so
hard on
his "sisters".
In a
previous passage
where she
briefly
assesses the
genealogy of
black American
women's
suffering she had this to say:
Edging into
life from the back
door.
Becoming.
Everybody in the
world was in a
position to give
them orders.
White women
said "Do this."
White
children said,
"Give me that."
White
men said,
"Come here."
Black men said,
"Lay
down."
(The
Bluest Eye p.109)
In Song 2i Solomon,
Guitar is
given a chance to respond to
this "Lay down".
But his response here reads,
ironically,
like a further
indictment of black women.
The black man as
Guitar is made
to See him,
perceives the black
woman as a
permanent
threat to
his need
for self-fulfillment.
Her
sense of caring is mistaken by him for emotional greed.
Her

---

84
commitment to him is just
another strategy of domination he
has to keep in check.
In any case, the image he has of them
indirectly tells what they
(black women)
perceive black men
as.
Guitar, as the author seeS him,
finds them too demand-
ing--emotionally speaking;
but such a perception
seems to
proceed
from a
misinterpretation of
black women's
caring
about their "brothers".
The historical deb~te between black
men and black
women as to which
of the two groups
was the
more oppressed in slavery and/or after is swiftly introduced
here. All things considered, the character of Guitar symbol-
ises here
what Alice Walker
calls "the ignorance
of black
men about black women."
In her opinion, the black woman al-
most never
has to ask of
the black man anything
he cannot
afford to offer her.
This is not to say that Morrison would
necessarily agree with Alice walker.
The latter's point as
indicated
earlier on.
in
this
dissertation is
made
most
forcefully in her essay "In Search Of Our Mothers' Gardens".
Black women,
she emphasises,
want for black men to acknowl-
e1ge their "labors
of fidelity and love" and
let them bear
fruit.
Guitar as Toni Morrison's
creation makes no mention
of them.
Just like Macon Dead, he is portrayed as an over-
focused person
who has
his own priorities
and no
time to
consider other people's feelingo.
Oddly enough,
Guitar feels that
the black woman is his.
Assuming that he is not taking black women for granted,
one
may think that
he is planning to
.mprove his relationships

---

85
with them in the future. He seems to hold that that specific
problem can "disappear" as soon as the prevailing socio-eco-
nomic order is revised. His journey to the South is supposed
to provide the Seven Days with the funding they need if they
are to make their dream come true one day. But the hostility
exhibited by
Guitar when
he thought
that Milkman
was not
willing to
share the gold raises
questions as to
his good
faith when he says he values
so much black lives.
In fact
Guitar becomes very suspicious of his former
friend probably
because the author does not want them connecting psychologi-
cally anymore.
They no
longer belong
to a
community of
~spirit and this
can be traced to
their different pOlitical
persuasions.
That Guitar loses his sanity over the gold is
an indication of
the kind of psychological
instability his
"focusedness" can land him in.
He appears,
however,
as a
winner because like Macon who has managed to fulfil himself,
he has achieved,
if temporarily,
his goal of love through
self-denial.
His killing
Pilate,
though by accident, calls
for a reassessment of his
political commitment.
The black
men in Song 21 Solomon
are not only success-oriented;
they
also know how
to reach their goals.
This seems
to be the
major difference
between them and
those in The
Bluest Eye
and Sula.
The same issues of love,
money and the black experience
have received
a more sophisticated
treatment in
Tar Baby.
Son
and the
other male
characters--no
matter what
their

---

...
86
race--add a
new dimension to
Toni Morrison's
portrayal of
black men.
1,3
THE DIVORCE FROM THE MATERIAL: TAR BABY
Apart from Guitar
in Song 2i Solomon,
each
of the male
characters studied in Toni Morrison's first
three novels has
a woman in his life.
None
of the above mentioned women has
ever accepted her man's account of himself.
In their every-
day J.ives,
the women in
Toni Morrison's fiction expose the
reality of a situation whereby
the discrepancy between what
men
think of
themselves and
what women
perceive them
as
highlights the power that men have
and what use they put it
to.
As far
as the representation of black
men goes,
the
originality of
IQ.£ Baby in the
work of
its author
lies in
the contrast between Son the man,
and Jade the woman he is
made to team
up with.
In contrast to what
we discover in
Song of Solomon,
where despite their higher
education the
Dead girls are not career-oriented, Tar Baby brings together
a man with
very little formal education and
a highly ambi-
tious professional woman.
No wonder it appears to Darwin T.
Turner that ";,hen one compares Tar Baby with Morrison's ear-.
lier works, Jadille and Son seem too ordinary,
too stereotyp-

---

87
ical--created solely to
demonstrate the clash of
class and
culture"."
The novel records the implications of Son's goal
in life and how this
goal affects psychologically his rela-
tionships with people around him.
Tar Baby is set on a
small Caribbean island called L'Ar-
bre de la Croix where Valerian
Street,
a retired white in-
dustrialist,
turns their summer residence into a definitive
home against the will of his wife Margaret. They share their
home
with their
two
black
servants,
Ondine
and
Sidney
Childs,
who have been married
for several decades but have
no children.
Valerian sponsored
the education of Ondine's
niece Jadine (Jade in short)
both in America and in France,
where she studied art and modeling.
When food starts disappearing from
the basement the but-
ler Sidney first blames it all on rats.
One night.
though.
Margaret,
who hardly gets along with her husband,
retires to
her room only to find a black man with dreadlocked hair sit-
ting in her
closet.
"She stood in
the doorway. screaming.
first at
Valerian and
then at Jadine,
who rushed
to her
side." (p.78) Before allowing Son into the picture,
the au-
thor makes sure that Margaret is
perceived by the reader as
a frail person
incapable of defending herself.
Her help-
lessness is further stressed as "She ( ..• 1
balled her beau-
40
Darwin T.Turner;
"Theme, Characterization,
~nd Style in
the works of Toni Morrison".
in Mari Evans,
ed.,
Black
Women Writers
(1950-1980),
Garden City,
N.Y.,
Anchor
Press/Doubleday,-r9B4~369.

---

BB
tiful hands into fists and pummeled her own temples, scream-
ing louder"
(p.7BI.
This white woman who is a romantic com-
bination of
frailty and beauty
proves unable to
name what
she just discovered in her
closet,
and when she eventually
manages
to
whisper
"Black"--with "her
eyes
shut
tight"
(p.79)--nobody understands her.
Many a woman,
under similar
circumstances,
would
have said
"A man"
or A
black man."
When scrutinized against the background of the dramatic iro-
ny exhibited by the omniscient
narrator in the presentation
of the
conversation (pp.7B-9I,
Margaret's choice
of word
reads like an
affirmation of her whitness--a
whiteness she
feels is threatened.
Surprisingly enough,
while Margaret is
struggling to recover
from the shock,
Valerian
makes sure
'that the intruder
is treated as a member
of the household.
As a matter of fact Valerian's reception of Son takes every-
body by surprise:
"Good evening,
sir.
Would you care for a
drink?"
Apparently Toni
Morrison is about creating
a very
liberal white man.
By having this unexepected reaction, Va-
lerian expresses the type of attitude
he would like to have
toward the intruder.
Margaret's fear,
in the author's de-
scription,
is counterbalanced by
her husband's self-confi-
dence.
By allowing the stranger to stay in the house Vale-
rian has created the necessary space where important actions
are to take place in the future.
For one thing,
the coming
together of the
black man and Jadine is
made easier thanks
to the landlord's move.
It takes
the newcomer long to re-

---

89
veal his identity:
at Eirst all we know is
that
he calls
himselE Son,
is originally Erom the West Indies,
and lived
in the United States Eor many years.
In terms oE the representation of males,
Tar Baby,
more
than any other novel oE Toni Morrison is fraught with pluri-
Eaceted characters
whose various images are
the constructs
oE the consciousnesses around them.
Soon aEter Son is dis-
covered in the house and is asked to stay--to be consequent-
ly waited upon by a reluctant Sidney--the latter overhears a
conversation between his wiEe and the stranger in the kitch~
~n.
He steps in and the long argument that takes place be-
tween the two men is most revealing:
"What are you doing in
my place?"
Ondine held up
a hand.
"He came to apologize, Sidney."
Son moved
aside so he would not be standing between them and
said,
"Yes,
Sir ... "
"Anything you got to say to
me or to my wiEe,
you say it somewhere else.
You
are not
invited
in here. '1
lIlt
was
Jadine,"
Son
began.
"She
suggested ... "
"Jadine
can't invite
you in here,
only I can do that.
And let me tell
you something now.
lE this was my house, you would
have a bullet in your
head.
Right there." And he
pointed to
a spot between Son's
eyebrows.
"You
can tell it's
not my house because
you are still
standing upright.
But this here is."
He pointed
a Einger at the Eloor.
"Mr Childs,
you have to
understand me.
I was surprised as anybody when he
asked me to stay--"
Sidney interrupted him again.
"You have been lurking around here Eor days, and a
suit and a
haircut don't change that."
"I'm not
trying to change it.
I'm trying to explain it.
I
was in some trouble and I leEt my ship. I couldn't
just
knock on
the door."
"Don't
hand me
that
mess.
Save it
Eor people who don't
know better.
You
know what
I'm talking
about,
you was
up-
stairs!"
"I was wrong,okay?
I'm guilty oE being
hungry and I'm guilty oE beeing stupid,
but noth-
ing else. He knows that. Your boss knows that, why
don't you know
it?"
"Because you are
not stupid

---

90
and Mr Street don't know nothing about you.
White
folks
play
with Negroes.
It
entertained
him,
that's all,
inviting you to dinner.
He don't give
a damn what it does to anybody else.
You think he
cares about his wife? That you scared his wife? If
it entertained him,
he'd hand her to you'·
·Sid-
ney!· Ondine was frowning.~'s truel·(Sidney in-
sists}
·You know him all
this time and you think
that?· she asked him.
·You tell me,· he answered.
·You ever' see him worry over her?-·- Ondine did not
answer.
·No.
You don't.
And he don't worry over
us neither. What he wants is for people to do what
he says do.
Well,
it may be his house but I live
here
too and
I don't
want
you around'·
Sidney
turned back to Son,
pointing
at him again.
·Mr
Childs,"
Son spoke softly but clearly,
·you don't
have to
be worried over
me either.·
·But
I am.
You the kind of man that does worry me.
Ydu had a
job, you chucked it.
You got in some trouble, you
say,
so you just run off.
You hide,
you live in
secret,
underground,
sur face when you caught.
I
know you,
but you don't know
me.
lam a Phil-a-
delphia Negro
mentioned in the
book of
the very
same name.
My people
owned drugstores and taught
school while yours were
still cutting their faces
open so as to tell one of you from the other.
And
if you
looking to live off
the fat of
the land,
and if you think I'm going
to wait on you,
think
twice!
He'll lose interest in you faster than you
can blink.
You already got
about all you can out
of this place:
a suit
and some new shoes.
Don't
get another idea in your head.·
·I'm leaving,
Mr
Childs.
He said
he'll help me get
a visa--some-
thing--so I can get back
home.
So ... •
You don't
need no
visa to go
home.
You a
citizen,
ain't
you?·
·Well,
I use another name.
I mean I don't
want nobody
checking me
out.·
·Take
my advice.
Clean your life up.·(pp.162-3)
This passage dramatizes three male images.
The authoritari-
an Sidney Childs,
who is seeking
to take over from his em-
ployer Valerian Street
in order to deal
with Son properi y ,
occupies a strategic position in the narrator's technique of
exposition.
The author establishes the character's authori-
ty by emphasizing
two facts.
He is black and
he has been

---

91
working for--and living
with--a white man for
quite a long
time.
He therefore feels qualified to articulate what Vale-
rian and Son are about.
Even Ondine is not allowed to ques-
tion her
husband's claim.
The
irony of the
situation is
that the part of the house he wants to keep Son away from is
the kitchen.
Hunger
forced Son into the
house.
So,
he
needs the kitchen,
if only metaphorically.
Sidney's inten-
tion to symbolically starve the stranger finds expression in
his threat to Son's life.
Because Sidney regards himself as
an authority on both Blacks and
Whites he needs rio explana-
tion from a fellow Black to understand the latter's motives.
The colourful language
in which the author
has him dismiss
Son's own
reasons for
being in
the house
both underlines
iidney's self-proclaimed position as
the ultimate custodian
o~
the truth
and
obliquely
conveys Valerian's
ignorance
:~bout Blacks.
As the conversation moves on,
Morrison cre-
~tes two contradictory images of Valerian,
with each of the
two black
men trying to
promote one.
Evidently,
Son is
judging Valerian as an individual and on the basis of a spe-
'cific, punctual decision about him,
whereas Sidney sees his
boss just
as the representative
of a whole
race.
"White
folks play with Negroes," he says.
The other irony is that
the more Son tells Sidney about himself,
the more convinced
Sidney is of knowing the intruder's nature.
Sidney,
in the
narrator's view,
regards himself as
an expert on human na-
ture.
He can read people's souls and tell whatever they are

---

92
about although he remains a secret to them:
"I
know you but
you don't know me."
And he holds both the power and the au-
thority that legitimate his knowledge as a birthright. He is
a Philadelphia Negro,
I.e.
one of the "emancipated" career-
oriented Blacks whose "case" was
studied by W.E.B.DuBois in
his famous
book The Philadelphia
Negro.
Being
from that
class alone--as
Toni Morrison ironically has
the character
believe-- is a sign of cleverness and,
as a result,
no ex-
planation from Son
can ever convince him of
the good faith
of the stranger.
As a matter of fact, one may understanda-
bly suggest that after drilling
certain ideas into his boss
about Blacks,
Sidney
IS afraid that Son
might promote an-
other "black" Image
that could affect Sidney's
life around
~alerian.
Fro~ Son's perspective, Valerian Street is caring
and understanding, and the record of his actions suggests on
his behalf a fairly liberal stand on racial issues. But as a
Philadelphia Negro who knows better, Sidney suggests that on
account of
Valerian's race
the latter
belongs to
a fixed
category of people.
The Manichean world promoted by Guitar
·in Son....9. of Solomon is,
once again,
anticipated.
Once the
basic idea is posited that Whites play with Blacks, the but-
ler's next move is to account for his boss's current differ-
ence as far as treating a stranger
as a human being 15 con-
cerned.
It may be true
that Valerian derives pleasure from
inviting Son to
dinner but his character as
seen by Sidney
. consistently appears
sustained by a
self-centeredness that

---

93
affects even ValeriDn's married life.
He cares about nobody
but himself.
Ondine's ·You know him
all this time and you
think that?" raises a lot of questions about the accuracy of
her husband's view of Valerian.
She uses the observation to
set the record straight.
Her contribution consequently un-
derlines the importance
of a feminine input
whose function
in the definition
of the "object" under
depiction consists
not only in
balancing out a masculine position
but most of
all in humanizing the image eventually obtained.
It is this
humanized image of Valerian 1n
his relationship with Blacks
that prevails until he decides to fire Gideon,
the yardman.
'The meaning of valerian Street in Tar Baby is crucial to the
understanding of most of the
other characters in the novel.
He owns a mansion and employs many people.
Those are well-
'~nown symbols of
wealth,
and in Morrison's
fiction wealth
fias always been depicted as
a metaphor for power:
Valerian
i's an achiever who,
by virtue of what he owns,
has a lot of
power at his disposition.
Iionically enough, he is not of-
ten allowed by the author to use that power.
Unlike the au-
thoritarian Macon Dead 11,
in Song Qi Solomon,
who dictates
to every person that depends on him,
the only person Valeri-
an can successfully "push around"
his wife.
Valerian's au-
,lthority is very often undermined,
if not openly questioned,
by his employees.
To some extent,
the first time he actual-
lyuses his power is when he fires Gideon and, unsurprising-
ly, his decision sparks off only hostility around him.
Gid-

---

94
eon's
dismissal is
a
turning point
in
the depiction
of
Valerian's character.
By
having the yardman fired
by his
boss for stealing a few apples,
the author creates a circum-
stance that forces Son--among
other characters--to reassess
his perception of his benefactor.
That a man of Valerian's
wealth could
take such an action
against a poor
worker is
beyond Son's understanding.
The representation
of this rich,
liberal White
is the
first
full length
portrayal of a white male
by Toni Morri-
son. The techniques used by the author to depict him include
both letting
the character's
actions speak
for themselves
and allowing, at the Same time,
Blacks from his entourage to
,generate a
discourse that aims
to underline the
impact of
white presence
on their everyday
lives.
While in
a novel
like
W.W.Brown's Clotel
there
is no
discrepancy--roughly
,speaking--between the way white men act and what their black
observers have to say about them,
in Tar Baby,
by contrast,
there is an overt sense
of commitment to re-evaluating old,
received ideas in light of new experiences. In this respect,
one can see many striking similarities between the ways both
Valerian and Son are represented.
Son i~ said to be "a man without human rites ... " and what
follows is an incomplete list of.those deficiencies:
unbap-
tized, uncircumcised, unmarried,
undivorced,
propertyless,
homeless, etc.
Once again, the black man in Morrison's fic-

---

95
tion is posited in terms of what he is not Or what he lacks.
Now those
rites are extremely
important in the
sense that
they alone can
provide any individual with
the appropriate
psychological strength that it takes
to feel a regular mem-
ber of any community of human beings.
A human being without
any rites is,
in actual fact,
entitled to no rights, and Son
confirms this by joining,
for the
first eight years of his
life
in America,
"that great
underclass of
undocumented
men."
Throughout his early American years,
Son is depicted
as a non-entity. Oddly enough,
his realization of his "rite-
lessness" does not lead him to facing his helplessness.
he
does not surrender to the fact
that he is excluded from so-
ciety;
instead
the author
makes him
creatively transform
what should be regarded as a handicap into a source of power
'that can
sustain him in
the expression of
his difference.
In his opinion,
something is wrong
with rites.
And he has
always wanted "another way". Such a choice clearly conflicts
with many previous representations of black men,
especially
in the
fiction of black
male writers.
In
Ralph Ellison,
'Richard Wright,
James
Baldwin and many others,
black men
'~vertly wish
to experience
the "human
rites"
in
order to
qualify to fit into American society.
In his confrontation
with Jadine--a woman who most clearly believes in rites--Son
is, at first,
perceived as a lazy element.
The fact of the
matter is that as the pieces of
the puzzle of his life pro-
gressively fall
into place he
appears as someone
who does

---

96
believe in
rites as
long as they
can serve
his immediate
purposes.
He marries,
in his own words,
"that crazy nurse
woman"(p.156)
because
he needs
an American
passport;
he
learns to read and write but refuses to inform his employers
about his educational
skills for
fear that
they might give
him too much responsibility on the job.
During his argument
with
Jadine--or rather
their
long discussion
(pp.ll3-24)
that eventually
degenerates into a
hot argument--different
facets of the character are exposed
by the author thanks to
the scrutiny of his interlocutor.
What soon appears to be a
salient aspect of his personality is a categorical rejection
of material wealth and the paths that lead to it.
As a re-
;sult, Jade appears as the living symbol of what he must keep
'away from.
But
behind her formal education.
her travels
abroad,
her expensive clothes and her perspectives on life,
'what Son sees is the haunting soul of Valerian.
The narra-
tor's view is that he has held
Jade hostage all her life by
providing
the conditions
that made
her what
she now
is.
Son's psychological confusion,
at this stage,
is sustained
by his attraction to a black woman whose values,
he seems to
imagine,
are actually opposed to his.
He first manages to
fake an excited
interest in her career as a
model in Paris
because this strategy seems
to be the best one if
he is to
know more about Jadine.
When
the author eventually decides
to have
Son's "real"
self emerge as
she imagines
it,
at
first it shows itself in his repeated use of a certain four-

---

97
letter word.
His consistent use of this language--a seman-
tically charged representation of what he thinks about her--
provokes revulsion in
her later on when he
decides to talk
to her in a more direct way.
The Sorbonne graduate quickly
notices the difference in their backgrounds and the response
she receives ("Goddam")
to her question "Don't you have any
other word to express awe7"lp.117) confirms her fear.
What
she does not realise,
though,
is how disconnected Son feels
from her and whatever she stands
for.
This gap is progres-
sively bridged.
The first stage
is Son's insinuation that
for Jade to be so successful a
model in Europe,
she has to
have been a prostitute in the Old World:
Jadine jumped away
from the desk and
leaned for-
ward trying to
kill him with her
fists while her
mind raced to places in the room where tl,ere might
be a poker or a vase or a sharp pair of shears. He
turned his
head a
little but
did not
raise his
arms to protect himself. All he had to do was what
he did:
stand up and Jet
his height put his face
and head
out of
his easy
reach.
She
stretched
nonetheless
trying to
tear the
whites from
his
eyes.
He caught both her
wrists and crossed them
in front of
her face.
She spit full
in his face
but the
saliva fell on the
C of his
pajama top.
Her gold-thread slippers were no good for kicking-
but she kicked anyhow. He uncrossed her wrists and
swung her around,
holding her
from behind in the
vise
of
his
arms.
His
chin
was
in
her
hair.lpp120-1)
This image
of the
black man
who stands
tall and
cool in
front--metaphorically--of
the
threat
represented
by
the
black woman is
even taken one step further.
Son does not
strike back.
Instead,
the final scene of the segment("His

---

98
chin was in her hair")
suggests a romantic involvement in i-
tiated by
the man.
By
meeting female adversity
with male
love
the
author presents Son not
as an enemy any
more but
rather as
a potential
friend and/or
a protector
of Jade.
The new situation
generates only frustration in
Jadine be-
cause the
fight he
has just started
is actually
meant to
provide the appropriate outlet to her anger.
No wonder that
she misreads
Son's loving gesture.
"You rape me
and they
will
feed
you to
the
alligators.
Count on
it,
nig-
ger."(p.12l)
Whatever
the reason behind
this misreading,
the message has the merit of
bringing up,
once again,
the
worn out stereotypical
image of
the black man
as a rapist.
It seems important to note here
that there exists an impor-
tant
scholarship by
an increasing
number
of black
women
which tends to insist that rape becomes an issue only if the
'victim is white. The point is made time and again by Trudier
Harris"
and
Paula Giddings,"
to
cite just
two examples.
Read against such a background, Son's response "Why you lit-
tIe
white girls
always
think
somebody's trying
to
rape
you?"(p.121)
is
more than ironical.
By assuming
in his
question that all
rapists are black and that
all rape vic-
tims are white
the author clearly questions
Jade's "black-
ne ss" and
puts Son in the
position of an arrogant
man who
thinks he knows what it takes to be a black woman.
For some
., Exorcising Blackness,
Bloomington,
Indiana
University
Press, 1984 .
• , When and Where I Enter, New York, W. Morrow,
1984.

