Keys-to-Part-VIII.doc

Keys to Part VIIII. Fill in the following blanks:1. myth 2. deliverance 3. oral, songs, ballads, spirituals 4. the Great Migration 5. the Harlem Renaissance 6. Native Son7. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker 8. My Bondage and My Freedom 9. Booker T. Washington 10. W. E. B. DuBois 11. the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People 12. Cane 13. Countee Cullen 14. Langston Hughes 15. Langston Hughes 16. The Wean Blues, The Ways of While Folks, Montage of a Dream Deferred 17. 60 18. Richard Wright, Fear, Right, Fate 19. Invisible Man 20. James Baldwin, The Seventh Day , The Prayers of the Saints , The Threshing Floor 21. Song of Solomon 22. epistolary 23. Roots 24. Maya Angelou, Robert Frost 25. House made of Dawn 26. Fools Crow 27. Maxine Hong Kingston, the National Books Critics Circle Award 28. China Men 29. The Joy Luck Club 30. Feathers From a Thousand Li Away, The Twenty-Six Malignant Skies, American Translation , Queen Mother of the Western SkiesII. Match the authors with their works.1. 1-c, 2-g, 3-j, 4-c, 5-i, 6-h, 7-e, 8-b, 9-a, 10-d2. 1-b, 2-c, 3-a, 4-e, 5-d3. 1-b, 2-c, 3-d, 4-1III. Analyze the following works:Work 1: Native Son Native Son is a fascinating book. It simply exploded on the sensibility of the American reading public. Dealing with