---

99
time now,
black women have
been consistently denying black
men the right
to define black womanhood.
The
way they see
it,
for a black man to claim that he can tell a black woman
what she
is or ought to
be instead of
just
contributing a
male input toward black women's
self definition is to treat
black women like immature children.
However, Jade acts de-
fensive enough for
the reader to assume that
she douts her
own blackness.
As Trudier Harris puts it:
"Through educa-
tion,
severing of connection to
black people,
and general
disposition,
Jadine IS
"white." She has traded
a cultural
-
heritage
for
what
she
considers
the
finer
things
of
life ..• ""
The second stage of Jadine's anger as imagined by
the
author is
therefore provoked
by what
she regards
as
Son's insult.
Despite this aggressiveness openly expressed by both par-
ties,
Son and Jade are
pulled together by external forces.
It is a fact that Son's coming to L'Arbre de la Croix caused
Valerian's household to split into many factions. Only Vale-
rian himself "liked" the intruder
right from the beginning.
And yet,
as
time passes by Jade becomes
sensitive to what
Son is
perceived as.
When
Margaret at the
very beginning
dare not
call him
"nigger," evidently
because she
thinks
Jade might
take offence
at the
word,
the
latter swiftly
makes her
white friend feel
comfortable calling a
spade a
spade. Later on,
though,
when Margaret says Son looks like a
., Trudier Harris, Exorcising Blackness 1984. p.153

---

100
gorilla a sudden c],ange occurs in the black woman:
"Jadine's
neck prickled at the description.
She had volunteered nig-
ger--but not goriJ]a."(p.129)
Toni
Morrison is putting in
the same
category of
Whites Margaret
and the
bargeman in
Sula who
recovered Chicken
Little's body
from the
water.
They both see Blacks as animals.
To their conception Morri-
son opposes Jade's outlook.
From the foregoing example and
many more,
one may conclude
that throughout Tar
Baby the
character of
Son--or more
precisely the
representation of
it-- functions
as a literary device
used by the
author to
hold the various episodes of
the story together.
His very
presence in the
house has generated between
the members of
the
household a
dialectic that
has not
left himself
un-
changed.
In the description of Son's psychological condition
from the moment he jumps ship to when he gets caught in Mar-
garet's room,
a
recurrent motif
is his
preoccupation with
everything but women. Over and over again,
the point is made
that "He
had not followed
the women."
But
after sleeping
'for a few
nights in Margaret's room a
change starts taking
place in him.
The beginning
of Son's romantic involvement
with Jadine
.offers the author
another opportunity to elaborate
more on
Son's personal beliefs
and attitudes which are
clearly ar-
ticulated in
his life story.
The narration
is basically
made by the character himself and Jadine's contribution con-
sists of questions that her
interlocutor cannot evade.
As

---

101
was suggested earlier
on,
everyone Son interacts
with has
his or
her own
mental representation
of him.
One con se-
quence,
therefore, of Son's "confession" to Jade is that her
new image of him is informed by knowledge no other person in
Valerian's house has access to.
She is closer than anybody
else to the center that holds
the various images of Son to-
gether because she knows the "truth".
And the truth is that
he is a murderer on the run.
He killed by accident his un-
faithful girlfriend and her teenage lover. And after narrat-
ing such a
story,
he simply proceeds to tell
her "I won't
kill you.
I
love you."(p.177)
But
Morrison makes
sure his
love
has some
difficulty
growing.
The first
maJor crisis takes place
when Valerian
fires two of his house-servants--Gideon the gardener and his
wife Therese--for stealing his apples.
Not only is the news
broken while the
"family" is having a
large Christmas meal
but
in addition Jadine unexpectedly
sides with her old "pa-
tron" against the unfortunate two:
Valerian
at
the
head of
his
Christmas
table,
looked at the
four black people;
all
but one he
knew extremely well,
all but
one,
and even that
one was in his debt.
Across from him at the bottom
of the table sat Son who
thought he k"ew them all
very well too,
except one and that one was escap-
ing out of his hands,
and
that one was doing the
bidding
of her
boss and
"patron."
Keeping
the
dinner going smoothly,
quietly chastising every-
body including
her own uncle and
aunt,
soothing
Margaret,
agreeing with valerian and calling Gid-
eon Yardman and
never taking the trouble
to know
his name and never calling
Ilis own name out loud.
He looked
at Valerian
and Valerian
looked back.
The evening eyes met those of the man with the sa-

---

102
vannas in his face. The man who respected industry
looked over a gulf at the man who prized fraterni-
ty.(p.204-5)
A similarity is created by the author between Sidney and Va-
lerian.
Just as Sidney claims that lIe knows White folks as
well as black people,
so
is Valerian portrayed as somebody
knowledgeable about the
people in his house.
At the same
time,
his hospitable treatment of
Son,
in retrospect,
is
presented
as a
callously calculated
strategy destined
to
cripple Son psychologically.
Even the locations of Valerian
and Son facing each other at the Christmas dinner table con-
vey the sense that Valerian is in the stronger position.
By
creating a gap
between the two men
on the one hand
and on
the other hand,
by making one cherish industry and the other
one fraternity,
the author once agaIn creates focused char-
acters and
seems to
imply that they
cannot reach
out and
touch each other.
Their first attempt to do that was,
un-
derstandably,
short-lived.
Once the deceiving liberal ap-
pearance at first exhibited by
Valerian is shattered by his
own deeds
(seen mostly from
Son's perspective),
he becomes
vulnerable to somebody like Son who has been waiting for the
first opportunity to strike.
When he does strike,
the pres-
entation of the two
men's states of mind is made
In a more
expressive way as soon as they
start talking to each other.
In fact,
when Son does verbally attack his host,
the result-
ing ideological confrontation
between the boss and
the in-
truder clearly indicates
that they do not
belong together.

---

103
The expression
by Son
of his
difference triggers
off the
rest of the
action.
The situation is
very well summed-up
during the argument
in Valerian's utterance:
"I
am being
questioned by these people as if,
as I could be called into
questionl"(p.20B)
The author is
having Valerian verbalise
what everyone knew all along:
he owns everything and pro-
vides for everyone in his
house.
He respects industry and
should be respected
for that.
Valerian's is
the voice of
the dominant cult"re and,
thanks to the shift of voice, Mor-
rison insists that he does not think it necessary for him to
respect poor people.
All
things considered Gideon becomes
an important part of the narrative only when he is no longer
,in the picture--physically speaking.
And the task of open-
ing people's eyes to the
gardener's importance has been as-
signed to Son.
The latter knows for a fact
that by Valeri-
an's standards only people who
own things are important and
respectable.
To reverse the trend,
as
Son is made to see
it,
is
to define the terms
of a new dialogue
between the
haves and the have-nots.
The notion of
fraternity which, at
first,
suggests the coming together of the exploited poor in
general quickly
fades into something
similar to
the Black
Brotherhood in Ralph Ellison's Invisible
Man.
Most of the
issues he raises force valerian to
make sure that he (Vale-
rian) keeps in control in his own house.
The rhetoric they
both engage in
aims,
in the case of Valerian,
to maintain
unchallenged the power
he knows he has whereas
in the case

---

104
of Son
it alms to dismantle the very foundation of that pow-
er.
Viewed
against this
background,
Ondine's
rebellion
against
her employer
becomes
the
artistic expression
of
Son's influence.
He wishes Jadine
also were influenced by
him.
Unfortunately, all he can remember her doing through-
out the whole debate is " . .. watching her pour his wine,
lis-
tening to her take his part,
trying to calm Ondine and Sid-
ney to his satisfaction." All
things considered,
Jadine to
him looks just like a replica of Valerian.
But in addition
to whatever she has in common with her "patron," she is per-
ceived by the author--at this stage of the story--to be weak
and incapable of standing on her own feet.
Son has
internalised the
basic principles
of the
male
culture he was
born into and which
taught him--among other
things--to be protective
of women.
In a
moment of
intro-
spection he therefore
assesses his duty to
Jadine in light
of his interpretation of that culture:
(U)nderneath her
efficiency and
know-it-all sass
were wind
chimes.
Nine
rectangles of
crystal,
rainbowed in
the light.
Fragile pieces
of glass
tinkling as long as the breeze was gentle.
But in
more vigorous weather the thread
that held it to-
gether wOllld
snap.
So it
would be his
duty to
keep the climate mild for
her,
to hold back with
his hand if need be thunder,
drought and all man-
ner of winterkill. and he would blow with his lips
a gentle enough breeze for her to tinkle in.
The
bird-like defencelessness
he had loved
while she
slept and saw when she took his hand on the stairs
was his to protect.

---

105
This rhetoric of
female frailty that needs
a male presence
to lean against does not draw any clear-cut distinctions be-
tween the physical,
the
emotional,
and the psychological.
It therefore
makes too many demands
on Son.
If he
is to
guarantee Jade every kind of protection, he has to make sure
first of all that he himself
is psychologically stable.
And
he is not.
The narrator's
evaluation of the internal tur-
moil experienced
by the character
is illuminating
to that
effect:
For if he loved and lost this woman whose sleeping
face was the
limits his eyes could
safely behold
and whose
wakened face threw him
into confusion,
he would sure lose the world.
So he made himself
disgusting to
her.
Insulted
and offended
her.
(p.220)
The anger which
originates from the realisation
of the di-
lemma is not expressed openly.
It explains,
though,
Son's
temporary decision to stop functioning from the heart as far
as his relationship with her
goes.
But he feels incapable
of hating her,
which
is why he tries to have
her hate him
instead. He prefers to give her • ... sufficient cause to help
him keep his love in chains ... ·(p.220)
Their life as
a couple in America
is another background
against which another
dimension of Son's character
is por-
trayed.
There is ample evidence In the novel that,
in Son's
view,
to help Jadine is to
help her rebel against whatever
Valerian stands for.
Son's desire to have
Jadine unlearn

---

106
what it took
her a whole lifetime to learn
proceeds from a
philosophy of education that
focuses
the cultivation of re-
spect for the individual for what he/she is and not
for what
he/she owns.
His refusal to join the rat race is referred to
by her
as ·ignorance.·
(p.264)
Jadine,
as
is reiterated
throughout
the novel,
has
learned ·to
make
it in
this
world."
(p.264)
Her insistence on the importance of the ma-
terial and
Son's point that·I
don't want to make
it.
I
want to be
it.·(p.266)
are unfortunately presented
as two
strictly defined and unalterable
alternatives.
The debate
between the two
lovers sheds some light
on the philosophic
interpretation of the Afro-American cultural heritage as the
tar-baby story in the novel
suggests.
From Jardine's per-
spective,
to
stick to the
black cultural tradition
is to
·stay in that medieval
slave basket ... ·(p.27l)
whereas for
Son,
joining
mainstream American
society is
a nightmare.
Their final break-up initiated by Jade
takes place as a re-
sult of
her inability
to change
or manipulate
Son.
All
things considered,
Son's divorce from
the m3terial did not
win him a stable relationship with Jadine because he was not
equipped with
the appropriate
psychological strength
that
could have enabled him to meet her halfway by accepting that
one can strike
a balance between
making it and
being it--
whatever ·being it· means.
In that respect, his final deci-
sion to join her in L'lle de la Croix in order to give their
love a second chance is simply
a belated loss of innocence.

---

107
By delaying
Son's psychological
maturation the
author has
succeeded in making him realise retrospectively that he gave
up a woman he loves simply "Because she had a temper,
ener-
gy,
ideas of her own and fought back"lp.29B).
AS was earlier on emphasized in this chapter, money plays
an important role in Toni Morrison's fiction.
It generates
a power that is easily processed into the language spoken by
the rich
to define what they
want and what they
think the
dispossessed need.
Her male characters,
when wealthy like
Macon Dead and Valerian Street,
become the centre that holds
together the shattered lives of
many others and the respect
that tomes with their very existence is perceived by them as
their ultimate objective in life.
At the same time,
though,
the
quest--among
Blacks--for
material
wealth
invariably
takes place in the context of cultural dispossession.
This
"fact" probably accounts for Son's
commitment to "being" it
~s opposed to "making"
it.
In
one way or another,
Morri-
son's black men are are depicted
as going through a painful
process of culture change.
Ironically enough,
she consis-
tently defines them
in terms of what they do
not know,
or
cannot do,
what
they are not or may not
offer.
They are
therefore confronted with the
dominant culture as potential
losers.
By contrast, Morrison's black women are defined in
terms of what they can do or produce.
In their relationship
with black
men,
their
ability to
manipulate and
silence
their husbands has no limit.
Unsurprisingly,the male have-

---

108
nots are at the mercy of
situations and events beyond their
control.
They find the pressure of
(married)
life extremely
hard to
handle and cope by
running away from the
women in
their lives--like BoyBoy,
Cholly,
Jude,
and Son--only to
realise that
they cannot
even afford to
be on
their own,
which is
why they run to
other women.
The black
men who
choose,
mainly for
ideological reasons,
not to believe in
money
become social
outcasts
or
a threat
to
mainstream
American
society.
What
all
these
men have
in
common,
though,
is a
certain inability to go
quickly beyond their
own conceptions in order to come to grips with the complexi-
ty of the human reality that they are part of.

---

Chapter 11
ALICE WALKER'S BLACK MEN
In the
first part of this
dissertation I tried
to show
how in her
depiction of black men
Toni Morrison emphasizes
the psychological handicap from which they suffer.
By con-
trast,
in Alice Walker's fiction there
seems to be a shift
of emphasis.
Admittedly she depicts in all her writings the
confusion black men experIence
whenever they are confronted
with the moving reality of their lives.
Unlike Toni Morri-
son who sets most of her fiction in the North and dwells,
in
the process
of depicting black
men,
on
the psychological
disintegration most
of them experience,
Alice
Walker sets
her novels in
the South where the impact
of the prevailing
social structure on
the black individual is
much stronger.
As far
as the
depiction of black
men goes,
Alice Walker
seems to
pick up where
Toni Morrison leaves
off.
Walker
places a special emphasis on
the black man's "marginal" at-
tempts to
both assert his manhood
and meet his needs
as a
human being.
-
109 -

---

110
2.1
MANHOOD REDEFINED: A STUDY OF ALICE WALKER'S
The Third Life of Grange Cope land
In her essay "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and A
Partisan View,""
Alice Walker makes
the point that "racial
health is
the quality she
feels
is most
characteristic of
Zora's work ... "
And this
notion as
she understands
it is
simply "a sense of black people as complete, complex,
undi-
minished human beings ... ""
To a large extent Alice Walker's
work is
a repeated effort to
make sure that
her spiritual
mother's message is heard and understood by men and women of
all races.
As a matter of fact,
her first novel"
The Third
Life 2i
Grange Copeland sheds a
crucial light on
a
world
where black women learn progressively to stop functioning as
diminished presences.
Even when posited as diminished pres-
ences,
black women in Alice Walker's fiction are still per-
ceived as
potential troublemakers by black
male characters
'~ho consequently seek to wrap them in silence.
But not all
black
women in
The Third Life 21 Grange
Copeland are shut
down for
good.
Walker emphasizes
that those of
them who
try--and manage--to assert themselves
expose in the process
the mentalities of the black men
who want them erased.
In
. , , Alice Walker In Search Of Our Mothers' Garden (pp.83-92)
. , ,
ibid. p.85
"
The Third Life
of Grange Copeland,
New
York:
Harcourt
Brace JovanovTch-,- 1970.
All
subsequent quotations are
from this edition.

---

I I I
this chapter I
will take a close look at the male figures in
these relationships.
Brownfield Copeland, Grange Copeland's only child,
grows
up on
a plantation
in Georgia
and realizes
in his
early
adulthood that
"his own life
was becoming a
repetition of
his father's."lp.54)
The combination by
the author of this
painful memory of the past and the possibility that it might
mortgage the future,
brings together the lives of three gen-
erations of Copelands,
because Brownfield's statement is ut-
tered
in the
context of
his realization
that his
oldest
child,
Daphne has
now become "the lone
little pickaninny"
Ip.54)
on
his boss's
cotton plantation.
Throughout the
first half of
the novel,
Grange is portrayed
as a virtual
slave.
The author has him stay
in the South,
in contrast
with his brother Silas.
By keeping Grange in the South, the
author creates the conditions for a realistic comparisorl be-
tween two socio-economic orders.
The first step towards the
realisation of
this "project" becomes apparent
when Brown-
field's cousins "told
him that their own
daddy,
his uncle
Silas had gone to Philadelphia to be his own boss."(p.5)
At this stage of the narrative,
the implied author tells
Brownfield where
to draw
the line
between his
own father
Grange and his uncle Silas.
Grange is not a risk taker; si-
las is.
This insinuation only prolongs the manipulation of
the mood
of the story
in which
the author engages
at the

---

112
very beginning of the novel by making Brownfield look worthy
of the
reader's empathy.
From Brownfield's
perspective,
Grange exists
only as the
opposite of Silas.
The latter
knows how to go for good and nice things in the North where-
as the former is not good at causing things to happen in his
own life.
The
image he has internalized of
his father
is
what his
cousins visiting
from Philadelphia
had told
him
years before.
"They told him that
his father worked for a
cracker and that tI,e cracker owned him,"(p.4) That this cru-
cial information
is provided by
outsiders whom
the author
posits
as innocent
is a
clear indication
of the
silence
Brownfield has to
cope with in the circle
of his immediate
family.
Slave status as has been experienced by Grange is a
series of attitudes
drilled into him by white society which
prevent him from living as
a self- determined person.
The
abundant sociological
description of the
human environment
where Grange lives in Georgia
underlines the little control
he has over
his own life and those of
the people depending
on hi~.
His manhood is affected in such a way the very fact
that he manages to survive at all
is portrayed as a feat
in
itself.
As a virtual slave,
Grange knows that he is not even en-
titled to
the right to protect
his family because
even in
the privacy of his married life,
Shipley his "owner" is the
ultimate boss.
Grange's wife Margaret
is quick to realize
this:
after only two years of marriage she knew that in her

---

113
plantation world the mother was
second in command,
the fa-
ther having no command at all.
Grange also has a first hand
experience of what
it feels like to be
confronted with the
reality of Margaret's finding:
"Grange,
save me!
Grange help me!" she had cried
the first time she had been
taken by the first
in
command.
He
had plugged his ears
with whiskey,
telling himself as he ignored her,
that he was not
to be blamed for his wife's unforgivable sin.
He
had blamed Margaret and he had blamed Shipley, all
the Shipleys in the world.(p178)
In the author's presentation,
the black
woman is seen as a
cheap piece of
property by the white man and
from the fact
that Alice Walker
does not make Grange
challenge Shipley's
authority it seem obvious that she means to establish a tac-
'it understanding between the two men as to what each of them
'is about.
Grange remains a
virtual slave because Sheepley
is a virtual slaveholder.
As Bertram Karon observes:
Whatever the Negro's difficulty may be in shifting
from thinking of
himself as an inferior
being to
thinking of himself
as an equal,
the
blocks are
much greater for the white man who must shift from
thinking of a piece of
property to thinking about
a human being
with the self-same property
he re-
served to himself.
The white man has never fully
made the shift, but merely made various compromis-
es between treating
(and thinking of)
the Negro as
a slave and as an equal."
"
Bertram P.Karon, The Negro Personality, New York: Spring-
er Publishing Company,
Inc., 1958, p.lO.

---

114
Grange's inability to function as
a husband who can provide
his wife with the protection she needs is at first presented
by the author
as a result of the imbalance
between the two
opposing forces.
The
way he chooses to
resolve the situ-
ation,
though,
tells the story of his maladjustment.
Only
when drunk can
he convince himself of
his wife's unforgiv-
able sin.
Instead
of having him reflect on
his plight in
order to
devise
ways of getting closer to
his wife within
the limited space
where they both are
allowed to function,
the author
chooses to make him
blame his wife for
not de-
fending herself.
In the final
analysis,
although
it is
Shipley who sleeps with Grange's
wife against her will,
it
is
Grange
who
is
portrayed--indirectly--as
the
rapist.
Brownfield's sympathy goes to his
mother instead.
For one
thing,
"he blamed his father for his mother's change"(p.20).
The manipulation
of the
mood by
the omniscient
narrator,
~nce again, can be traced to the concern of a female observ-
er who is more than willing
to "justify" what Margaret her-
self believed to be sinful.
In the narrator's words:
"
it was Grange she followed at first.
It was Grange who led
her to the rituals of song
and dance and drink( .•. )
It was
Grange who had first turned to someone else"(p.20).
The so-
cial structure of
which Grange is a part is
ill adapted to
the needs he feels as an individual.
His marriage no longer
offers
him any
opportunities for
the
fulfillment of
the
goals of social life as defined by the whole community.
He

---

115
reacts the way he knows how.
Unsurprisingly,
Grange's un-
faithfulness to his wife leads the
latter to follow suit by
engaging in the bad behaviours listed by the author.
And even when Margaret found relief from her cares
in the arms of her
fellow bait-pullers and church
members,
or with the man
who drove the truck and
who turned her husband to
stone,
there was a de-
ference in
her eyes
that spoke
of her
love for
Grange.
On weekdays when
sober and wifely,
she
struggled to
make food
out of
plants that
grew
wild and game caught solely in traps, she was sub-
missive still.
It was on
weekends only that she
became a huntress of
soft touches,
gentle voices
and sex
without the
arguments over
the constant
and compelling
pressures of everyday
life.
She
had sincerely regretted the baby.
And now, humbly
respecting her husband's feelings,
she ignored it.
Grange survives his wife who "had died believing what she
had done was sinful and required death, and that what he had
done required
nothing but that she
get out of
his life."1
p.178)
By making Margaret take to
the grave the secret of
her own ignorance,
the author allows the dead woman to shed
a special light on Grange's previous life.
He lives to re-
gret his past
mistakes.
If he now "thought
with tears in
his eyes what a fool he had been"(p.178),
it is not so much
because of those
past deeds as it is because
of the possi-
bility that they might happen to other people in the future.
A father
is supposed to be a role model to his sons;
now
until his
son Brownfield
gets married,
Grange Copeland's
life has
been a series
of humiliations and
exhibitions of

---

116
his powerlessness.
No wonder that he has never had anything
to tell his son as the latter grows up.
As a father, Grange
fails to provide
a basis from which
Brownfield could later
on operate as an adult.
Growing
up with a father who "al-
most
never spoke
to
him
unless they
had
company"lp.5),
Brownfield Copeland
spends his childhood listening
to "the
familiar silence around him."lp.5)
What
he cannot hear his
father say,
he
tries to see him do.
He soon establishes
that Mr.
Shipley, the white man whose plantation his father
has been working on all his
life,
terrorizes Grange by his
sheer presence:
"Brownfield's father
had no
smiles about
him at
all.
He merely froze;
his movements when he had
to move to place sacks on
the truck were rigid as
a machine's.
At first Brownfield thought his fa-
ther was turned to stone by the truck itself.
The
truck was
big and
noisy and
coldly,
militarily
gray.
Its big wheels flattened the cotton stalks
and made deep ruts in the
soft dirt of the field •
. But after
watching the loading
of the
truck for
several weeks he realized it was the man who drove
the truck who caused his fater
to don a mask that
was
more
impenetrable than
his
usual
silence.
Brownfield looked
closely at the
man and
made a
startling discovery;
the man was
a man,
but en-
tirely different from his own father."lp.BI
All his married life,
as
Alice Walker imagines it,
Grange
has symbolized psycho-social maladjustment.
Even from the
young Brownfield's
perspective he does
not live up
to the
"norm".
He is only his father whereas the white man,
"the
man",
has something more about him.
He is an index of man-
hood by
the standard
of the
dominant culture.
In other

---

117
words,
if ·the man· isa man
but at the same time entirely
different from the man that Grange Cope land is,
the differ-
ence obviously symbolised by Mr.
Shipley's whiteness is the
space
where
the
narrator sees
fully
authorized
manhood
standing tall
next to
unauthorized and
therefore crippled
manhood.
In the case of Grange's relationship with his wife
Margaret,
the white man has not
been processed into a cas-
trating presence,
as
happened to Cholly Breedlove
1n Toni
Morrison's The Bluest Eye,
when he
was caught by two white
males in the
bush in the company of his
first girl friend.
In either case,
though,
the anger aroused in the black male
is directed
against the black
women.
Although
The Third
Life 2! Copeland has only few white characters in it, almost
~very episode of the narrative tells
the story of the white
man's power over the Southern
sharecroppers'
lives.
To be
sure,
this
power is
often over-valued
by the
black men,
which is
why one can
admit that • ... Brownfield
uses white
racism as
an excuse
for his
moral decay·"
The Copelands
live in the
environment where violence is
experienced on a
'~aily basis:
Their life followed a kind
of cycle that depended
almost totally on Grange's moods.
On Monday, suf-
fering from a
hangover and the aftereffects
of a
violent quarrel
with his
wife the
night before,
Grange was morose,
sullen,
reserved,
deeply in
pain under
the hot early morning
sun.
Margaret
•• Klauss Ensslen:
·Collective EXperience and Individual Re-
sponsibility:
Alice
Walker's The Third Life
2! Grange
Copeland· in Peter Bruck and Wolfgang Karr~ eds.
The
Afro American Novel Since 1960 1982,
p.206

---

lIB
was
tense
and exceedinly
nervous.
Brownfield
moved about the house like
a mouse.
On Tuesday,
Grange was merely quiet.
His
wife and son began
to relax.
On Wednesday as
the day stretched out
and
the cotton
rows stretched
out even
longer,
Grange muttered and sighed.
He sat outside in the
night air
longer before going
to bed;
he would
speak of moving away,
of
going North.
He might
try to
figure out
how much he
owed the
man who
owned the fields.
The man who drove the truck and
who owned the shack they occupied.
But these ac-
tivities depressed him, and he said things on Wed-
nesday nights that made his
wife cry.
By Thurs-
day,
Grange's
gloominess reached
its
peak
he
grimaced respectfully,
with veiled
eyes,
at the
jokes told
by the man
who drove the
truck.
On
Thursday nights he stalked the
house from room to
room
and pulled
himself up
and
swung from
the
rafters of the porch.
Brownfield could hear his
joints creaking
against the sounds of
the porch,
for the whole
porch shook when his
father swung.
By Friday
Grange was so
stupefied with
the work
and the
sun he wanted
nothing but rest
the next
two days before it started all over again.
On Saturday
afternoon Grange
shaved,
bathed,
put on
clean overalls
and a
shirt and
took the
wagon into town
to buy groceries.
While
he was
away his
wife washed
and straightened
her hair.
She dressed up and sat, all shining and pretty,
in
the open door,
hoping
anxiously for iisitors who
never came.
Brownfield too was washed and cleanly dressesd.
He played contentedly
in the silent woods
and in
the clearing.
Late Saturday night
Grange would
come home lurching drunk,
threatening to kill his
wife and
Brownfield,
stumbling and
shooting off
his shotgun.
He threatened
Margaret and she ran
and hid
in the woods
with Brownfield
huddled at
her feet.
Then Grange would roll out the door and
into the yard,
crying like a child in big wrench-
ing sobs and
rubbing his whole head
in the dirt.
He would lie there until Sunday morning,
when the
chickens pecked around him, and the dog sniffed at
him and neither his wife
nor Brownfield went near
him. ( pll-12 )
The weekly scenario
of Grange's life is the
cycle that the
novel seeks to replicate.
AS the life of the family depends

---

119
on Grange's moods,
so does the spiral along which the story
evolves.
The various images of
his married life projected
by the author from different perspectives underline Grange's
inability to
mobilize the energies
that can help
him face
his responsibility as both a father and a husband.
His re-
peated threat to
kill Brownfield and Margaret
1S
the ulti-
mate result of his psycho-social maladjustment.
Grange gen-
erates around
him much
more suffering than
he is
made to
endure.
Brownfield has picked up where his father left off.
The
irony of
the situation is that
he has always wanted
to be
different.
By
the time Brownfield
realizes that
his own
life has been
progressing along a path
previously traveled
by his
father,
he
is already
married with
one daughter.
~ike his father,
he first of all blames most of his problems
on the person closest to him: his wife Mem.
Not surprising-
ly,
in the depiction of Brownfield
as a villain in his fa-
ther's image,
the female sensitivity once
again prevails.
The dialectics of his mistreatment of Mem is captured by the
author in a series of commentaries.
Brownfield decides that
having married Mem is a "mistake"
Ip.55), starts beating her
on a regular basis,
and refuses to take full responsibility
for his own failure.
He has become a monster who cannot fit
anymore.
The tender woman he married he set out to destroy.
And before he
destroyed her he was
determined to
change her.
And change her
he did.
He was her
pygmalion in reverse.
The first thing he started

---

120
on was her speech.
They had begun their marriage
with her correcting
him,
but after a
very short
while this
began to wear
on him.
He
could not
stand to be belittled at
home after coming from a
job that
required him
to respond
to all
orders
fsrom a
stooped position.
When she
kindly re-
placed an "is"
for an "are" he
threw her correc-
tion in her face.
Brownfield's intention
as conceived
by the
author is
not
only to destroy
his "tender" wife physically
but also psy-
chologically.
By forcing
her to learn to
account for the
reality of her
inner world by means of
a "borrowed" tongue
he expresses a strong desire to disfigure her soul.
In the
narrator's estimation,
his ultimate
goal is
to make
her
sound like"
a hopeless nigger woman
( ... )
who deserves
him."
Ip.56).
The implication that Brownfieldhimself is a
"nigger",
i.e. a failure,
is soon written in bold character~
when the author
makes the reader see him in
the company of
his peers.
While they admire how much alcohol he can drink
and wonder how
he managed to marry a woman
of Mem's class,
he reminds
them of
another dimension
of his
achievement:
"'Give this old black snake to
her,'
he said,
rubbing him-
self indecently, exposing his life to the streets,
'and then
I beats her ass.
Only way to treat a nigger woman! '"lp.56)
'This segment reminds one of the
passage in Song of Solomon,
where Toni Morrison
has Lena reduce her
brother Milkman to
his penis.
In Alice Walker,
though,
it is the black man who
consciously
promotes the
self-defeating phallocentric
ac-
count of himself.
The character's
self perception and the

---

121
omniscient
narrator's perception
of
him coincide,
which
makes Brownfield's married life read like the record book of
people's failure
to adjust themselves to
society.
Brown-
field's
character is
conceived as
a
unique chance
given
Grange to scrutinize the replay of his own life.
The simi-
larities are striking.
The one
big difference seems to be
the crucial
role played by Mem
in bringing Grange
to full
maturity--not that he quickly seizes the opportunity offered
by his wife to make himself a better person.
Brownfield has
spent all
his life
trying to
erase his
wife.
In the couple's joint
projects as they are depicted
by the author,
he proves inconsiderate and in fact does not
,even remember
that he
is party
to a
deal.
At
first he
spends on a pig the money they were saving together to buy a
house.
When Mem
decides to go it alone this
time,
he is
"
once again in the way.
He uses the money of the second at-
.tempt "for
the down
payment on a
little red
car"
Ip.57).
.Only he can understand his
own priorities.
His wife's en-
deavours to move out of the sharecropper's world are annihi-
lated by
him.
He does not
even wonder whether
there are
some ways out.
To be sure, she married him out of love but
~e was in his teens.
Despite his young age,
he soon senses
·that he will have to depend
on himself for the solutions to
t his various problems. The pressure from life on the planta-
tion will not leave his family life unaffected.
So the au-
thor makes sure that the popularly acknowledged pattern ful-

---

122
ly applies to him.
He assumes that his wife Mem was "being
used by white men,
his
oppressors;
a charge she tearfully
and truthfully denied.
And when he took her in his drunken-
ness and in the midst of his own foul accusations she wilted
and accepted him
In total passivity and
blankness,
like a
church"(p.54) .
When jealousy in him is sustained by a sense
of worthlessness,
sex becomes the only means Brownfield can
think of
to convince himself that
he is still
in control.
In so doing,
he reminds the reader of Grange's younger years
when
his motto
used to
be "If
I can
never own
nothing,
( ... ), I will have women"(p.177).
The disintegration of the
character into the type of black male that Eldridge Cleaver,
in Soul ~ Ice,
calls
the "Supermasculine Menial" actually
begins the very day he marries
Mem.
As in Toni Morrison's
Tar Baby
where the
education of
Jadine is
primarily per-
ceived by Son as a threat in an eventual ralationship, Mem's
"knowledge reflected badly
on a husband who
could scarcely
read and
write"
(p.55).
The character
of Brownfield
as
shaped by Alice walker is petrified
by a strong black woman
like Mem.
Little wonder that he drags her away from school-
teaching.
But obviously,
it IS
not enough preventing her
from professionally expressing her
"superiority" on a daily
basis.
To help "his crushed pride" and "his battered ego"
recover from the
situation he makes the
decision "to bring
her down to his level"(p.55) by sending her into white homes
as a domestic.
This way of looking at "equality" is in fact

---

123
a camouflaged attempt
to pattern his lifestyle
in a manner
that brings him closer to Mr.
Shipley.
Mem is made to pay
the price for
her husband's symbolic ascension
because for
the power that he now has to be real,
he has to exercise it
over real people
and see how it works.
A
most brutal ex-
pression of the newly acquired power takes place when Brown-
field learns that
his wife is not willing to
move with her
family to J.L.'s,
a place owned
by Captain Davis,
the new
man Brownfield now has to work for.
The fact of the matter
is that Mem prefers to get a
house in town in order to bet-
ter
their
daughters'
chance of
getting
good
education.
Brownfield takes offence because not
only does she not want
to move to
another plantation but in addition
she wants to
move to another place of her
own choosing.
As a matter of
fact,
two conflicting visions of the future are at war here.
'While Brownfield is unconsciously favoring the perpetual re-
production of, the cycle of violence,
poverty and maladjust-
ment,
the author is having Mem
see education as a means to
break it.
During the argul"ent that
they have upon her re-
turn from town, he passes a new rule:
"'1
ought to make you
call me Mister,'
he said,
slowly twisting the wrist he held
and bringing her to her knees beside his feet.
'A woman-as
black and ugly
as you ought to call
a man
Mister'"lp.??).
The image of a black woman
kneeling down at the black man's
feet is the materialisation of the master-slave relationship
Brownfield has always wanted to have
with his wife.
I t
is

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124
revealing to know that,
in the author's perception,
the mo-
ment Mem is in a weak and defenceless position her blackness
is equated with ugliness by the
husband who is supposed to
protect her.
When, days later, Brownfield in a new attempt
to display his authority,
thunders
:"we going to move over
on Mr J.L.'s
place," his wife uncompromisingly
fires back:
"I ain't,
and these children
ain't"(p.52).
For the first
time ever,
Mem has the courage
to assert herself by saying
NO to her husband.
Prior to this crucial event, Mem was de-
picted as a shadow of Brownfield.
He used to think that he
moulded her
and shaped
her;
in
other words
he dutifully
,
sought to delete her as
an individual entity by structuring
kround
her a
silence similar
to the
one he
had to
live
through as a child.
Mem who
has been ignored all her mar-
r~ed life
has just opted for
not ignoring back.
She ac-
know ledges him as
a person by demanding that
he break away
from his usual self.
Brownfield's old self is deeply rooted
in a passive acceptance of
the sociological conditions pre-
vailing in the planta~ion world.
As long as his definition
of manhood is informed by that frame of mind, he will be de-
nying himself and his daughters the chance to seize the var-
ious opportunities that America has
to offer.
AS a matter
of fact,
she intentionally let him
don the mask of head of
the family for a long time but to no avail; looking back now
she realizes that her
"decision to let him be a
man of the
house for nine years had cost her
and him nine years of un-

---

125
relenting misery."(p.B6)
Alice Walker sees a striking simi-
larity between
the black
man-black woman
relationship and
the
white man-black
man relationship.
Mem's and
Brown-
field's problem is
just the microcosm a
more general situ-
ation.
Her NO therefore,
is the
meeting point of the old
and the new.
The old is the resignation philosophy drilled
into Blacks both in slavery and after, which teaches them to
blame it all on each other or the white man,
whereas the new
holds that the possibility exists for them to creatively ma-
nipulate the prevailing situation to
their own advantage by
tapping into a noble part of themselves.
Although Grange is late in realising-that a NO like Mem's
is crucial to the survival of his people in America,
he de-
serves a lot of credit for making it a new starting point as
he engages in rethinking manhood.
No wonder that when his
new wife Josie complains to Grange
that not only did Brown-
field fail to have
a father
in childhood but to
top it off
_now
"the white
folks
was just
pushing
him
down in
the
mud"(p.206I, he seizes the opportunity to lecture Josie, his
9randdaughter Ruth,
and
Brownfield on what manhood
1S
all
about:
You see,
I
figured he could
blame a good part of
his life on me;
I
didn't offer him no directions
and,
he thought,
no love.
But when he becomes a
man himself,
with his
own opportunity to righten
the wrong
I
done
him by
being good
to his
own
children, he had a chance to become a real man,
a
daddy in
his own
right.
That
was the
time he
should have just forgot about what I
done to him--
and to his
ma.
But he messed up
with his chil-

---

126
dren,
his wife and his home,
and never yet blamed
himself.
And never blaming hisself done made him
weak.
He no
longer have to think
beyond me and
the white
folks to
get to
the root
of all
his
problems.
Damn,
if thinking like that ain't made
noodles out of his brainslp.206).
In this scene the author-narrator brings together three gen-
erations of
Cope lands and the
statement is uttered
in the
context of a family feud.
This
opportunity is used by the
author to
fuse the past and
the present into
a meaningful
set of ideas
that will sustain a bright future
for the new
generation.
Grange acknowledges that he has already failed
twice in
the sense that
his son's life
so far has
been a
replica of his own.
Somebody has
to break the cycle.
By
making Ruth
a witness to
the performance the
author makes
her part of the new beginning.
She is the reason why Grange
can afford
to live for the
third time.
In
this respect,
Barbara Christian
is fully
right to
hold that
"The Third
Life ~ Grange Copeland I •.. ) is based on the principle that
social change is invariably linked to personal change,
that
the struggle must be inner- as well as outer-directed.""
The idea
that never
blaming oneself
makes one
weak is
central to the writing of
most black American feminist nov-
elists.
In that
respect,
Zora Neale Hurton's
Their Eyes
Were Watching Go~ can be regarded as the starting point of a
"
Barbara Christian: "Alice Walker:
the Black Woman Artist
As
Wayward" in
Mari
Evans,
ed.,
Black
Women
Writ-
ersI1950-1980) Garden City, N.Y., Anchor Press/Doubleday,
1984, p.460.

---

127
new tradition in the post
Harlem Renaissance era.
In that
tradition, many female characters eventually mature into as-
sertive and self-determined
women who show their
newly ac-
quired
inner
force by
conquering
male-conceived
speech.
What they
have to
say whenever they
have access
to man's
language disturbs the foundation of the whole structure upon
which
lies men's
power.
That
power
has been
protected
through violent means for generations,
which is the secret
Mem has discovered living with her husband in The Third Life
of Grange Copeland.
When she decides to
terrorize Brown-
field with the gun he starts behaving exactly the way he had
wanted her to behave when he was "in power".
As long as she
was behaving the way he thought fit,
Brownfield did not need
to engage
in an
introspection that could
have led
him to
blaming himself.
To go back to Grange.
To be sure, his refusal to under-
mine people's accountability for their own actions or plight
puts an end to
a long tradition of women blaming
it all on
men or Blacks
holding Whites totally responsible
for their
,poor condition.
The irony,
though,
is that it took him a
third chance for him to correct some of the mistakes he made
in his younger years.
The crucial
family reunion
is
used by the
narrator as
the beginning
of a new era
in the narrative
itself.
The
rest of the story is told,
in actual fact,
through the con-

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128
sciousness of Ruth,
especially when it is
her grandfather
talking,
reflecting or acting.
Using his belated maturity
as a yardstick,
he tries to
convey the impression that un-
like his son, he 1S no longer a whiner.
By taking full re-
sponsibility for preparing Ruth to face life with determina-
tion and
self confidence
while,
at
the same
time he
is
"against her acting boyish"(p.214) Grange and lurking close-
ly behind
him the
author,
are
promoting a
new womanhood
based on femininity without dependence.
The breed of women
the new Ruth now represents calls for
a new breed of men if
they are to survive.
In that respect,
one understands why
Grange "became softer than Ruth
had ever known him·(p.207).
In Grange's newly conceived world,
girls get tough without
going boyish whereas men become soft without turning effemi-
nate.
Fair enough.
But Grange's theory and its application
as articulated by
the author have a
few inconsistencies to
them.
While it is clear
that the grandfather is committed
to preparing
his granddaughter to
protect her
·purity and
6pen-eyedness and humor and compassion ... ·(p.214),
the ambi-
guityof
Alice Walker's style in
the next statement
is an
indication of some sort of confusion:
·Assured,
by his own
life,
that America would kill
her innocence and eventually
put out the two big eyes that searched for the seed of truth
in
everything,
he
must
make
her
unhesitant
to
leave
it·(p.214).
In my opinion,
it is not clear what Ruth must
leave.
Should it be America, her symbolic alientation from

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129
mainstream American culture will simply
result in a further
isolation of Blacks in the new world.
Some of the
inconsistencies in Grange's new
outlook can
be traced to the fact that its definition of the new manhood
is not a
fully conceived philosophy of action
but simply a
series of occasional declarations of intent.
It is also
revealing that whenever Grange
has something
important to say in relation to
the necessity for change in
the black
American community
he talks
in the
presence of
Ruth.
This way of assigning the new black woman a relative-
ly active role in the
redeeming process underlines the urge
to start off a collective action although the focus seems to
be on individual decisions.
The profile
of the new man is
therefore informed by an awareness
that being one's own po-
sitive person in a hostile environment can bear all the more
fruit as the individual proves able
to come to terms with a
whole range of contradictions.
Take
for example this fol-
lowing statement:
"I know
the danger
of putting
all the
blame on
somebody else
for the mess
you make out
of your
life.
I fell into the trap myself!
And I'm bound
to believe that that's the way the white folks can
corrupt you
even when
you done
held up
before.
'Cause when they got you
thinking that they're to
blame for everything they have you thinking they's
some kind
of gods!
You
can't do
nothing wrong
without them
being behind it.
You git
just as
weak as water,
no feeling
of doing nothing your-
self.
Then you begins to think up evil and begins
to destroy everybody around you, and you blames it
on the crackers.
Shit!
Ndbody's as powerful as
we make them out to be.
We got our own
souls,
don't we?"(p.207)

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130
Swiftly Grange
is blaming
something on
"the white
folks"
here.
But the dialectic of the conversation brings the pre-
cision of meaning and the
delineation of content.
Being a
man is diving
deep inside oneself for
the appropriate psy-
chological
resources which
can
harden
the individual
in
front of the
worst adversity and make him
retain his faith
in--and commitment
to--whoever trusts him,
depends
on him
and/or loves
him.
In view of
the general context
of the
novel,
it implies unconditional love and total dedication to
one's people.
It IS a
victory over oneself.
The past,
therefore,
must be critically evaluated
in the present for
the future to be worth living for.
The constant presence of
the past in the present is even reiterated when the narrator
depicts the new Grange poring over Ruth's bible:
He had
great admiration
for the
Hebrew children
who fled from
Egypt land.
For perhaps
the hun-
dredth time he
told Ruth the story
of the Hebrew
exodus.
"They done the right thing," he said.
"Did they?"
"Got out
while they still
had some
sense and
cared what happened to they
spirit.
Also to one
'nother.
I may be wrong, but nothing ain't proved
it yet."
He looked thoughtfully
over the book at
the fire.
"What?" aSked Ruth.
"We can't live here free
and easy and at home.
We going crazy."
"Here?"
"I don't mean this farm;
I mean in this coun-
try,
the
U.S.
I believe
we got to
leave this
place if we 'spect to survive.
All this struggle

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131
to keep human
where for years nobody
knowed what
human was but you.
It's killing us.
Thye's more
ways to git rid of people than with guns.
We make
good songs and asylum cases."
Maybe it would be
better if something happened
to change everything; made everything equal;
made
us fel at home," said Ruth.
"They can't
undo what they
done and
we can't
forget it or forgive."
Is it so
hard to forgive
'em if
they don't do
bad things no more?"
"I honestly
don't belive they can
stop," said
Grc71nge,
"not
as
D
group anyhow."
(pp.209-210)
The mood
being set
In this
dramatization of
the Cope-
lands'
uncertainty
about their
future obliquely
announces
the Civil Rights Movement of the 60's as the deus ex machina
which will make their hopes
worth entertaining.
Thi s part
of the story leaves Brownfield uninvolved.
In his own way,
he has always
sensed,
if vaguely,
that it takes
a lot of
dedication and self-denial to find one's way in the world he
lives In.
All his
life Brownfield has
tried to
do just
that.
But
he also
knows from
experience that
parenting
could be a lot
easier for him to handle had
he had his fa-
ther's attention as a child.
Viewed from that perspective,
Grange's rhetoric sounds like
an a posteriori
justification
of his
own failure
to be
a real
father--and a
man--when
Brownfield gave him the chance to.
To some extent Grange's
point holds that no matter how much pressure is exerted on a

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132
black man by
both the people and
the socio-economic struc-
ture of America "you ~ to hold
tight ~ place in you where
they can'! come."
Then agaIn,
this is mere abstract specu-
lation to Brownfield,
who has never been
taught where the
man is to be found inside every male.
Grange,
as the
narrator reiterates over. and
again,
is
committed to
the idea
that once
the relationship
between
black men and their "sisters" has improved,
the children re-
sulting from their union will find
it very easy to take the
trip within
themselves and come
up fully prepared
to face
lite as healthy people.
And those children could grow up as
whole
human beings
and become
the
sound foundation
upon
which a better future for the community could be built.
Unlike Brownfield, Grange acknowledges the historical and
unconditional commitment of most black women to black men as
well as the
negative response so many of
them receive from
their "brothers."
He unequivocally blames this state of af-
fair on black
men--to the utter disappointment
of his son:
."We guilty,
Brownfield,
and neither one
of us is going to
move
a
step
In
the
right
direction
until
we
admit
it."(p.209)
Brownfield is
not
about
admitting "a
damn
thing" to his father.
Not only is he loaded wfth socio-eco-
nomic problems which
do not give him the time
to engage in
philosophising like his father,
but in addition his strategy
for survival excludes admitting to a crime against any black
woman,
especially the
one he married.
To
confess to any

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133
such guilt is
to strip himself of his
manhood.
He killed
his wife in the name of it.
To some extent, he sues his fa-
ther for
Ruth in
the name of
the same
pride.
Ironically
enough, his efforts were perceived differently by his daugh-
ter.
The grandfather and the granddaughter are agreed that
only Brownfield
stands for
the eternal
reproduction of
a
very dangerous cycle.
Brownfield's murder by his own father
eventually breaks
the cycle
and provides
Ruth with
a new
range of alternatives.
As much as
Grange hates Black on Black
violence,
he is
also fully
aware that "The"gun
is very important"
for the
simple reason that
"I don't know that love
works on every-
body."
The
paradoxical nature of
the double
warning con-
tained in these propositions testify to the hesitations of a
mind in the making.
To recommend,
as he does,
"a little
love, a little buckshot,"(p.l96) as a way for Ruth to handle
herself when he is no longer there
to protect her is to in-
directly encourage
the further disintegration of
the black
family.
Apparently,
though, he sees things differently for
the time being.
The last years of his life are an illustra-
tion of his strategic combination.
If he can get emotional
'and cry
along with Ruth at
the thought that he
could lose
,
his granddaughter to Brownfield, he is also able to gun down
his own son just to get him out of his way.
As Trudier Har-
oris observes,
"Brownfield was the
monster he created,
and
Brownfield is the monster he decided to destroy.
l. .. )
His

---

134
recognition
of this
two-way
responsibility completes
his
philosophical position,""
Ruth is
portrayed as a
cause worth living
and fighting
for.
She incarnates a chance
of self-creation enhanced by
women's input.
This chance
of self-creation is simultane-
ously initiated by
men and women whose
evaluation of their
own life history validates their choice for a radical inter-
nal change.
Her life is sustained by the support system of
her
grandfather's ideas.
Viewed
from that
perspective,
Grange lives on within his granddaughter.
The black woman,
in this context,
is made the
custodian of a most important
legacy.
The two maIn black men in
The Third LIfe ~ Grange Cope-
.land spend the
greater parts of their lives
trying to cope
as individuals.
In the process of surviving,
the author in-
volves them
in irresponsible
practices that
undermine the
future as
well as
the well-being
of the
people close
to
them.
As a result,
social rites and symbols no longer carry
any weight to them.
They live on the margins of mainstream
society.
Two generations of wom0n died from their men's in-
,ability to transcend their everyday difficulties in order to
live as
psychologically balanced individuals.
To
a large
extent,
the portrayal
of the character of
Brownfield as a
replica of his father Grange,
is an attempt by Alice WAlker
,.
in R.Baxter Miller,
ed.
Black American Literature and
Humanism p.65

---

135
to illustrate in her own way
the stereotypical image of the
black man as a helplessly
victimized person totally incapa-
ble of handling the impact of the structure of slave society
under
the supervision
of
the white
man
in the
American
South.
Grange Copeland's comeback is,
therefore, a success-
ful attempt to break the stereotype and by the same token to
indicate some
ways out
of the
vicious circle.
with the
death of the two Copelands.
the past seems buried for good.
The only survivor is Ruth.
the
incarnation of the ideas of
the older Grange.
The message she carries illuminates parts
of the lives of the characters of Meridian.
2.2
THE BLACK MAN IN AN INTER-RACIAL RELATIONSHIP
An Approach to Meridian
The Third
Life 2i Grange
Copeland dramatizes
black wo-
men's wish for
a new breed of men willing
to give male-fe-
male relationships a new chance.
The type of black man that
Alice Walker
is promoting in her
first novel
is
no longer
crippled by the pressure exerted on him by the dominant cul-
ture.
Instead,
he
lets his conscience be
his only judge
'and,
once rid of all the complexes and the anger which used
to plague him,
he allows his new self to
come into being.

---

136
As a result of this rebirth, he looks at American reality in
a new light.
In Meridian,
the Civil Rights Movement-- in so far as one
may look
at it as
a revolution of
mentalities--points the
way to a
better understanding between Blacks
and Whites by
focusing on
the interrelatednesss of
the needs as
well as
the interests of both communities.
It is against the back-
ground of
this relatively
improved and
healtl!y atmosphere
that the character of
Truman Held is depicted
in an inter-
racial love relationship witl! Lynne Rabinowitz,
an exchange
student on a fact-finding mission from the North.
The novel is set in the
South and deals essentially with
the personal growth of Meridian, a black woman who,
at some
point,
was
in love with
Truman Held,
the
handsome civil
,rights activist.
It was Meridian who first
introduced Tru-
man to Lynne and then lost him to her.
In the opening chap-
ter called
the "last return,"
which in actual
fact closes
the narrative,
the author focuses o~ Chicokema,
a Southern
town with a tank:
It had
been bought
during the
sixties when
the
townspeople who were white
felt under attack from
"outsider agitators"--those
members of
the black
community who thought equal
rights for all should
be extended to blacks.
The image of
the formerly divided city as is
drawn here by
'Alice Walker announces the author as a politically committed

---

137
observer of life in the South.
Chicokema is a place of con-
tradictions.
The
author depicts it
as a town
where con-
flicting factions have to come to grips with their hostility
towards each other in order for
them to live in a semblance
of harmony.
It
is a place where the worst
thing that can
happen to anyone is to be poor.
In the words of Meridian's
mother:
"The answer to everything ( ... ) is we live in Ameri-
ca and we're not rich"(p. 561.
This way of representing be-
ing American and
poor as an awful
combination,
because of
the pain that comes with it
for the individual concerned or
for the community at large,
reminds the reader of many other
cases in
Meridian where the
whole consists of
(two)
con-
'tlicting parts.
The author sees Truman Held as a black/man,
Meridian as a black/woman, Lynne as a white/woman who wishes
to be treated as a Jewish/woman.
The novel presents interracial dating
as an activity not
many people engage in down South.
Not that people are not
.drawn to
each other across the
race line;
they
are .
In
,spite of its
strict sexual morality (as is
depicted in the
episode where the body of Marilene Oshay the unfaithful wife
killed by her
husband is displayed)
the South
has to live
with many
other contradictions.
The character
of Truman
fully testifies
to black men's
attraction to
white women.
,On purpose,
it seems, the author goes beyond this "fact" and
,recalls to memory the other
combination:
despite the pre-
vailing
philosophical
attitudes
held
by
most
Southern

---

138
Whites,
the fact of the matter is that white men have always
been attracted to
black women.
"Some of
them liked black
women for sex and said so.
For
the others it was a matter
of gaining experience,
initiation into the adult world.
The
maid,
the cook,
a stray child,
anything not too old or re-
pulsive would do" (p.107).
The author's hostile voice seems
to indicate that love is excluded from these white man-black
woman relationships,
which
is a way of
reducing her white
men to what,
in The Third
Life 2i Grange Copeland,
Brown-
field sees
himself as a sign
of.
Only Brownfield
has no
power at all next to a white man.
The author's portrayal of
white men as very powerful individuals is highlighted by the
fact of Henry Oshay's freedom.
Eveybody approved of what he
did when he killed his adulterous wife.
In addition, he has
been making
money off the dead
body for years
without any
~oice ever riised against him.
It is obvious in the author's
VleW that the power struc-
,ture sustaining many white men's
authority makes most black
,women easy prey for them.
The painful stories of rape which
black women keep telling their daughters
seem to be part of
,a defence strategy that purports to educate the younger gen-
eration.
When
Mrs.
Hill,
Meridian's mother,
tells her
daughter about how as a maid
she was often harrassed by her
·boss's son,
a
twenty-one-year-old kid who could
have been
.her grandson,
the feeling aroused
in her is plain disgust .
. This disgust later on is processed into "weary religion- re-

---

139
strained hatred."
And it is
with this sentiment
that she
described white men.
Mrs. Hill's perception of white men is
achieved through an artistic combination of both her person-
al life story and the
collective evaluation by black people
of their
several-century-long existence
in the
New Conti-
nent.
This
e<aluation,
Amiri
Baraka in
another context
called the "emotional history·"
of black people in America.
Although it does inform in
Alice Walker's fiction all black
Americans'
representation
of America
and,
as
a result
their interaction with Whites,
the
evidence seems to indi-
cate that
every generation
scrutinizes it
from a
farther
perspective than
the previous
generation.
Details
which
carry a lot of weight to one
group may be overlooked by an~
other.
If Meridian remembers
almost everything her mother
told her about
white men,
she remembers
almost nothing of
what .her mother
told her about white
women.
Whatever the
reason or reasons behind her selective memory,
it is used by
Alice Walker
as an excuse
to have Meridian's
personal im-
pression of
white women
complemented by
her grandmother's
certainty about them.
Not
surprisingly,
Meridian and her
grandmother hold a
number of similar VleWS
on the subject.
They both
tend to think
white women
"frivolous,
helpless
creatures,
lazy
and without ingenuity"
(p.lOB).
But the
difference between
them both
is just
as important
as the
similarities.
Unlike her grandmother who
is afraid of the
"
Amiri Baraka, Home, New York, Morrow, 1966.

---

140
White
woman as
a "baby
machine" because
"all the
little
white people" produced by her are seen by the black woman as
potential oppressors,
Meridian does
not entertain
such a
fear.
In addition, she doesn't even see white girls as po-
tential rivals when it comes to dating black men.
Her con-
fidence proceeds quite naturally from what she was taught as
a child:
"nobody
wanted white
girls except
their empty-
headed,
effeminate counterparts--white
boys"lp.lOB).
The
character of Truman
Held is the living proof
that not many
black men share this VleW.
Against such a psycho-social
background,
a mixed couple
appears necessarily as an oddity.
The fact of the matter is
that in Alice Walker's Meridian the
black man and the white
woman belong each to a different tradition in which,
as far
fts selecting a spouse goes,
there
exists a code of conduct
that advises them against choosing
a partner from the ·oth-
er" group.
The two codes of conduct may be sustained by two
different sets
of reasons
but the truth
of the
matter is
that they are
implemented to the same end.
To love,
let
,alone marry, across the race line is,
therefore,
to degener-
ate into a code violator.
The character of Truman Held is presented,
right from the
Ibeginning,
not
only as
a man committed
to the
the Civil
.Rights movement but
also as a product
of Meridian's fanta-
sies.
When he
and Meridian first meet and
before one can

---

141
tell what he thinks and why,
his physical appearance is al-
ready assessed from Meridian's perspective:
She could not help staring at his nose,
which was
high-bridged
and keen
and
seemed
to have
come
straight
off
the faces
of
Ethiopian
Warriors,
whose photographs she had seen.
It was wonderful-
ly noble,
he was dressed in blue jeans and a polo
shirt and
his shirt front
was covered
with but-
tons.
That he wore lots
of buttons struck Meri-
dain as odd,
too playful,
for such a cool,
serious
man.
She wanted buttons like that,
though.
(p.81)
This idealized image of Truman turned into a noble Ethiopian
warrior dressed in Western attire tells the story of Meridi-
an's fantasies as imagined
by the author-narrator.
Truman
seems to be the reflection of
something that wants to
come
out from deep inside Meridian's soul
while at the same time
she makes
an obvious
effort to
identify with
the picture
that she sees of him.
Truman's
commitment to the cause of
the movement is so total he does not even notice her infatu-
ation with him.
Ironically enough,
the emotional discrepan-
cy between them is not allowed to work against the political
harmony that lies
at the basis of their
involvement in the
movement.
Truman's dedication to the black cause, at times,
is confusingly expressed in the shape of a personal interest
'in Meridian.
If Truman's looks have not changed, Meridian's perception
of him has over the first year of their friendship.
Looking
back,
the narrator gives a sketchy account of her change and
its consequences

---

142
Everyone thought him handsome because his nose was
so keen and
his skin was tan and
not black;
and
Meridian,
though disliking herself for
it,
thought
him handsome for exactly those reasons,
too.
Or
had,
until,
when
she had known him
for about a
year,
she
began to look
closely at
him.
With
scrutiny, much of the handsomeness disappeared be-
hind the vain, pretentious person Truman was.
And
his teeth were far
from good.(p.99)
The author has pronounced the Ethiopian warrior dead in Tru-
man and what remains of him is just a regular black man.
As
Meridian's excitement wears out,
her appreciation of physi-
cal beauty changes and tends
to depend on her evaluation of
the inner person behind the mask of physical appearance.
By
the time
Meridian uncovers
the "vain,
pretentious person
Truman
was"
(p.99)
behind
the
handsomeness of
his
tan
skinned Ethiopian figure,
she has gone too far to pull back.
By throwing "open
the door for him"
with passionate force,
Meridian gives herself the chance to see and feel what still
closer scrutiny can reveal about him.
That they are not in-
terested in the same thing becomes obvious first of all from
, .
the linguistic
gap he
creates between
them by
constantly
speaking French to
her.
When eventually he
decides to go
back to their common English language,
the gap is ominously
maintained.
Little wonder
that the night Meridian
and he
were supposed
to go
to a
party together
Truman suggested
that they
stay home
beca use " ... we'll
be alone.
r want
you;"
to which
Meridian responds:
"r love
you. "
(p.109)
The
narrator's warning
that " ... the
sly,
serious
double
ta kes were st i 11 in the future"(p.99}
is an attempt by the

---

143
author to pull
the bits and pieces of
Truman's current be-
havio~r patterns together
and,
in the process,
give us a
glimpse of what is to happen ne~t.
Lynne Rabinowitz appears in the
picture as the center of
"a
gigantic
flower with
revolving
human
petals"(p.129).
This romanticized depiction
of a white woman
with her hair
being combed by a group of
happy black children in a circle
around her
marks the
beginning of a
new life
for Truman,
The children "might be bridesmaids
preparing Lynne for mar-
riage.
They do not see him.
He frames a picture with his
camera but something
stops him before he
presses the shut-
ter.
What stops him he will not,
for the moment,
have to
.acknowledge:
it is a sinking, hopeless feeling about oppo-
sites, and what they do to each other"(p.129).
Whether the
opposites here are Black and White, man and woman,
or black
male and white female,
Truman's
coming together with Lynne
is already
anticipated and
his instant
attraction to
her
proceeds from the
"hopeless feeling."
The chaos
of racism
and
mutual hatred
has
consistently
prevented Blacks
and
Whites from getting to know
each other,
which explains why
after
several centuries
of
co-existence
in America
they
'still find each other exotic.
The view the author seems to
be expressing here is that placing
too much emphasis on the
differences between people is a way of negating their common
ground.
In the case of Lynne
and Truman the evaluation of
the differences is done within
the broader framework of the

---

144
Civil Rights Movement as a
social revolution.
Anybody in-
volved in
this revolution is supposed
to get rid
of their
old selves in preparation for
a new common future.
Truman
is no exception to the rule.
It is striking, however,
that
with Meridian he would make no concession whereas with Lynne
he can afford to be flexible:
Truman
had had
enough of
the
Movement and
the
South.
But
not Lynne.
Mississippi--after the
disappearance of the three Civil Rights workers in
1964--began
to beckon
her.
For
two years
she
thought of
nothing else:
If Mississippi
is the
worst place in America for black people,
it stood
to reason,
she thought,
that
the Art
that was
their lives would flourish best there.
Truman who
had given up
his earlier ambition to
live perma-
nently in France,
wryly
considered Mississippi a
just alternative.
And so a little over two years
after the bodies--battered beyond recognition, ex-
cept for
the colors:
two white,
one black--of
Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner were found. hidden in
a
backwoods Neshoba
County,
Mississippi,
dam,
Lynne and Truman arrived(p.l30).
Lynne has a
clear idea what he
wants to do with
her life.
Her decision to discover the black experience in its various
manifestations constitutes the backbone of her personal com-
mitment.
Truman,
therefore,
appears in the picture as the
expression of Lynne's consciousness.
By letting him give up
"wryly" his
life dream
in order
to become
the shadow
of
Lynne in the process of fullfilling herself,
the author has
created a vacuum
in Truman.
When scrutinized
against the
background of
Truman's own perspectives on
interracial un-
ions at one point of his personal growth,
this daring act of
love and self denial represents a
big change in the charac-

---

145
ter.
When,
ignoring Meridian's love for him he first dated
the
exchange students
for many
months,
it
is not
clear
whether he did
it out of love
or just for the
sake of it.
Judging from the emotional and intellectual shock he experi-
enced reading W. E.
Du Bois's The Soul £i Black Folk, after
the white girls had gone back to the North,
he sounds truly
infatuated with the encounter.
"'The man was a genius!'
he
cried,
and he read the passages
from the book that he said
were reflective of his and Meridian's souls"(p.106).
What-
ever passages are read to
Meridian are open to speculation.
In the context of the sixties
where all of a sudden "BLACK"
became beautiful because it could serve all kinds of politi-
cal purposes, one key passage could well be where Du Bois is
teaching his brothers
and sisters to learn
to derive pride
from blackness."
Whatever the case,
unless Truman's state-
., "After the Egyptian and Indian,
the Greek and Roman,
the
Teuton and Mongolian,
the Negro is a sort of seventh son,
born with
a veil,
and
gifted with second-sight
in the
American world,--a
world which
yields him
no self-con-
sciousness,
but
only lets him
see himself
through the
revelation of the other world.
It is a peculiar sensa-
tion,
this
double-consciousness,
this sense
of always
looking at
one's self
through the
eyes of
others,
of
measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on
in amused contempt
and pity.
One
ever feels
his two-
ness,--an American, a Negro;
two souls, two thoughts,
two
unreconciled strivings;
two warring ideals in
one ,dark
body,
whose dogged strength keeps it from being torn as-
sunder.
The history
of the American
Negro is the
history of
this strife,--this longing to
attain self-conscious man-
hood,
to merge
his double soul into a
better and truer
self.
In
this merging he
wishes neither of
the older
selves to be lost.
He would not Africanize America,
for
America has too much to teach
the world and Africa.
He
would
not bleach
his Negro
soul
in a
flood of
white

---

146
ment is meant to
be a strategy used by him
to win back Me-
ridian's love
or friendship,
one may
wonder why
"He was
startled by the coolness with
which she received his asser-
tion that what
he had decided,
after
reading "le maitre,"
was that if he dated white girls it must be, essentially,
a
matter of sex"
Ip.106).
In his new relationship with Merid-
ian,
Truman reveals more aspects of his intimate self which
are conveyed
in the text through
Meridian's consciousness.
Meridian,
who was first married to one Eddie and bore him a
child,
is fully aware that she used to lack courage,
initia-
tive and a mind of her own.
Black history saves her by pro-
viding outstanding models whose lives
she could pattern her
own after.
One such model
is "Harriet Tubman,
the only
American woman
who'd led troops
in battle."
This
is cer-
tainly good for Meridian,
who has every reason to try to be-
come an exceptionally strong fighter,
i.e.
the exact type of
black woman Grange
has managed to bring forth
in The Third
Life of Grange Copeland.
"But Truman, alas, did not want a
general beside him.
He did not want a woman who tried, how-
ever encumbered by guilts and fears ~nd remorse to claim her
own life.
She
knew Truman would have liked
her better as
she had been
as Eddie's wife,
for all that
he admired the
flash of her face across a picket line--an attractive woman,
but asleep"lp.llD).
Americanism,
for he knows that the Negro blood has a mes-
sage for
the world." W.E.B.DuBois,
The Souls
of Black
Folk,
Greenwich,
Conn.,
Fawcett Publications-,-
I nc ,
TI903), 1961, pp.16-17

---

147
Truman's helpless
attraction to
other white
women than
his wife is
the dramatization of his own
confusion when it
comes to controlling his emotional
life.
As a critic puts
it,
"In Truman's failure to recognise the contradictions and
inequities in his sexual ideology,
he condemns himself to a
spiritually tragic divisiveness""
The couple's short-lived
marriage or
more specifically the
reason why the
man lost
interest 1n the woman is used by the author as an opportuni-
ty to explore Truman's divided self.
His feelings for Lynne
had been undergoing subtle
changes for some time.
Yet
it was not until the
shooting of Tommy Odds in
Mississippi that he no-
ticed these changes.
The
shooting of Tommy Odds
happened one evening just as he Truman, Tommy Odds
and Trilling
(a worker
from Oklahoma
since fled
and never seen again)
were coming out of the door
of the Liberal Trinity Baptist Church.
There had
been the
usual meeting
with songs,
prayers and
strategy for the next
day's picketing of downtown
stores.
They had assumed, also,
that guards had
been posted; not verifying was their mistake.
As
they stepped
from the church
and into
the light
from an overhanging bulb on the porch,
a burst of
machine-gun fire came from
some bushes across the
street.
He and Trilling jumped
off the sides of
the steps.
Tommy Odds,
in the middle,
was shot
through the elbow(p.131).
The right
mood is
set when the
event is
briefly narrated
that will serve as a catalyst
for the big confrontation be-
tween Truman's private self and his public self.
The irony
of the situation
as the author seems to
articulate it here
is that
Mississippi which is
regarded by Lynne
herself as
"
Deborah E.McDowell:
"The Self
in Bloom:
Alice Walker's
Meridian in CLA Journal, Vol xxiv #3, March 81, p.269

---

148
the best
place to live the
"Art" that she sees
Blacks as,
the same
Mississippi has
now become
the framework
within
which their love is to go through a trying experience.
The
events affecting their
life as a couple
originate from the
confrontation between
two races
they didn't
at first
see
themselves as the representatives of.
Despite his previous
decision,
"after reading "le maitre," that even
"if he dat-
ed white
girls it
must be,
essentially
a matter
of sex"
there is ample evidence in the
text that when he chooses to
marry Lynne it
is essentially because his
private self has
seen in her many qualities of love,
personal dedication and
political commitment that appealed to Truman.
He "had felt
hemmed in and pressed down
by Lynne's intelligence."
To be
with her is therefore to express interest in an intellectual
quest that implies a collective participation.
But in ret-
rospect, Lynne's contribution toward the shaping of Truman's
character is not
just intellectual:
How marvelous
it was
at
first
to find
that she
read everything.
That she thought, deeply.
That
she longed
to put
her body on
the line
for his
freedom.
How her idealism had warmed him,
brought
him into the world, made him eager to tuck her un-
der his wing,
under himself,
sheltering her from
her own illusions.
Her
awareness of wrong,
her
indignant
political response
to whatever
caused
him to suffer,
was a
definite part of her charm,
and yet
he preferred it as
a part of
her rarely
glimpsed, commented upon in passing,
as one might
speak of the fact that Lenin wore a beard (p.140).
In this instance of focalisation through Truman,
the narra-
tor tries to
describe Lynne and ends up
depicting her hus-

---

149
band as well.
One part
of Lynne's personality revealed to
Truman the urge for him to secure and save the other part by
offering to protect
her.
The most important
fact here is
that she
expresses her
love for him
by espousing
a cause
which has yet
to be defined.
In the context
of the civil
Rights Movement the
cause is the attainment
of social jus-
tice and equality of opportunity for all.
As a couple, un-
fortunately,
they are part of a social network which imposes
on events and attitudes meanings too often beyond their con-
trol.
The
mixed couple therefore
becomes an
easy ground
where conflicting ethnic forces view the individual as a mi-
crocosm of a
whole race.
Truman cannot
overlook the fact
that Lynne's father
disowned her on account
of her choice.
In addition, listening to the yellings of Lynne's mother who
went to Truman's neighborhood to
talk her daughter into re-
turning home,
one wonders if the
worst thing that can ever
happen to a white couple is to "lose"
their only daughter to
a black man.
Although they start out as
two human beings
who choose
to be together because
they can relate
to each
other,
society makes sure that
they percieve each other as
the representives of two different races.
On Truman's side
of the race line,
the energies mobilized to that effect are
generated by
his friends.
When
Truman visits
with Tommy
Odds at
the hospital
after the
latter was
fired at
by a
white gang,
the conversation both of them have is crucial to
the later development of Truman's character.
His effort to

---

150
include his wife ("Lynne says hurry
up and get your ass out
of here"
(p.132)
in his social life
is blatantly discour-
aged.
"Don't mention that bitch to me" is the answer he re-
ceives from Tommy Odds.
This symbolic way of erasing Lynne
recalls
to memory
Guitar's purpose
in
joining the
Seven
Days.
Truman, of course,
cannot believe his ears.
"Tommy
Odds turned
his head
and looked at
him,
moving
his lips
carefully so there
would be no mistake."
And
what he says
this
time
is
"don't
mention
that
white
bitch"(p.132).
Shifting from "bitch" to "white bitch"
is a way of indirect-
ly subscribing to the attitude exhibited by Lynne's parents.
~he fight goes on.
Truman is made to believe that his wife
belongs with others.
And if she
does,
it follows that he
has deceived
himself by
making her
his partner
for life.
The moment the problem is presented
in terms of Blacks ver-
sus Whites,
taking sides with Lynne
is for Truman like ex-
eluding himself from the black community.
His private self
is at odds
with what his public self--the
mask society has
had him put on--is supposed to be.
Although he still feels
committed to Lynne despite the
decided effort of Tommy Odds
acting on
behalf of
the black community
as a
group,
his
whole being is shaken.
So even if he clearly suggests that
"Lynne had nothing
to do with this",
the clash
of the two
sides of his
split self triggers off a
most telling intro-
spection.
He has to choose between Lynne and blackness:
while he was
saying this,
his tongue
was slowed
down by
thoughts that began twisting
like snakes

---

151
through his
brain.
How could
he say
Lynne had
nothing to
do with
the shooting
of Tommy
Odds,
when there were so many
levels at which she could
be blamed?(p.132)
It does not
take Truman very long to figure
out what Lynne
may be guilty of.
By being white Lynne was guilty of whiteness.
He
could not reduce
the logic any further,
in that
direction.
Then the question was,
is it possible
to be guilty of a
color?
Of course black people
for years were 'guilty'
of being black.
Slavery
was punishment for their 'crime.'
But even if he
abandoned this search for
Lynne's guilt,
because
it ended,
logically enough,
in racism,
he was
forced to search through other levels for it.
For
bad or
worse,
and regardless
of what
this said
about himself as a person,
he could not--after his
friend's words--keep from thinking
Lynne was,
in
fact,
guilty.
The
thing
was
to
find
out
how.(p.133)
Beyond the crucial .question whether
one can be guilty of
a color,
there
seems to lurk a strategy being
used by the
author-narrator to drive home to her readers the nonsensical
nature of
the philosophical foundations
of slavery
as was
experienced by American Blacks.
But evidently,
the author
does not want Truman holding Lynne guilty of whiteness.
He,
therefore,
has to search through other
levels for a sin to
blame her for.
Lynne as the
author sees her is guilty un-
till proven innocent.
Truman is
changing into a White-ha-
ter.
In the process,
however,
he is soon confronted with
the inconsistencies of his own line of arguments.
The con-
tradiction shows when his stand
as a husband is scrutinized

---

152
by the Civil Rights Movement
activist engaged in building a
society where one's race should not
be regarded as a curse.
In other words,
by loading Lynne with a crime he cannot even
define,
he is indicating how far he
has yet to go if he is
to come to grips with the
conflicting forces at work within
him.
Blackness erases his individuality
as much as white-
ness depersonalizes Lynne and sweeps
away her Jewishness in
the process.
In fact even
Truman sees no Jewish dimension
to Lynne's
existence at
all.
For him,
she is
just "an
American white woman."
Now she knows that ~hiteness as such
does
not generate
the
psychological
protection that
she
needs and
the sense of belonging
that comes with
it.
No
wonder people "make her conscious,
heavily,
of her Jewish-
ness when,
in fact they want
to make her feel
her white-
ness"(p.179).
To try to strip Lynne of her Jewishness is to
insist on the one striking,
irreversible "difference" there
is between the couple--skin colour.
Viewed from this angle,
blackness is irreversible whereas Jewishness
is not.
As a
matter of fact,
one can ~ven make the point that,
for Tru-
man,
Jewishness is just a metaphor for suffering and perse-
cution.'· One may well imagine that as a Jew, she sees simi-
larities
between the
Holocaust and
the black
experience •
•• Members of both communities seem to agree with this view,
which is why
(like JUlius Lester who holds that "there is
no need for black people to wear yellow Stars of David on
their sleeves;
the Star of David is all over us,") Rabbi
Alan Miller thinks that "The black man is,
in truth,
the
American Jew.";
in Nat Hentoff, ed., Black Anti-Semitism
and Jewish
Racism,
New York,
Richard
W.Barrow,
1969,
pp. ix-x.

---

153
However, the interpretation now of those historical facts is
not the
same.
It varies from
one group to the
other and
within the
same group,
from
one individual to
the other.
Lynne's marriage to Truman is therefore the affirmation of a
personal stand.
This is why Tommy Odds believes that Truman
is just the means used by Lynne
to teach her parents a les-
son.
A close analysis of the reasons why they fell
In love
with
each other
indicates that
"her
awareness of
wrong"
(p.160)
is just the manifestation
of something in her that
he never felt like figuring out.
The truth of the matter is
that by nature,
she
is not "cut out to be
a member of the
oppressors."
(p.181)
She
hates them because they
make her
feel guilty all the time.
Her evaluation of her own growth
as a person heavily depends on the dialectic of their common
life as a
couple and her statement that
"Truman isn't much
,but he's instructional"
(P.181)
sheds some crucial light on
the role
he plays in exposing
her to the condition
of the
oppressed.
By committing himself to
the Movement.
he has
'openly expressed a =oncern, and the very statement thus made
places him outside of the community of ordinary people.
His
militancy is
used by the author
to help him mature
into a
new man.
The
image thus projected of him by
Lynne is the
. culmination
of the
transformation the
character has
gone
through ever since he jpined
the Movement.
However,
from
Meridian's standpoint,
Truman
has not always been
a hero.
He has not always been around
to be supportive of her.
As

---

154
she was
growing from the experiences
and the facts
of her
own life, Truman was cold and distant.
A juxtaposition of a
number of episodes of the
story shows that Trurnan's attrac-
tion to Meridian is, at first,
now physical now ideological
and always shallow.
It becomes ideologically deeper only in
response to peer
pressure,
that is when
his friends start
telling him that he is welcome among them as long as he does
not come along with Lynne.
Ironically enough, his ideologi-
cal change appears to the
character himself as an emotional
growth.
If he eventually seeks to part from his wife,
it is
not so much because he is now in love with Meridian as it is
because he
has developed a new
attitude vis a
vis "black-
ness".
All things considered,
Lynne also stays married to
Truman for ideological reasons.
But this situation only aggravates Truman's psychological
confusion.
viewed from that perspective,
he now lives on
the margins
of mainstreamn
American society.
The author
makes his position even more
uncomfortable by using the two
women's unbreakable friendship.
In the name of this friend-
ship,
they freely share insights during their conversations
which help once again to define Truman's character.
Despite Lynne's
opinion that
Truman saved
her "from
a
fate worse
than death,"lp.IBl)
the
fact of the
matter is
that he has
not managed to save everybody that
he came ac-
cross.
One case in point is Johnny the deer hunter and his
wife(pp.203-4)whom he fails to convince to register to vote:

---

155
"What good
is the vote
if we don't
own noth-
ing?" asked the husband as Truman and Meridian wer
leaving.
The wife,
her
eyes steadily carresing
her husband's back, had fallen asleep,
Johnny,Jr.
cuddled next to
her on the faded
chenille bedsp-
read.
In winter
the
house
must be
freezing,
thought
Truman,
looking
at
the
cracks in
the
walls;
and now,
in spring,
the house was full of
flies.
"Do you want free medicines
for your wife?
A
hospital that'll
take black
peolple through
the
front door?
A good school for Johnny, Jr.
and a
job no one will take away?"
"You know I do," said the husband sullenly.
"Well,
voting
probably won't get it
for you,
not in
your lifetime," Truman said,
not knowing
whether
Meridian intended
to
lie
and claim
it
would.
"What will
it get
me but
a lot
of trouble,"
grumbled the husband.
"I don't know," said Meridian.
"It may be use-
less.
Or maybe it can be the beginning of the use
of your voice.
You have to get used to using your
voice,
you know.
You start on simple things and
move on ... "
"No," said the husband,
"I don't have time for
foolishness.
My wife is dying.
My boy don't have
shoes.
Go somewhere else
and find somebody that
ain't got to work all the time for pennies, like I
do. 11
"Okay," said Meridian.
Surprised, Truman fol-
lowed calmly as she calmly walked away.(pp.204-5)
This
dramatization by
Alice Walker
of
the necessity
for
Blacks to make it a duty for
them to vote fully makes sense
in the context of the mood set by the author-narrator.
But
Truman's decision to be realistic
and frank about what con-
crete changes voting
can bring into the homes
and lives of
poor bla~k people
is manipulated by the author
to show how

---

156
the cycle
of poverty
is kept unbroken
by the
very people
concerned.
The result of the presentation,
ho~ever,
is a
clear message
for the
black community
that they
can make
their voices count.
By failing to draw the conclusion per-
sonally,
Johnny who
sees no reason why
poor people should
vote is alienated by the author from American pOlitical life
and is indirectly made to turn his
back on some of the pos-·
sibilities of having
his lot improved.
Johnny
too is so-
cially maladjusted.
Throughout the novel,
the portrayal
of the character of
Truman as a married man
is presented through his propensity
to involve himself in loyalty
conflicts he cannot win.
He
maintains
that despite
the difficulties
his marriage
has
been going through, he still loves Lynne;
only that he does
not desire her any more.
This may very well explain why he
fails to take the appropriate action when his wife was raped
by his black
friends.
By allowing Truman to
make such an
irresponsible move,
Alice Walker creates in the character a
flaw that makes him a rapist of his own wife--morally speak-
ing.
This status brings him ~Jose to G~nn90 Copolnnd,
who
did nothing
to prevent Shipley
from taking his
wife.
In
"Truman's case,
though,
the black man's failure to stand by
his wife--if
only symbolically--originates from
a transfer
of priority from "personal co~mitment" to what may be called
"race allegiance."
Once again,
the author has managed, psy-
chologically speaking,
to make
Truman a
totally confused

---

157
person. He does not know which way to turn anymore.
As his
control over the world around him dwindles,
he appears more
and more
incapable of adapting
himself to society
and its
rules.
He gets caught by his wife having an affair with an-
other white woman,
gives up his former political commitment
and asks Meridian to bear his black children.
His last re-
quest
seems to
be of
the greatest
importance because
it
calls for an ideological
reinterpretation of Truman's char-
acter as the rest of the story unfolds.
In the Western tra-
dition,
it
takes only
one black
parent to
make a
child
black.
In that respect, Camara,
the daughter of Lynne and
Truman,
is as black as the
children he could have with Me-
ridian.
Truman is therefore articulating here an ideologi-
cal statement of a new kind.
Having children with Meridiar
is seeing part of his soul
reflected around him.
In other
words,
when considered from the triple perspective of Cama-
ra's death,
her father's persistent attraction to white wo-
men,
and
his surprising desire
to have Meridian
bear his
"black" children,
the ideology of blackness
that sustains
the author's perception
of the character of
Truman is evi-
°dently open
to love,
friendship,
and
sex across
racial
boundaries
but frowns
upon
miscegenation and
interracial
marriages.
Beyond
this observation there also
exists the
fact that in the world of
The Third Life 2i Grange Cope land
and Metidian, Alice walker's (married) men are always out to
take advantage of women.

---

158
2.3
HUMANIZING THE BLACK MAN
An Analysis of The Color Purple
In her article called ·Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The
Importance Of Models
In The Artist's life.""
Alice Walker
confesses that,
just like Toni Morrison,
she writes the kind
of books
she wants to read.
One major feature
common to
novels like Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon and Tar Baby and
Alice Walker's Meridian
and The Color Purple
is the female
characters'
successful
attempt to go beyong
the bitterness
they have to deal with in the
process of both trying to un-
derstand and
explaining themselves
to,
the
black men
in
their lives.
This post- feminist
perspective of theirs has
the merit of sustaining a set
of ideas that these two writ-
~rs want
reflected in
the world
of their
fiction.
This
·ideology· Alice Walker locates in the double reality of the
conception of creative ideas by individuals and the determi-
nation of these inventive generators to see their dreams ma-
terialize
into concrete
achievements.
As
she puts
it:
·• ... to write
the books one wants
to read is both
to point
the direction
of vision
and,
at the
same time
to follow
it.·"
A
writer is
a performer
who acts
out his/her
own
"
Alice walker:
~ Search Of Our Mothers' Gardens pp 3-14
,. Alice Walker In Search QiOur Mothers' Garden p.8

---

159
dreams.
The vision
"pointed" in The Third
Life Qi Grange
Cope land and elaborated on in
Meridian is "followed" In The
Color Purple.
The novel opens
with the narrator's statement
that "You
better not never tell nobody but God.
It'd kill your mammy"
(p.ll).
The silent conversation between the letter writers
and the author who,
incidentally,
regards herself as a medi-
um (p.253)
underscores the necessity for
the former to give
shape and meaning to their lives by writing down their daily
experiences.
The opening statement
validates the language
of the people
concerned and consequently makes
it possible
for them to feel comfortable using it in order to tell their
own stories.
And these stories
can kill the tellers' mam-
mies because in
substance they constitute an
indictment of
the men in the tellers'
lives.
Only God can save them all.
No wonder
that Celie in her
very first letter begs
God to
"give
me
a sign
letting
me
know
what is
happening
to
me"lp.Il).
Her diary may well be regarded as the first re-
sponsible step on
her way to self-redeeming.
Writing for
her is, therefore, a way of relieving herself of her suffer-
ing.
It is
an act of self-creation.
By structuring the
story of her
daily life into meaningful pieces
of what one
may well call literature,
she forces herself to engage in a
reflection on
the world around
her.
This world
in which
people
consistently treat
her like
a good-for-nothing
is
dominated by black
men whose names she does
not even know.

---

160
Alice Walker presents Celie's life as a steady succession of
sufferings and rejections and Celie's account of it reflects
the nature of the men who
make it miserable for her.
They
overpower her and make her the object of all kinds of trans-
actions.
As far
as her own evaluation of
her self esteem
goes,
the character of Celie seems to have taken over where
Brownfield Copeland's wife, Mem,
left off in The Third Life
of Grange Copeland.
Brownfield's idea that a woman as black
and therefore ugly as she is should be calling him Mister is
internalised by Celie who sounds
more than convinced of her
own worthlessness.
Alice Walker • ... has indicated that the
character of Celie
is based on her
great-grandmother,
who
was raped at twelve by her slaveholding master.""
Elaborat-
ing on the above,
Trudier Harris,
who refers to The Color
Purple as "a political shopping list
of all the IOUs Walker
'felt that it was time to
repay,·"
makes an important point
in light of which I
intend to
look at the way black men are
portrayed in this novel; she writes:
In reparation
to a
woman who
had suffered
such
pain,
Walker has explained:
I liberated her from
her own history ... I wanted her
to be happy"
(New-
sweek,
21 July 1982, p.67).
It is a clash between
history and
fiction,
in
part,
that
causes the
problem with the novel.
"
Trudier Harris:
·On The Color purple,
Stereotypes,
and
Silence," in Black American Literature Forum, Vol18, Num-
ber4, Winter84, p.157.
,.
ibidem p.160.

---

161
On the way to making
Celie happy,
Walker por-
trays her
as a victim
of many
imaginable abuses
and a few unimaginable ones."
The first man Celie encounters 1S her stepfather who, de-
spite her youth,
fathers her two children.
The image that
Alice Walker makes Celie project of
him in the first letter
i~ repeated almost
throughout the whole novel
in the shape
of different men.
Fonso is the custodian
of an authority
and a power which he uses only for personal gains.
He looks
all the stronger as
Celie is in no position to
stand up to
him.
The author uses contrast over and again to depict the
commanding role he plays in her life.
Her silence not only
protects her
abuser against her
mother's anger but
by the
same token reinforces Fonso's position in the community.
He
1S
a respectable
married man who is
determined to preserve
,ihat appearance.
He does so by pretending and lying.
The
full story
of his strategy
of conquest is
eventually told
years later,
only after Celie
has finished off verbalizing
her pain during a conversation
with her husband's mistress,
Shug.
Before recording how she was raped by her stepfather
whom she used to think was her own father,
Celie tells Shug
I
ihe whole story:
She ast me,
How was it with your children dad-
dy?
5'
ibidem p.157.
~"

---

162
The girls had
a little separate room,
I say,
off to itself,
connected to the house by a little
plank walk.
Nobody ever come
in there but Mama.
But one time when mama not at home, he come.
"Told
me he wanted
me to trim his hair.
He bring the
scissors and comb and brush and a stool.
While I
trim his hair
he look at me funny.
He a little
nervous too,
but I don't
know why,
till he grab
hold of me and cram me up tween his legs.( ... )
Af ter he
through,
I say,
he make
me finish
trimming his hair.
( ... )
After while I
say,
Mama finally ast
how come
she find his
hair in girls room if
he don't ever
go in there like he say.
That when he told her I
had a boyfriend.(pp.10B-109)
This incestuous relationship and how
the man gets away with
it constitute
two different
events which,
once combined,
give a
clear indication of the
type of morality
he stands
for.
Although the story is
told from Celie's perspective,
there is every indication that Fonso knew that Celie thought
he was her real father,
which aggravates his situation as a
rapist.
If he is morally loose he is also good at falsify-
ing any crucial facts that are likely to affect the image he
wants people to see of him. The story of his "astuteness" is
used as a source of
knowledge to enhance Shug's familiarity
with human nature.
"Shug say, Wellsah, and I thought it was
6nly whitefolks do freakish things like that"lp.109).
This
piece of information later on
helps shape her perception of
'her Albert,
i.e.
Celie's Mr
The only experience Celie
depends on to assess her husband's nature and personality is
given shape in the suffering she endured at her stepfather's
~and.
A sk~tchy moral portrait of him is drawn in'the third
letter:
i
;'
'...---"

---

164
length conversation he has with
Albert (known to Celie sim-
ply as Mr
J.
Albert who was originally interested in Netty
has to be content with Celie:
Well, He say,
real slow,
I can't let you have
Nettie.
She too young.
Don't know nothing but
what you tell her.
Sides,
I want her to git some
~ _ _ rn"""..,.._ ...... _'h ..... ,..,,_,_~
......
_
1."_.1. _ ..
1-
. , _ . _ -
•
~>
•
_
163
Dear God,
He act like he can't stand me no more.
Say I'm
evil an always
up to no good.
He
took my other
little baby,
a boy this time.
But I don't think
he kilt it.
I
think he sold it to a
man an his
wife over Monticello.
I got
breast full of milk
running down myself.
He say Why don't
you look
decent?
Put on something.
But what I'm sposed to
put on?
I don't have nothing.
I keep hoping he fine somebody to marry.
I see
him looking at my little sister.
She scared.
But
I say I'll take care of you.
With God help.
Celie's awareness of the man's power
and the type of use he
puts it to,
indicates a clear
sense of the limitations put
on her.
The dialp.ctic of that power and Celie's powerless-
ness helps shape
Fonso's profile as a
socially maladjusted
man throughout the text.
The character of Fonso,
in the fi-
nal analysis,
is the powerful man
that a tiny
force like
Celie eventually causes
to disintegrate because he
used to
derive his
strength from her
ability to reassure
him that
she knows nothing.
That she
promises from her desperately
isolated corner of the world to help her sister survive adds
a heroic
dimension to
both the
committed courage
and the
calculated abnegation she displays throughout the novel.
"I
ast him
to take me
instead of
Nettie while our
new mammy
~ick," she writes.
This strategy
aims to save her younger
sister Nettie from falling prey
to their stepfather's lust.
It works at first.
The picture of the stepfather, however,
still has too
many spots of indeterminacy to
it.
Most of
the blanks are filled in when
Celie records the first full-

---

165
He say,
She near twenty.
And another thing--
she tell lies.(pp.17-8}
While the use
of reported speech lends
more credibility to
the images Alice Walker is promoting of the two men, Celie's
status as a
negated human being is underlined
by the final
agreement reached by
her bosses.
This deal
coldly struck
between two
men totally contemptuous
of the
reified Celie
announces the transfer of power over her.
She stands for a
labor force that is valued by both parties.
The form of en-
slavement this attitude promotes and encourages reflects the
strictly materialistic
mentalities of
the men
who display
it.
while the message seems clear that, once in a position
of power, most oppressed people tend,
in their turn,
to hold
weaker people
down for
whatever profit
the situation
can
generate,
it also implies that
the value system sustaining
the worldview
of a community
of people too
often reflects
almost exclusively the wishes and
the dreams of the strong.
The mule metaphor quite often used in black American litera-
ture (especially
by black women
.riters)
to
describe the
plight of black women is given
substance as a result of the
two men's determination to project
a backward and undesira-
ble image of Celie.
Fom the two men's perspective the only
positive
point about
her
is that
"she
can
work.like
a
man"(p.18); and this point seems to be what makes her a bet-
ter wife than Nettie.
In fact,
the definition of the term
"wife" as a submissive mate readily
willing to do only what

---

166
she is ordered
to,
IS
the condition that
places and keeps
Celie at the bottom of the hierarchy of human beings as con-
ceived by her
stepfather.
She is a nonentity
he must get
rid of.
Mr,
the man who is to take over,
is therefore set
up to be cruel to Celie because,
for one thing,
he is made
~o perceive her as an unwanted person.
Chances are Mr
is
going to be a replica of his future father-in-law.
Not that
it
matters to
Celie
herself.
As
far
as
she can
tell,
" •.. mens look
pretty much alike
to me"(p.23).
The above
statement evidently contrasts
with the view of
some people
in the county that he is
the nicest man around.
Just like
Fonso,
Mr
has a deceiving facade beyond which people usu-
ally fail to go.
But when it comes to knowing Mr
Celie
is an insider.
Outside of Nettie, Celie has 11obody in the world that she
,can love and feel loved by.
Nettie is the only person who
,ever managed to
make Celie feel "pretty
cute."(p.26)
The
role played by
these two sisters in each
other's lives is.
therefore,
exceptionally important.
The heartless side to
Mr
takes a greater proportion when he decides to send away
Nettie who came
to stay with the couple.
Not
only is she
very assertive but to top it off she has a vision.
Her re-
fusal to sleep with Mr
is a big blow to a man who seems to
take it for granted that he is entitled to anything he feels
like.
Once she is out of the way. Mr
can freely do what-
ever he wants with Celie.
In fact, his effort to erase both

---

167
women clearly shows when,
for several decades,
he receives
and holds Celie's letters from her sister living in Africa.
Originally it was indirectly said to Celie that she would
be working
like Mr
when
she first married
him.
Viewed
from this angle,
Mr
fails to
live up to her expectation.
While Celie and
Mr
's son Harpo are in
the field chopping
and plowing all day,
he sits
back and watches them:
"Why
you don't work no more?
he ast his daddy."
Celie can never
afford to ask such a question at this point of her life.
In
addition, she already knows the answer to it.
Mr
,never-
theless,
takes the trouble to reiterate it.
"No reason for
me to.
His daddy say.
You here, ain't you?"(p.35)
In her
depiction of Harpo's interaction with his father,
the author
tells us a lot about men as she sees them.
Her observation
'that Harpo is "strong in body
but weak in will"(p.35),
lm-
plies that
physical strength
is all
that "mens"
have and
they do use it to cover up their spiritual weakness.
The various signsCelie begs God
for
in her first letter
~re sent to her in the shapes of Shug,
Nellie,
and Harpo's
wife.
Both directly and indirectly,
they prepare eelie to
humanize her husband.
But the most important achievement of
hers seems
to be her
loss of interest
in God and
His re-
placement with Nettie, and it all happened when she and Shug
eventually discovered
the accumulated
mail.
The
drastic
change that occurs
in the character coincides
with the be-

---

168
ginning of
her acquisition of a
keen sense of the
urge to
escalate from the
passivity in which she
has been grounded
all her life
in order to transcend what
she considered her
irremediable condition.
She becomes articulate in her lan-
guage and the result is a new Mr
Dear Nettie,
I don't write to God no more,
I write to you.
What happen to God? ast Shug.
Who that? I say.
She look at me serious.
Big a devil as you is,
I
say,
you not worried
bout no God, surely.
She say, Wait a minute.
Hold on just a minute
here.
Just I don't harass it like some peoples us
know don't mean I ain't got no religion.
What God do for me? l a s t
She say, eelie!
Like she shock.
He gave you
life, good health,
and a good woman that love you
to death.
Yeah,
I say, and he give me a lynched daddy,
a
crazy mama, a low down dog of a step pa and-a sis-
ter I probably won't ever
see again.
Anyhow,
I
say,
the God
I been praying and writing
to is a
man.
And act just like all the other mens I know.
Trifling,
forgitful and lowdown.( ... )(p.175)
Not only has she won the right to alr her views but in addi-
tion she makes it clear that
by her former silence she cre-
ated a God out of every man she knew and put each of them on
a pedestal.
She is now prepared to break what she made.
In
actual fact,
the author has been preparing her for this new

---

169
mission ever since she (the author) decided to keep her sis-
ter Nettie.away
from Mr.
TO be sure,
Nettie does not
leave Celie on
her own accord.
She leaves
her sister be-
cause of
situations and events
engineered by
Mr.
The
irony,
howevere,
is that in his attempt to separate the two
sisters Mr.
has simply
contributed toward
their reunion
many years later.
As a matter of fact, Nettie leaves Celie only to run into
"somebody" nice enough
to give her a ride
into town before
pointing
her
"in
the
direction
of
the
Reverend
M 's
place"(p.119).
This Reverend--whom
Harrisironically calls
"(a)
born again male feminist""
--is used by the author as
a link
between black
American men
and black
African men.
The author's decision to set the
other half of the story in
Africa underlines the pan-African
nature of her enterprise.
As a matter of fact,
the representation of Africa that most
.black American are
familiar with is the
one made available
mostly by white Europeans and/or Americans.
And, as Marion
Berghahn notes,
"only a very few Afro-Americans have actual-
ly succeeded in emancipating themselves completely from this
. 'white'
image of Africa.""
For an Afro-American novel to be
:set in black Africa,
the author,
therefore, must be making a
statement by intentionally seeking to reappraise the old im-
.0
ibidem p.160 .
• , Marion Berghahn,
Images of Africa in Blcak American Lit-
erature, Totowa, N.J., Rowman and Littlefield, 1977, p.l

---

170
age of Africa.
Before the "expedition" reaches Olinkaland in West Africa
a series
of letters were written
by Nettie in
which Alice
Walker supplies all appropriate
information about the back-
ground against which
black men in the
Black Continent will
be portrayed.
Nettie and the other missionaries have every-
thing carefully planned
before leaving America and
she re-
minds her sister of it in her first letter from Africa:
I never
even thought
about it
as a
real place,
though Samuel
and Corrine
and even
the children
talked about it all the time.
Miss Beasley used to say it was a place overrun
with savages who didn't
wear clothes.
Even Cor-
rine and Samuel thought like
this at times.
But
they know a lot more about it than Miss Beasley or
any of our other teachers, and beside,
they spoke
of all the good things they could do for the down-
trodden people from whom they sprang.
People who
need Christ and good medical advice.
(p.122-123)
"
'C'learly,
Corrine and Sam,
the missionaries,
as the author
has Nettie portray them here, are not on a fact-finding mis-
sion in Africa.
Literacy and medical science have made them
the custodians
of a certain power
and just like
Fonso and
Mr
who like 'to decide on
things and simply impose them on
'the women in their lives,
the two black American missionar-
ies "know" what Africans need.
This patronizing attitude is
a new
version of the
eurocentrism displayed by
white con-
querors in colonial Africa.
Oddly enough,
in another let-
ter,
Nettie thinks "
Africans are very much like white

---

171
people back home,
1n that they think they are the center of
the universe •.. " (p.155)
Nettie does not see any difference
between her being a "missionary" in Africa and the traumatic
experience that it
means to the natives.
To
be sure,
she
notes that "Samuel ..•
reminded us that there is one big ad-
vantage we have.
We are not white.
We are not Europeans.
We are black like the Africans
themselves.
And we and the
Africans will be working for
a common goal:
the uplifting
of
black people
everywhere"
(p.127).
The
panAfricanist
overtone of the
statement can be traced to
the good inten-
tion of Sam and his followers.
What leaves something to be
desired,
though,
is the fact that there is no African- inp0t
in the
strategy to be adopted
in view of the
final objec-
tive.
How to achieve this goal without turning the natives
into outsiders in an African setting
is not easy to articu-
late.
Apart from this basic contradiction that she is part
of, Nettie's discovery of black Africa is recorded in such a
way that
her letters
invariably testify
to her
desire to
'share her newly
gathered knowledge with her
sister.
"Oh,
Ce1ie,
there are ...
1 i ke ma was!!" ( p . 1 26 )
But at times,
eelie is
just the symbolic pupil
her sister tries
to edu-
cate.
Behind her ((elie's)
frail figure one can see various
audiences:
Our work began to seem somewhat clearer in England
because the English have been sending missionaries
to Africa and India and
China and God knows where
all, or over a hundred years.
And the things they
have brought back!
We spent
a morning in one of
their museums and it was
pack packed with jewels,
flurniture,
fur carpets,
swords,
clothing,
even

---

172
tombs
from alII
the
countries
they have
been.
From AFrica
they have thousands of
vases,
Jars,
masks,
bowls,
baskets,
statues--and they are all
so beautiful it is hard to imagine that the people
who made them don't still exist.
And yet the Eng-
lish assure
us they
do not.
Although Africans
once had
a better civilization than
the European
(though of
course even do
not say this:
I get
this from reading a man named J.
A.
Rogers)
for
several centuries they have
fallen on hard times.
"Hard times" is a phrase
the English love to use,
when speaking of Africa.
And it is easy to forget
that
Africa's "hard
times" were
made harder
by
them.
MIllions and millions of Africans were cap-
tured and
sold into slavery--you and
me,
Celie!
(p.129)
The rhetoric
Nettie engages in
here aims to
remind Blacks
that they have a past they
can derive pride form.
In this
other instance
of focalization through Nettie,
the author
cites some
of the
sources she is
basing her
analysis on.
The treatment of
the evidence in the context
of the letter
contributes a lot
toward the delinea.tion of
the background
against which the African characters will be viewed later on
by Nettie.
In her evaluation of the socio-economic and po-
1 i tic a 1 s ha pe i n wh i c h Af r i c a cur re nt 1 Y is,
she tu r n san a.c-
.i
cusing eye to
the white people as well.
Not
many of them
,
see a connection between the poor performance of present-day
Africa on the stage of world affairs on the one hand and the
Slave trade,
the colonial encounter,
and their aftermath in
the Black Continent on the other.
The
series of
questions that
Nettie eventually
writes
down--why did they
sell us?
How could they
have done it?

---

173
And why do we still love them?-- are elucidated and,
in some
!
c~ses,
rephrased as
she gets familiar with
African reali-
ties.
Her
first real encounter
is with
the "blueblack"
Senegalese.
They are so black,
Celie,
they shine.
Which is
something else folks
down home like to
~ay ~bout
real black folks.
But Celie,
try to
ImagIne a
city full of these shining, blueblack people wear-
ing brilliant
blue robes with designs
like fancy
quilt patterns.
Tall, thin,
with long necks and
straight backs.
Can you picture it at all, Celie?
BEcause I
felt like
I was
seeing black
for the
first time.
And Celie,
there is something magical
about it.
Because the black
is 50 black the eye
is simply dazzled,
and then
there is the shining
that seems to come really from moonlight,
it is 50
luminous,
but their skin glows even in the sun.
But I did not really
like the Senegalese I met
in
the market.
They were
concerned only
with
their sale of produce.
(p.131)
The
language of
fascination
used
by Nettie
to
describe
blackness unquestionably contrasts with the repulsive impli-
cations it is associated with in most western white fiction.
A comparison
of Alice Walker's
Africa with that
of Joseph
Conrad's in Heart
2! Darkness or that of Joyce
Cary in his
"African novels"
in general
and Hr
Johnson in
particular
gives a clear idea of the difference.
The narrator's fasci-
nation with Senegalese Blacks,
however,
is spoiled by the
latter's fascination with money.
She was preceded in Sene-
gal by capitalist ideology.
Its political manifestation in
Liberia translates into the
love-hate relationship that the
president,
William Tubman,
has with the "natives"
who he

---

174
views as a source of the problem more than anything else. By
referring by name to the man who ruled Liberia for a quarter
of a century, the author of The Color Purple adds a more re-
alistic dimension
to the background
study of the
world in
which she
intends to places
her African
characters.
The
president who
is of Afro-American
origin has
his attitude
toward his African countrymen sustained by a strategic amne-
sia that
enables him
to forget
to appoint
native African
cabinet ministers.
The fact that he has white ministers in-
stead,
clarifies
his intentions as
to whose
interests he
values most.
The irony,
though,
is that although president
~ubman and his
Afro-American friends--none
of whose
"
wives could pass for natives"
(p.132)--seem to have acquired
the feeling
of belonging
with the
Whites,
all
the cocoa
'fields across
the country are owned
by "people in
a place
called Holland."
Th~ Africans that
Nettie meets in Olinka-
'land (p.132)
are therefore people
alienated from their own
lands; outsiders in their own country.
The first man the author allows into the picture from the
,village
the missionaries
are supposed
to settle
in is
a
christian Olinka, a combination of Africa and Europe.
"His
.:christian name is Joseph.
He is short and fat,
with hands
that seem not to
have any bone in them.
When
he shook my
'hand it felt like something soft
and damp was falling and I
,almot
caught it."
(p.13B)
This hopelessly soft portion of
Africa with a European name tag on
it becomes the buffer be-

---

175
tween the newcomers
and the muscular
deep
chocolate brown
boatmen who,
just like the
blueblack Senegalese traders in
Dakar,
"paid very little attention to us ... "
(p.139).
1.1-
ice
Walker's
rhetoric
of missed
brotherhood
once
again
points to a
lack of spontaneity on the part
of the natives
especially the men.
But once again what prevails very soon
is black women's community of
spirit:
the first woman who
eventually talks
to them wants
to know who
the children's
mother is.
In her opinion,
they both look like Nettie.
The narrator's depiction of Olinka men heavily depends on
her perception of
Olinka women.
Having posited
that "The
Olinka do not believe girls should be educated ," because "a
girl is nothing to herself,"
(p.144)
the narrator moves on
to describe
women with a
vision,
i.e.
mothers dragging
their sons to the missionary school.
Even young Olivia par-
takes of the
women's vision when she
proclaims that Olinka
men are
"like white people at
home who don't
want colored
people to
learn!!" (p.145)
Since
Alice Walker
constantly
compares whatever
Nettie experiences in Olinkalandto what
happens back
in the United
States,
Olinka
men eventually
look like
their American brothers
in that they
don't know
that "the world is changing," that
"it is no longer a world
just for boys and men."
(p.14B).
How short-sighted and so-
cially maladjusted Olinka men are is dramatized in a conver-
sation between Nettie and Tashi's father,
who does not want
Tashi educated in the western ways.

---

176
Our women are respected here, said the father.
We
would never let
them tramp the world
as American
women do.
There
is always someone to· look after
the OLinka woman.
A father.
An uncle.
A brother
or nephew.
Do not be offended, Sister NEttie, but
our people
pity women
such as
you who
are cast
out,
we know not
from where,
int a world unknown
to you,
where
you must struggle all
alone,
for
yourslelE .
So
I am
an object
of pity
and contempt,
I
thought,
to men and women alike.
Furthermore,
said Tashi's father,
we are not
simpletons.
We understand that
there are places
in the world where women live differently from the
way our women
do,
but we do not
approve of this
different way for our childrenn.
But life is changing,
even in Olinka,
I said.
We are here.
He spat on the ground.
What are you?
Three
grownups and
two children.
In the
rainy season
some of you will probably die.
YOu people do not
last long in our climate.
If you do not die, you
will be weakened by illness.
Oh,
yes.
we have
seen it all before.
You Christians come here,
try
hard to change
us,
get sick and go
back to Eng-
land, or wherever you come from.
Only the trader
on the coast remains,
and even he is not the same
white man, year in and year out.
We know because
we send him women.
(p.149)
This
conversation recalls
another one
1n America
between
Fonso and Mr __ when they discussed Celie's marriage.
Events
leading to Olinka women's life and
death also have only men
behind them.
Alice Walker sees black American and black Af-
rican men
in the same light.
She uses Tashi's
father to
promote a myth
of the Olinka woman as a
person not allowed
to express
herself as an
individual.
Although
the man's
straightforward English
clearly lacks the elements
of oral

---

177
tradition so
common In
African fiction
by native
African
writers,
the author has managed to convey a powerful message
in which Tashi's
father engages in drawing
a psychological
picture of himself which brings h~m, once again,
very close
to his American
brothers.
No wonder Nettie
observes that
"There is a way that men speak
to women that reminds me too
much of Pa.
They listen just long enough to issue instruc-
tions" (p.149).
The death of Tashi's father,
In vIew of his stand on wo-
men's place and role in Olinka society,
appears as a device
used by the
author to remove a major
obstacle from Tashi's
~ay to self-fullfilment as defined by the narrator.
In her
prescription, Nettie rules out,
among other practices,
po-
lygamy because,
for
o~e thing it takes romance
out of the
women's
lives and
for
another it
turns
Olinka men
into
childish adults
(p.153).
The author's decision
to change
this scheme of things brings in
Samuel.
She thinks it his
"duty as a
Christian minister to preach
the bible's direc-
tive of one husband and one wife"(p.1531.
This naive way of
trying to
use the
bible for
feminist purposes
within the
community overlooks the fact that the
bible itself is but a
'collection of contradictory
statements that can be
used by
different people to different ends.
All it takes is to gen-
erate
the
right
kind of
rhetoric
that
validates
one's
claims.
Samuel's skepticism about the mission being imposed
'on him by Nettie reflects his own inner doubt.
He "is con-

---

178
fused because to him,
since the
women are friends and will
do anything for
one another -- not always,
but more often
than anyone from America would expect -- and since they gig-
gle and gossip
and nurse each other's
children,
then they
must be happy with things as they are."
Ip.lS3) Clearly, Al-
ice Walker is having Samuel's
conception of happiness among
Olinka women read like insensitiveness
to the plight of Af-
rican women as the narrator sees it.
Samuel's point,
how-
ever,
is all the more
understandable as,
back in America,
Mr
has
been in
a monogamous
marriage for
years without
ever having
Celie experience anything
close to
the Olinka
type of happiness.
Romance, Samuel seems to imply,
is not
love.
It is just a way of expressing it that happens to be
very popular in the Western world.
His conception also re-
'iterates his position as an outsider who does not want to be
a vector of change in every
aspect of Olinka life.
Never-
theless,
the author sends him on a civilizing mission among
Olinka men.
Elaborating
on the author's idea
that men in
Olinkaland are often childish Netty writes:
And a grown child is a dangerous thing, especially
since among the Olinka,
the
husband has life and
death power over the wife.
If he accuses one of
his wives of witchcraft or infidelity,
she can be
killed.
Thank God land sometimes Samuel's intervention)
this
has
not
happened
since
we
have
been
here.(p.lS3)

---

179
Olinka men as Alice Walker
sees them are backward,
selfish
phallocrats committed,
just like their black American broth-
ers, to keeping down nice,
innocent Olinka women--a replica
of the author's black American
women.
In The Color Purple
Samuel goes t6 Africa. among other things,
to "humanize" his
brothers in the
same way black American women
have the re-
sponsibility of humanizing Afro-American men.
In so doing,
he teaches a philosophy of
action that brings into question
the role played by men in traditional Olinkaland.
But Samu-
el is not the
only one who is out to
humanize in The Color
Purple.
Shug and Mr
's wife
evidently join forces to hu-
manize Mr
and so do Celie
and Harpo's wife,
Harpo.
The
'image of a helpless Harpo crying
because his wife Sofia has
deserted him
on account
of the ill
treatment he
has been
giving her (p.65)
1S
an indication of the necessity for him
to be
educated as to how
a husband should treat
his wife.
Celie,
at first,
turned to
Sh~g for emotional comfort be-
cause of Mr
's
inability to connect with
her--both senti-
mentally and ,psychologically.
In
either case,
the author
has the men eventually face the pettiness of their own lives
by confronting them with
the belated psychological maturity
of the women in their existence.
If Fonso is not Celie's father,
Adam is still their son.
The new situation simply changes Fonso's status from "inces-
tuous father"
to "polygamous
husband".
The
character of
Adam is portrayed by Alice Walker
as the one black American

---

180
man who
eventually does what
the Liberian men
of American
descent will not do:
marry a
native African woman.
In so
doing he plays a determining role
in the engineering of Ta-
shi's voluntary exile
in America.
The author
uses him to
complete the
last leg of
a "triangular" journey
which re-
minds the reader of the
"triangular trade" era.
Only this
time,
the "captive" is made to perceive the whole experience
as a migration of the heart.
Most of Alice Walker's black
men as are portrayed in The Color Purple operate under limi-
tation of
information and vision,
especially
when dealing
with women.
In the light of the above,
their lives as so-
cially maladjusted
individuals fully
make sense.
At the
same time
their existence seems
written against
the back-
ground of an unclear message of optimism that once they know
'any better,
they
will move onto higher
planes.
In Alice
'Walker's novels to date,
the author's project has constantly
been to have her black women overcome (male) adversity,
In
the world of her fiction,
men exhibit a limited vision which
almost always
prevents them
from seeing
beyond their
own
petty,
present interests.
Unlike Toni Morrison whose fic-
'tion allows room for
individual expression,
Alice Walker in
her description of
black males has a
Manichean perspective
which makes most of her characters carry invariably the bur-
den of gender.

---

181

---

Chapter III
BLACK M~N IN TH~ FICTION OF TONI CAD~ BAMBARA
Toni Cade Bambara's
creative work reads like
a very so-
phisticated
attempt to
level out
most
of the
imbalances
spotted by both Toni Morrison and
~lice Walker in the black
communities of their various novels.
BoyBoy, Macon Dead and
Son are
just three
faces of
the psychologically
crippled
black man depicted
by Toni Morrison in
her fiction.
This
black man has evolved into a socially maladjusted monster to
be educated by dedicated women like Mem, Meridian, Lynne and
Celie in Alice Walker's novels.
The way Alice Walker rou-
tinely shapes her
women clearly makes inevitable
her black
male· characters'
dependence--on these women--for
any posi-
tive attitude towards life.
This tendency to idealize black
women takes different forms in the fiction of most black wo-
men novelists, which is why Ishmael Reed,
a black male nov-
elist and
literary critic,
ironically observes
that black
women novelists fill their books
with "ghetto women who can
'do no wrong."'l
•• John Domini,
"Roots and racism: an interview with Ishmael
Reed", Boston Phoenix,
5 April 1977, p.20
- 182 -

---

I
I
183
,
Bambara's black
men are ordinary
people caught up
in a
network of
political choices and
moral ideals
informed by
the author's
ideological declaration
of intent
that makes
the black community's survival as a united whole,
a duty of
the highest importance.
As a writer of fiction,
Toni Cade
Bambara engages in promoting a strategy that purports to es-
tablish the necessity for the artist
to be a fighter.
The
role she assigns the creative
writer is unconditionally po-
litical, especially when scrutinized in the light of her own
commitment.
Through writing I attempt
to celebrate the tradi-
tion of
resistance,
attempt to tap
Black poten-
tial,
and try
to join the chorus
of voices that
argues that
exploitation and
misery are
neither
inevitable nor necessary.
writing
is one of the
ways I
practice the commitment to
explore bodies
of knowledge for the usable wisdoms they yield."
Her desire to
channel the energies of Blacks
along new av-
enues likely
to lead to
the dismantling of
the prevailing
political order constitutes
what she refers to
as the mes-
sage.
As
a self-proclaimed "brazenly
'message'
writer""
she
points
to
the "healing
possibilities"
available
to
Blacks
by bringing
together their
spiritual strength
and
their political
awareness.
She operates from
the premise
that even
in literature,
"(t)he
'experts' are
still men,
"
Toni Cade Bambara:
"What I
think I'm Doing Anyhow",
in
Janet Sternburg, ed.,
The Writer on Her Work,
New York,
W.W.Norton & Co., 1980,-rp.154)
.. ibid.
(p.16l)

---

184
Black or White.
And the images
of the woman are still de-
rived from their needs,
their fantasies,
their second-hand
knowledge •.. ""
To try to set the
record straight is to en-
gage in
reconstructing black
identity.
Redefining
black
identity means,
to Toni Cade Bambara,
projecting a feminist
perception of women
in their interaction with
both men and
fellow women and she is fully aware of the importance of the
task to be
performed:
"The job of
purging is staggering.
It perhaps takes less heart to pick
up the gun than to face
the task of creating a new identity, a self,
perhaps an an-
drogynous self, via commitment to the struggle.""
Although the
gender politics of Morrison,
Walker,
and
Bambara rest,
in essence,
on
the same ideological founda-
tion,
each of these writers is original in her depiction of
the black community and the role played by men in it.
Like
Toni Morrison's, Toni Cade Bambara's fiction posits that the
black man's aspirations
in the context of
American society
cannot materialise until he decides to acknowledge the black
woman's contribution
towards their common
future.
Unlike
Morrison, however,
Bambara does not,
as a rule,
set up her
female characters to trap their men
in an attempt to estab-
lish female visibility.
Like Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bamba-
ra writes
against a psychology
of blackness
that stresses
the common destiny underneath the various individual choices
"
In The Black Woman, Toni Cade Bambara, ed.
(p.9)
"
ibid.
(p.103)

---

185
made by each member of
the black community;
unlike Walker,
Bambara does
not allow the
individual choices to
work ir-
remediably against the cohesion of the community.
In "The
Hammer Man " ,'1
the narrator
depicts Manny
the
"hammer man" as one who does
not waste time verbalising his
feelings.
No wonder
" ..• after I called him
what I called
him and
said a few choice
things about his
mother ... "
he
does not
say anything.
Only
" ... his face did
go through
some piercing c~anges."(p.
35)
Manny appears as a focused
individual who
quickly decides what
to do
when confronted
In the case
of the narrator's
q with
. ,
a specific
situation.
name calling,
Manny's
decision is to strike
back --not by
,insulting back--and the fact that the message of his project
is relayed by the narrator's father is indicative of Manny's
audacity.
Althoug~ the author does not involve directly the
narrator's father
in the
fight that
the narrator
started
'witho~t meaning to,
she manages to convey a
sense of what
'she assumes the men's duty is:
My father got in on
it too,
cause he happened
to ask Manny
one night why he was
sitting on the
stoop like that every night.
Manny told him right
off that he
was going to kill me
first chance he
1.':
got.
Quite naturally this made my father a little
warm,
.me being his only
daughter and planning to
become a
doctor and take care
of him in
his old
age.
So he had a few words with Manny first, and
then he
got hold of
the older brother,
who was
more his size.
Bernard didn't
see how any of it
was his business
or my father's business,
so my
., In Gorilla, ~ Love (pp.
33-43)

---

186
father got mad and jammed
Bernard's head into the
mailbox.
Then my father started getting messages
from Bernard's uncle about where to meet him for a
showdown and all.
My father didn't say a word to
my mother all this time ... (p.37)
At first,
the world depicted here by the author looks total-
ly like a man's world.
Fathers, uncles, nephews,
sons and
brothers are
the custodians
of an
unvoiced order
that is
supposed to prevail at all cost.
They are in charge of all
the action and they dutifully perform it to their own satis-
faction.
AS a result,
the women appear as mere on-lookers.
The female narrator, however, presents herself as one who is
determined to break
into this male-dominated world.
As a
self- appointed potential protector of her father
in his old
age,
she indirectly points to an assumed resignation of her
brothers.
This assumed
resignation later on turns
into a
symbolic reality acted
out by Manny on
a basketball court.
It is interesting
to note that the snow-ball
effect of the
fight
initiated by the narrator brings together only men ea-
ger to show each other what
they are up to.
Bernard,
who
prefers to let individuals take
r.are of their own problems,
eventually sounds
out of
place in
the picture
because he
fails to abide by the rule
that whatever concerns the indi-
~idual must concern
the male members of
the community:
to
fight one's
child's fight is
to acknowledge one's
role in
the community.
The same perspective prevails when the nar-
rator and Manny are harrassed by
the police on a basketball
court late one night.
When one
of the two white policemen

---

187
refers to Nanny as "black
boy".
the black woman's reaction
sets the tone for the rest of the story:
"Now, when somebody
says that word like that,
I gets warm.
And crazy or no cra-
zy,
Nanny was my brother at that moment and the cop was the
enemy.n(p.40)
The narrator's determination to establish to
the fullest the manhood being denied the Hammer Nan comes as
no surprise.
Her willingness to be part of the men's world
is given
a chance
to materialise.
Manny's readiness
to
stand on his own feet as
a "man" inside the black community
contrasts with his resignation when faced with the white po-
licemen.
The series of events
that lead to the narrator's
above
mentioned
ideological
pronouncement
establish
the
black woman as the one who
keeps the spirit of the struggle
alive as opposed to the black man who appears to be very ef-
ficient only when it comes to taking punctual actions.
Man-
ny.
the over-focusedbasket ball player just hangs around and
lets his "sister" fight his fight in his stead.
She acts up
~o his uneKpressed eKpectation
by systematically taking all
the questions
put by the policemen
to both of
them.
The
narrator plays
her role so
well she
eventually transforms
talking into
the only appropriate action
worth undertaking
under the prevailing circumstances.
The irony of the situ-
ation lies in
the fact that Nanny's silence
tends to "con-
firm" the policemen's conviction that the couple got seKual-
ly involved in the park,
whereas
the true story as told by
the narrator sounds like an effort on her part to camouflage

---

188
what the policemen take to be
the self evident truth.
The
reader's sense
of what the
character of Manny
is actually
about is informed by the narrator's determination to not al-
low the "system" to jeopardize his future:
"'You better give
him back his ball,'
I said."
The role of passive on-lookers
assigned to black women by black men as suggested earlier on
by the
author,
is squarely ignored
by a black
woman who,
ironically enough,
feels more comfortable
challenging the
two white men
more than the black man
does.
"Manny don't
take no mess from no cops.
He ain't bothering nobody.
He's
gonna be Mister Basketball when he grows up.
Just trying to
get
a
little
practice
ln
before
the
softball
season
starts."lp. 40) The rhetoric of black brotherhood permeating
'the whole story is eventually represented in the shape of an
unconditional gift from the black woman
to the black man in
front of
outside adversity.
Manny's girlfriend
knows the
inside story of his past and present
as much as that of his
dream for the future.
In brief,
he can "tell" his future
image, which makes her,
if temporarily,
his "creator."
Al-
though the
two law
enforcement agents
ignore the
woman's
statement,
Manny's silence indirectly makes it the only al-
ternative "image" they
have of him that is
not grounded in
their own prejudice.
Prior to the expression by the narra-
tor of this emotional bond,
Manny was seen exclusively in-
side the black community.
There he was aggressive, articu-
late in his own way,
and more action-oriented than anything

---

189
else.
And one way he tries to
convey a sense of his being
is by planning on teaching a
black woman a lesson.
Inside
the black community, he deserves the name "Hammer Man",
.es-
pecially when one
looks at him from the
perspective of the
people
he can
easily
beat
up.
Outside
the
community,
though,
he is psychologically
handicapped by forces beyond
~ . ,-
his control.
His initiation
into manhood--by the stand~rd
of American society as a whole--includes among other phases,
a close contact with the
world outside the black community.
The path is
less difficult to travel if he
makes the bl~~k
woman his journey companion.
Even
though he gets arr~s~~d
by the
police,
the
reader understands
that Manny
is not
alone.
The same sense of
belonging that Manny is supposed
to experience
is much more
emphatically articulated
in "A
Tender Man", another story by Toni Cade Bambara.
"A Tender Man""
IS
the story
of Cliff--a black man once
married to a white woman named Donna.
Rhea.
their daughter,
was born while
he was fighting in Cuba as
an American sol-
dier.
Cliff,
now a divorced sociology instructor,
is at-
tracted to Aisha,
a black woman who is more than determined
to take Rhea from her white mother
and raise her as a black
child .
••
In The Sea Birds Are Still Alive, pp.12S-1S1

---

. 190
Thematically the story partly reminds
one of Alice Waik-
.
"
er's Meridian.
Just
like Truman,
the character
of Cli~f
... ' ,'.
eventually disapproves of his own
choice of partner.
How-
ever,
unlike Alice Walker who
astutely uses Camara's death
as a device to free Truman from his married past,
Toni Cade
Bambara keeps
Rhea alive and
focuses on the
necessiti:for
the father to prove responsible enough to help raise the mu-
latto girl.
The psychological portrait of Cliff
as a would-be father
shows that the
character is not sure
what his relatio~ship
with his daughter will be
like.
The narrator even implies
".:".., ... ,
t ha t
Cl i ff ,
on the
ship carrying him to a war
he does not
.: ' . .~ .
think he can survive, has taken all appropriate disposit~ons
"He had pronouced
the marriage ~ull and void
in the spring
of
'61.
On the troop ship speeding to who knew where,or at
least none of the dudes in
that battalion knew yet,
bUi to
. ~.,
die most
probably."(p.138)
For
the character
as he
now
stands,
if he still has a future at all,
there is no place
in it for a child.
Cliff is simply avoiding what Michael G.
Cooke calls "intimacy," which takes in Afro-American litera-
ture "the form
of reaching,
or being invited,
out of the
self and
into an
unguarded and
uncircumscribed engagement
with the world.""
From her father's perspective, ther~fore,
Rhea at one point is an
unwanted child,
which is why Cliff
6 .
Michael G. Cooke, Afro-American Literature in the Twenti-
eth Century, New Haven,
Yale University Press,-r984, p.9.

---

191
" ... read the
letter over and
over and was
convinced Donna
was lying about
being pregnant and so
far advanced"(p.138)
Not only IS he
limited in his movements as a
result of his
presence on a ship but he
is also psychologically held hos-
tage by
a past he cannot
run away from.
Even
his future
looks mortgaged:
Cliff had collapsed on his
bunker,
back pack and
all,
the letter crumpling under his ear.
A child
was being born soon,
the letter said.
He was go-
ing to be a father.
And
if he died,
what would
happen to
his child?
His
marriage had
been in
shreds before he'd left,
a
mere patchwork job on
the last leave,
and she'd been talking
of going
home.
His
child.
Her
parents.
That
world.
Those people.(pp.139-40)
The story of Rhea's unplanned beginnings is told by the nar-
rator as
a flashback
destined to shed
some more
light on
'Cliff's current inner conflict.
She is now standing on the
borderline between
a territory she
is familiar
with,
and
"that world."
She
is the unavoidable link
between him and
himself and
"those people."
Bambara makes
Cliff perceive
his own child as a combination of two conflicting r~alities.
The point is made in many
subtle ways that the character
of Cliff is
very anxious to be accepted by
Aisha the black
woman he now wants to get involved with.
Fear of rejection,
consequently,
makes
him feel
judged or
evaluated whenever
interracial relationships are discussed.
"He had enough_of
the white girl-brother thing.
Had been sick of it all,
of
hearing,
reading about it, of arguing, of defending himself,

---

192
even back
then on the tail
end of the Bohemian
era,
much
less in the Black and Proud times since."(p.140)
Throughout
the crucial conversation he has with Aisha in the restaurant
Cliff behaves up to the narrator's idea
of him as it is ex-
pressed in the foregoing statement.
He wants to live in the
present as a self detached from the Cliff of the past, which
is one reason
he keeps on specifying that Donna
is his ex-
wife.
The unreliable
narrator soon makes the
black woman
locate what looks like a mask on the black man's face.
"Cliff?" She seemed to call to him,
the him be-
hind his"poker face.
He leaned forward.
Whatever
she had to
say,
it'd be over with
soon and they
could get
on with
the Friday
evening he
had in
mind.
"I asked Donna on Tuesday to give up the child.
To give
your daughter
to me.
I'm prepared
to
raise
11
Cliff
stared,
not
sure
he
heard
that
right.(p.140-41)
Cliff is
interested in
the here and
now whereas
Aisha_is
~tanding tall,
scru~inizing the future
and trying,
in the
process,
to help him stand up.
The irony here is that the
attitude Aisha takes indicates that
Cliff,
in her opinion,
is not mature enough to stand on his own feet.
The theme of
power-play
as introduced
by Bambara
in the
conversation,
sheds light,
once
again,
on the black
woman's confidence
that she can succeed where the black man fails.
In fact she
defines,
in her own terms,
"irresponsibility" in the black

---

193
man's behaviour.
In the narrator's presentation Aisha even-
tually decides
to take
care of
Rhea because
the latter's
white mother has been too much
looking up to her for advice
on
·black· matters.
Donna's determination
to raise
her
daughter as a black child is clearly indicative of the black
father's failure to
live up to many
people's expectations.
Viewed from this perspective,
Aisha's question to her white
colleague Donna:
·Where
is the nigger daddy
who should be
taking the weight?"(p.142)
is both an homage to Rhea's moth-
er and an indictment of Cliff, especially when the latter is
seen against the
background of his present
obsession as it
is articulated by the narrator.
Cliff changes his mind and
decides that ·she was a
type ... he didn't like ... " although
he still think that he • ... might
take her home to make love
to her--no.
to
ruck her."
The narrator's
explanation for
<all this
is that "She
kept him off
balance." (p.142)
The
fact of
the matter
is that
Bambara is
depicting a
world
<where the black man resents the
questions put to him by the
black woman because
he cannot answer t~em
without pointing
to his own limitations and,
consequently,
running the risk
of
jeopardizing his
relationship with her.
As
the author
seems to insinuate,
Cliff's treatment
of his white ex-wife
is a foretaste of whatever Aisha might have to cope with one
day as his partner.
At least,
this is the way Bambara has
'Cliff assess the
woman's inquisitive behaviour.
As
a re-
suIt,
the atmosphere keeps on changing--just like the black

---

194
man's feelings.
Cliff's conquest strategy is destroyed by a
clever Aisha who,
in so
doing,
clearly indicates that her
priority of
the moment
is black
parents'responsibility to
their children.
Toni Ca de Bambara. here,
is simultaneously
depicting two
different types of
·intimacy·:
one
is both
moral and psychological,
the other is physical and shallow.
Aisha's commitment is the political
expression of a psycho-
logical healing process engineered by
her in view of bring-
ing home
to Cliff an
ultimate quest,
a
crucial ·message·
that the
black man has no
right to ignore:
• ... no matter
when or where
or how we met,
the
father question would've
come up ..• ·(p.142) The narrator makes Aisha's control of the
situation so total
she takes the lead
throughout the whole
story,
She refers to him indiscriminately as ·sugar·, ·mis-
ter·, or ·brother" depending on her mood.
She can afford to
be ironical,
formal,
or shockingly straightforward if she so
wishes.
As a result,
the discourse she has been producing
goes far
beyond the mere
~erbal representation
of Cliff's
character and
sheds different
lights on
the space
he has
created between himself and the rest of the black community.
As she sees
it,
Cliff's initiation into
manhood implies a
'journey back home.
From his perspective,
though,
Aisha's
evaluation of
him is totally
wrong.
"He wasn't
sure for
What,
but
he felt he was
being unjustly blamed
for some-
thing.·(pp.143-4)
The narrator has
constantly placed Aisha
'and Cliff on two different
planes with Aisha always playing

---

195
the finer role.
The man's
unawareness of these two levels
of discourse results
in his poor timing as far
as his move
on Aisha goes,
Their priorities of the moment are basically
different and since most of the talking has been done by the
woman,
the man takes it for
granted that he knows the type
of person his interlocutor is.
with this in mind,
the nar-
rator has him
mentally jump to a
most important conclusion
about her:
She
wasn't goirig
to sleep
with
him,
that
was
clear.
He knew from past experiences that the mo-
ment had passed,
that
moment when women resolved
the tension by deciding yes
they would,
then re-
laxed one way,
or no they wouldn't, and eased into
another rhythm.(p.144)
.But his past knowledge of women is proven wrong when applied
,
to Aisha.
In light of the foregoing,
Keith E.Byerman's ob-
servation is right:
Toni Cade Bambara " .. . tends
to leave
her characters
at the
edge of
some new
experience rather
than with a sense of the completion of action ... ""
r,
Toni
Cade Bambara
ha~ often
insisted
that she
values
whatever brings Blacks together over
what divides them.
In
"A Tender Man" poor timing has made Cliff perceive the black
woman as a bossy, exceedingly aggressive person who wants to
teach the black man how to behave properly.
Fortunately, he
is
rescued from
his misperception
by Aisha
as the
story
[draws to an end.
The truth of the matter is that both char-
""
,. Fingering the Jagged Grain,
(p.105)

---

196
acters are attracted to each other.
The only difference is
the woman's
strong desire to
have their
relationship sus-
tained by a
deep sense of responsibility
and self-respect.
As can be seen in this story,
the black woman has a crucial
role to
play in
the black
man's initiation
into manhood.
Aisha is more than a nurse; she is a healer.
The same
role is played in
a more sophisticated
way by
Vel ta,
Ruby
and other very
observant black women
in Toni
Cade Bambara's only novel."
The
sophisticated style of the
author of The
Salt Eaters and the complex
structure of the
novel are combined
to shed a variety of lights
on the cru-
cial contributions of
black women toward a
redefinition of
black manhood.
The survival of
the black community
as a
cultural entity capable of generating a political force,
is
the obsession of most of the female characters.
.
Ruby's as-
"
sessment of the the lack of cohesion in the community comes,
therefore, as no surprise:
"'1
dunno.
Malcolm gone, King
gone, Fanni Lou gone, Angela quiet,
the movement splintered,
enclaves unconnected.
Everybody off into the Maharaji This
and the Right Reverend That.
If
it isn't some far-off re-
'iigious nuttery;'
it is
some otherworldly stuff ... '"(p.193)
The atomization and the chaos
described by Toni Cade Bamba-
ra--here from the
point of view of a
committed black woman
who scrutinizes the black community as a whole--are what the
,~' The Salt Eaters.
(New York: Vintage Books), 1981.
All
subsequent quotations are taken from this edition.

---

197
novel seeks to replicate.
Paradoxically enough,
the lack of
cohesion does not result in
confusion.
Not on the women's
side of the gender gap, anyway.
" ... let's face it"
(Ruby)
said from under the ta-
ble,
"Women for Action is
taking on entirely too
much:
drugs, prisons, alcohol,
the schools,
rape,
battered women, abused children.
And now Velma's
talked the
group into tackling the
nuclear power
issue.
And the Brotherhood ain't doing shit about
organizing."
Ip.19B)
The long
list of what
women have
been doing and
the con-
trasting passivity
of black
men are
portrayed as
the two
sides of the same coin.
In
the process of describing this
dichotomy,
Toni
Cade Bambara
clearly indicates
that,
at
times,
knowledge.n
view of internal growth
may well flow
from black women towards black men.
No wonder the reader is
informed
that black
men's
inaction
affects bl.8Ck
women's
very existence.
As Ruby
puts it:
'" (b)ecause men
jive
around with each other instead of dealing for real and later
for all the beating-on-the-chest raw
gorilla shit,
all the
unresolved stuff slops over
into man/woman relationships.'"
(p.199)
Against this background of female
skepticism as to men's
willingness
to
address
the major
issues
facing
(black)
American society James
Lee Henry,
called Obie,
and a few
other black males are portrayed by Toni Cade Bambara.
Velma
expects her husband James to commit
himself to the cause of
. the community on the one hand and
on the other hand to make

---

198
himself available to her whenever she needs him.
AS far as
his commitment to her goes,
she
is not fully satisfied and
although the dramatization of this state of affair is set in
a restaurant,
it
directly focuses on the
couple's private
life.
Against the background of a heart-felt nostalgia the
author opens a window onto a world where the sweet responses
provoked in James back in the
past by Velma's very presence
are now
mere memories contrasting
with the reality
of her
present life.
Thus,
although she
has on "(t)he
kind of
blouse that years
ago sne would have worn to
put James Lee
Henry, called Obie now,
under her spell,"
she must live with
i
t~e internal certainty that "(hIe
no longer thought she was
a prize
to win."(p.201
During the
confrontation between
~usband and wife the images
projected of the two characters
'and the
various symbols sustaining
them tell the
story of
James's internal
change.
The author suggests
that Velma,
who once attempted suicide,
now tries to "withdraw the self
'to a safe place where husband,
lover,
teacher,
workers,
no
one CGuld follow,
probe.
Withdraw I,er
self and prop up a
'Sorderguard
to
negotiate
with
would-be
intruders."(p.51
Obie is aware that his wife almost killed herself because of
., ,
~he pressure resulting from the redeeming role she wanted to
play in all these people's lives.
And yet,
the author's in-
tention
seenlS
to
ttll"ll
llill1
i111:0
nil
irltrtlde,".
A hRr~ one to
'~egotiate with:
James Lee had begun moving the dishes aside,
dis-
rupting her meal.
Her salad bowl no longer under
~ . ,

---

199
her right wrist where she
could get at
it between
chunks
of steak
and
mouthfuls
of potatoes
but
shoved
up against,
the wall
next
to the
napkin
rack.
Her sweet potato pie totally out of reach.
And now he
moved her teacup toward
the hot sauce
bottle.
He was interrupting her story,
breaking
right in just as she was
about to get to the good
part,
to tell
her to put her fork
down and lis-
ten. (p.21)
The active search,
on James's part,
for a friction between
himself and Velma manifests itself
in the double attempt to
symbolically starve her
on the one hand and
to prevent her
from talking,
on the other.
But the dislocation by him of
the precarious order prevailing in her Inner universe IS not
, -~
an end in
itself.
I t
is,
instead,
a way
of testing the
foundation upon which
that universe rests.
Not
only does
the author allOW James In
this private universe of Velma's,
but in addition,
he applies more pressure on her
as if to
push her against the wall:
IIHe was making an appeal,
a
rec-
onciliation of some sort,
conditions,
limits,
an agenda,
Something about emotional caring
or daring or shar-
ing ... ·(pp.21-22)
The psychological profile of the charac-
ter is more concretely depicted as he engages in a conversa-
fion with his wife:
"We're different people, James. Obie.
Somebody
shit all over you,
you
forgive and forget.
You
start talking about how we're
all damaged and co-
lonialism
and
the
underdeveloped
blah
blah.
That's why everybody walks all over you."
You're the
only one to
ever try to
walk over
me,
Vee."

---

200
"That's why
I
just
can't stay
with you.
I
don't respect--"
"That's not why, Vee.
"What?"
"Scared.
Any time you're not
in absolute con-
trol,
you panic."
"Scared?"
She chewed with her
mouth open,
certain the sight would make him shut
up or at least turn away.
"Shit.
Scared of you?
Sheeeeet.
Obie."
"Intimacy.
Love.
Taking a chance when the is-
sue of control just isn't--"(p.23)
By allowing Obie to know how
Velma feels without her having
to tell him,
the author equips the character with the means
he needs to
improve his performance as a
husband.
Had an
argument
of this
nature taken
place
between Pauline
and
Cholly Breedlove in Toni Morrison's The Bluest ~,
it would
h~ve changed the
couple's life:
for better
that is.
The
fact of
the matter is that
Morrison and Bambara,
a t
some
point,
have confronted both
husbands with situations which
are similar in the sense that
each situation results from a
power struggle between both spouses.
But while Morrison al-
lows the disintegration of
a man reduced to a toy
by a ma-
nipulating wife,
Bambara makes Obie aware of his wife's de-
structive project,
which enables
him to short-circuit her.
This foreknowledge of what Velma is about does not,
however,
turn Obie into an oppressive,
inconsiderate husband willing
to
strike
back.
Misusing this
information
would
have
·~rought him very close to Alice Walker's Brownfield Copeland
ln The
Third Life of Grange
Copeland or Mr
in
The Color

---

201
Purple.
Instead,
sharing this information with
his wife
brings him closer to her.
Despite the strict
order around which it
IS
structured,
Velma's inner self is not the
only world that needs protec-
tion from intruders.
Like Obie,
Dr Meadows is represented
by Bambara as an intruder.
Only
in his case the structure
he risks disrupting does not
refer to one individual.
In-
stead,
Dr Meadows is portrayed as a threat to the inner or-
ganisation that sustains aspects of black identity and black
people's self-apprehension.
He IS a
lonely man who stands
in a category almost by himself.
When the author describes
him on his way to the
Infirmary one evening,
the character
"found himself daydreaming on a
family he'd never had."
He
seems forced
by circumstances
to make
up "things
to keep
himself company."lp.
176)
This may well explain why he has
given his life a meaning only
through his commitment to the
"black community.
Dr Meadows' commitment
is all
the more
meaningful as he is light enough
in complexion to pass as a
White.
As a matter of fact,
his
nose seems to be the one
"remaining "black" feature that he
still has.
The narrator
ironically laments
the fact
that
years
of dutiful
nose-
"pinching carefully monitored by Dr Meadows' mother failed to
m~ke him ~ C~ucnGi~n.
Dr Me~dow~ ~c)rlsciOllS
rcjoct:iorl
of
)lis
mother's
choice is
not
undertaken
without the
awareness
that,
racially,
whatever he feels he is may not be obvious
to everybody.
His situation
becomes understandably
more
precarious when he goes to places where he is not known:

---

202
Meadows would have preEerred a
walk in the woods.
Stumbling about aimlessly amidst
trees and squir-
rels on the
hunt for the essential
selves of the
patient and the healer would
not have been nearly
so alarming as fumbling along the pavement, cross-
ing streets for no reason, attracting attention to
his Eoreignness,
attracting danger.
To walk in
the woods, one needed a gun,
just a prop to guise
the meandering.
In these unknown
streets,
who
knew what he needed?
The various people he is made
to interact with in these un-
known streets see almost everything in black and white.
As
a result,
they turn his life into D perpetual dilemma.
The
author repeatedly
uses flashbacks
and flashEowards
to ac-
count Eor the character's current
state of mind.
11 mult i-
tude of mental
images and old memories mingle in his mind in
an attempt
to help bridge
the gaps between
Meadows'
past,
his present,
and his future.
While he remains confronted
with the ordeal of living
with an appearence reflecting an-
other reality than the one he feels deep inside him, Meadows
scrutinizes Claybourne.
Unlike Meadows,
the town "hadn't
settle on its identity yet ... Its history puts it neither on
this or that side of the Mason Dixon"(p.
181) .
Depending,
therefore,
on where one is in
Claybourne,
one could be on
one side or the other of the Mason Dixon line.
The section
of the town
where most of the
action is set is
"where the
poorer people lived"(p.
181).
While the author's descrip-
tion of this neighborhood (pp.
181-2)
recalls to memory the
"people as
'well as the places
Macon Dead 11 in
Toni Morri-
son's Song of Solomon does not
want to identify with,
what

---

203
seems to attract
Dr Meadows's attention more
than anything
else is
"a dark-skinned man with
a cap yanked low
over an
unruly bush ... "
This man,
whom Dr Meadows is quick to type
"Welfare Man," is
posited as a contrasting
entity destined
to point to the fact that
Dr Meadows's blackness needs some
extra rhetoric to make it
fully valid and acceptable.
The
mode of representation
used by the author
1S
almost exclu-
sively the description,
from different angles, of the physi-
cal,
and human environment that Dr
Meadows is a part of in
Claybourne.
Little wonder that when eventually one conver-
sation does take place,
it carries a lot of weight.
When Dr
Meadows,
under the
spell of
his "supermarket
memories,"
tramples the dark-skinned man's feet,
he (Meadows)
is woken
up to the reality of his racial status:
"Watchit, hanky!"
"Hanky!
You mutherEuckin
dumb bastard,
don't
you know a Blood when you see one?'!
"Get the fuck
off my feet,
whatever
the fuck
you are."
Two more
men were coming
out of
the doorway.
Then a
woman with half
her hair pressed
and the
other
half raw
came
onto
the porch,
children
swarming all around her hips.
"You on
the wrong side
of town,
buddy."
(p.
185)

---

204
Or Meadows is
an invisible black man in
a black neighb-
ourhood.
He
is perceived by
"his" people as
the "other"
that
is to say,
an intruder
out to disturb the community's
peace of mind.
His blackness
cannot be acknowledged until
he demands it.
And even when he does demand it,
it is not
granted automatically:
They were studying him.
By now,
they'd know he
was not a honky.
He felt himself coming into fo-
cus for them,
like the movie stars on the lids of
Oixie Cups he'd licked long ago into being.
Com-
ing into view for
them
now,
his red gold-hair of
no less than five grades--curly in front,
stringy
in back, wavy around the ears,
slick on top,
and
downright nappy at the center.
The barbers always
went at the
nigger hair with clippers
ablaze but
couldn't bear
to clip
the curls
or shorten
the
back no matter how he instructed.
Haircuts were a
freak show.
He
licked his lips and
tried to be
patient.
Now the grain of his skin would be com-
ing into view,
like a 35 mm blowup.
He was never
more cle~r to himself than when Black people exam-
ined him this way,
suspicious.
He felt his nos-
trils flatten.
For all his mother's pinching, his
nose splayed out into his cheekbones now as if
for
the first time, as though willed. I ... )
They were
satisfied he was one of them,
he sensed.
Though
he
wasn't fool
enough to
think
being a
nigger
saved him.
Or Meadows'
reception
inside the black community
does not,
at first
sight,
agree with his
proclaimed role as
a con-
sciousness-raiser, which is why he laments the fact that his
people fail
to heed
a "teacher"
and a
"synthesizer" like
him,
·come to prepare you for
the transformation,
I ... )
to
forge the new alliances,
I ... )
to throw open the new foot-
paths •.. ·(p. 126)

---

205
That Dr Meadows always ends up being accepted in the com-
munity just as Obie--despite the
difficulties they all have
relating to the
group,
bears witness to the
power and the
healing possibilities that Toni Ca de
Bambara locates in the
political cohesion of the black community.

---

206
CONCLUSION
In this dissertation my concern has been to shed light on
some of
the many ways
the novelists Toni
Morrison,
Al ice
Walker,
and Toni Ca de Sambara
represent black men
in their
works.
In each of the three chapters I have tried,
first of
all,
to establish that all three writers,
on a very general
plane,
portray their "brothers" against the background of a
somewhat
similar ideological
project--black feminism.
I
have not,
howeve r ,
suggested
any personal
definition of
black feminism.
Instead,
I have
simply paid close atten-
tion,
on the one hand,
to some critical essays by the very
authors discussed,
and on the
other hand,
I have depended
substantially
on the
writings of
other
(black)
feminist
theorists for my understanding of the individual works.
Be-
cause
of
the
social status
of most
black American
women
since slavery, and also in light of the irony behind Barbara
Smith's concept of black women
as "double nonentities,""
I
"regard tl,em as a cultural minority of a dispossessed minori-
ty.
As a cultural entity,
they account for their life ex-
periences through the medium of their own language.
,. Barbara Smith:
"Toward a black feminist
criticism," in
Judith Newton and Deborah Rosenfelt, eds.
Feminist Crit-
icism and Social Change.
(New York:
Methuen),
1985;"""P.
6.

---

207
Toni Morrison,
Alice Walker,
and Toni Cade Bambara as I
have considered them,
belong to a tradition of black female
novelists.
Politics, economics,
race, and gender combine to
define the framework within which
black men are "construct-
ed" by
their novelist sisters.
In
all the novels
that I
have studied,
successive images of black men are revealed to
the reader through a series
of double features,
namely the
men's objectives as defined by the
authors on the one hand,
and on the other hand the psychological as well as intellec-
tual energies the authors have these men mobilise in view of
reaching the objectives thus defined.
Toni Morrison,
more often than
not,
sees each of these
,pbjectives as
the starting point
of a freely
chosen route
that black
men think
will lead
them to
self- fulfilment.
She repeatedly creates tension between
the goal and the de-
finer's self evaluation.
Cholly's marriage to Pauline, and
,their journey up north, Milkman's journey down south,
Macon
Dead II's commitment to the
acquisition of material things,
and Son's rejection
of whatever Jadine stands
for are just
,few examples
of the moments
when these tensions
are given
shape and expression.
The women
in their
lives often de-
,
fleet the course of these men's
progress or keep quiet and,
as a result of their silence,
spur their men as the latter
engage
in
courting
confusion and
chaos.
whenever
men
project their dreams
into the future,
they
tend to ignore
both the
destructive and
the constructive
capabilities of
'black women's inner force.

---

208
Alice Walker tends
exclusively to depict
in
her novels
black men who
achieve a sense of
self- accomplishment only
when they keep women "in their proper place."
Her black men
are petrified by the prospect of any relationship in which a
(black)
woman is to be perceived as an equal partner.
The
younger Grange Copeland,
Brownfield Copeland,
Truman Held,
and Mr
all experienced these
feelings or were traumatised
by similar
ones.
To avoid the
trauma,
most of
the male
characters in Alice Walker's
fictional world eventually de-
velop a coping
system sustained by a
central attitude that
basically proclaims
that the more of
a man a man
wants to
be,
the farther down he must keep a woman.
Alice Walker's
fiction thrives on the recurring irony that,
morally speak-
ing,
the men who push the
female characters into the ditch
~nd up hanging around the ditch because this is the only way
the "pushers"
can make ·sure that
the "pushed" do
not come
out of the ditch or rise into a new threat.
Even when Alice
Walker tries hard to redeem a male character already compro-
mised--as she does 1n the cases
~f the older Grange and the
older Albert--most of the
reader's original bitterness with
the "villain"
remains.
The power conflict which
openly cripples Blacks' married
lives in novels such as Toni
Morrison's The Bluest Eye,
or
.Alice Walker's The Third Life.2i Grange Copeland,
is handled
in a
more subtle way
in the
world of Toni
Cade Bambara's
stories.
Bambara insists in het fiction that black men can

---

209
play a very positive political role reconstructing the black
community--only if
they realize the
determining importance
of black women's contribution.
She envisions a future where
black male ego can keep
on asserting itself without having,
as a prerequisite,
to shut down black women.
However,
the truth of the
matter remains that Morrison,
Walker, and Bambara write primarily about black women.
The
black man, as he appears in these women's creative works is,
therefore,
just one of the various
means used by these au-
thors to drive home ti,e urgency for the black woman to start
reconstructing her shattered self.
Unfortunately,
the re-
conquest --as well as the re-affirmation--by the black woman
of her psychological integrity
and her intellectual dignity
happens
almost exclusively
during her
encounter with
the
black man in the process of giving up his socio-historically
defined old self for a new
self involved III a Jove-h'1te re-
lationship with the American Dream.
In the fiction of Toni
~orrison, Alice Walker,
and Toni Cade Bambara the black man
~ngages in a "rite of passage"
he may not complete until he
fully acknowledges, and pays all due respect to,
the think-
. I
ing presellce--in his life--of the black woman.

---

210
Selected Bibliography
Primary Sources
Morrison,
Toni.
The Bluest ~.
New York:
Wasl.ington Square Press,
1972,
1970.
Sula.
New York:
New American Library,
1982,
1973.
Song of Solomon.
New York:
New American Library,
1978,
1977.
Tar Baby.
New York:
AIEL'cd A.
Knopf,
1901.
Walker,
Alice.
The Third Life of Grange Copeland.
New York:
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1970.
Meridian.
New York:
Washington Square Press,
1977,
1976.
The Color Purple.
Washington Square Press,
1983,
1982 .
. Bambara,
Toni Cade.
Gorilla ~ Lovc.
New York:
Randoffi House,
1972.
The Sea Birds Are Still Alive.
New-York:
vintage-Books
(Random House),
1982,
1977.
The Salt Eaters.
New-York:
Vintage Books
(Random House),
1981,
1980.
Secondary Sources.
Baker, Jr.,
Houston A.
The Journey Back.
Chicago:
The University of CI.icago Press,
1980,
1983.
Blues,
Ideology,
and Afro-American Literature.

---

2Jl
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1984.
Baldwin, James.
The Price of the Ticket.
New York:
S~Martin'57Marek, 1985.
Bambara,
Toni Cade:
"What It Is I think I'm Doing Anyhow,"
In Janet Sternburg, ed.
The Writer on Her Work.
New York: W.W. Norton-and company~9~pp.153-l68.
Baraka, Amiri.
Home.
New York: Morrow,
1966.
"Afro-American Literature
and
Class Struggle,"
in
Black American Literature Forum,
vol.14,
Numberl,
Spring
1980, pp.5 14.
Barton, Rebecca Chalmers.
Black voices In American Fiction:
1900-1930.
----
Oakdale, New York: Dowling College Press, 1976.
Berghahn,
Marion Images of Africa in Black American Litera-
t ure. ,
Totowa, N.J., Rowman and Littlefield, 1977.
'B'r-uck,
Peter and Wolfgang Karrer,
eds.
The Afro-American
Novel Since 1960 .
. ,.
Amsterdam: Gruner,
1982 .
.:.
, -,
Byerman, Keith E.
Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and
Form in Recent Black Fiction.
-,,-,--.~thens and
London:
The University of
Georgia Press,
'1985.
Cade, Toni, ed,
The Black Woman: An Anthology.
,.
New York: New American Library,
1970.
'; ;.1
Christian, Barbara.
Black Women Novelists,
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1980.
Black Feminist Criticism,
New York: Pergamon,
1985.
,0;
,C,ooke, Michael G.
Arro-American Literature in the Twentieth
'Century.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984.
:Cooley, John R.
Savages and Naturals.
London and Toronto:-x5sociated University Press,
1982.
';Cruse, Harold.
The Crisis ~ the Negro Intellectual .
. ~
New York: William-Morrow and Company,
1967, 1970.
:Davis, Charles T.
Black is the Colbr of the Cosmos.
.
New York: Garland Publishing,
In~,-r982.
, ,

---

212
Dubois, W.E.B.
The Souls of Black Folk.
Greenwich, Con,: Fawcett Publications, 1903, 1961.
"
Ellison, Ralph.
Shadow and Act.
New York: Random House~964.
"Remembering Richard Wright," In Delta, Num.18, April
1984, pp.1-15.
Evans, Mari, ed.
Black Women Writers
Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books,
1984.
Ford, Nick Aaron.
Tlie Contemporary Negro Novel.
College Park, Md.: McGrath Publishing Compi1ny, 1968.
Gates, Jr., H.L.,
ed.
Black Literature and Literary Theory.
New York: Methuen,
1984.
Gayle, Jr., Addison.
Black Expression.
New York: Weybright and Talley,
1969.
'
The Way of the New World.
New York: Doubleday,
1975.
G~novese, E.D.
Roll, Jordan, Roll.
New York: Vintage Books,-r972,
1976.
Giddings,
Paula.
When and Where I Enter,
"
New York: W.MorroW;-1984.
Goldstein, R.L.,
ed.
Black Life and Culture in the United
'States.
New York: Thomas Y.Cromwell Company,
1971.
Grier, W.H. and Price Cobbs.
Black Rage.
New York:
Bantam Books,
1968, 1969.
,,",
Gross, Seymour L.
and J.E.Hardy, eds:
Images Qf the Negro
in American Literature.
"
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966.
Harris, Trudier.
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Bl06mington:
Indiana university Press, 1984.
nOn The Color Purple,
Stereotypes,
and Silence," in
"'B"l-ca'--c:--':-k-American Literature Forum,
Vo1.18,
Number 4,
Winter
;. 84, pp. 155 161.
,Hemenway, Robert ed.
The Black Novelist.
Columbus, Ohio: CHarles E. Merrill Publishing Company,
"1970.
l'r.:
~ughes,
Carl Milton.
The Negro Novelist.
,
New York: The Citadel Press, 1953.

---

213
Jones, LeRoi.
Blues People.
New York: W. Morrow and Company, 1963.
Karon, Bertram.
The Negro Personality.
New York: SprInger PUblishing Co. Inc., 1958.
Klotman,
phillis Rauch.
Another Man Gone.
Port Washington & London: Kenni~Press, 1963.
Ladner, Joyce A.
Tomorrow's Tomorrow.
New York: Anchor Booki, 1971.
Levine,
Lawrence, W.
Black Culture and Black Consciousness.
New York: Oxford University Press,1977.
Locke, Alain, ed.
The New Negro.
New York: Antheneum,
1925, 1977.
Lorde, Audre.
Sister Outsider.
Trumansburg, N.Y.: The Crossing Press Feminist Series,
1984.
'Miller, Jane.
Women Writing About Men.
New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
Miller, R. Baxter, ed.
Black American Literature and Human-
ism.
Lexington,
Ky. :
The University
Press of
Kentucky,
1981.
pgunyemi,
Chikwenye Okonjo:
·Sula:
'A Nigger Joke,'· in
Black American Literature Forum,--v01.14,
Number 4,
Winter
79.
Ostendorf, Berndt.
Black Literature in White America.
New Jersey:
Barnes and Noble Books, 1982.
i ..-
Page,
Monte M.,
ed.
Personality:
Current Theory and Re-
search.
Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Pryse, M. and Hortense J. Spillers, ed.
Conjuring.
,
Bloomington: Indiana University,
1985.
Showalter, Elaine, ed.
The New Feminist Criticism.
New York: Pantheon~985.
'", ~
Staples, Robert.
The Black Woman in America.
.
Chicago: Nelson Hall,
Publishers, 1973.
,'Starke, Catherine Juanita. Black Portraiture ln American
Fiction.
-------N-ew York: Basic Books Inc, 1971.
"

---

•
214
Singh, Amritjit.
The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance.
University Park
and Londo~
The Pennsylvania
State
University Press, 1976.
Tate, Claudia, ed.
Black Women Writers at Work.
New York: Continuum, 1983.
Trischler, Nancy M.
Black Masks,
University Park
and London:
The Pennsylvania
State
university Press, 1969.
Turner, Darwin T.
In a Minor Chord.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971.
Wade-Gayle, Gloria.
No Crystal Stair.
New York: The PTIgrim Press, 1984.
Walker, Alice.
~ Search .2! Our Mothe ~\\~\\«;'\\\\'ifdeD'\\
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovano;l~:'ch--; 1 9B'3{.,'"
Whittow, Roger.
The Darker Vision.
8~) ~~
New York: GordonPress, 1977.
;;
~;J
c...
t: I
Williams, Sherley Anne.
Give Birth to Bri-gn
e,s's':
New York: The Dial Press, 1972.
"n"'~"~
:<
Willis, Susan:
"Erupti()!);; p~,;.funk:
Historictzing Toni Mor-
rison,"
in Black American Literature Forum, Vol.
16, Number
1, Spring 1982.
l :
'
,,1
..
'"''
.' .
'"., :'
--~ ....

---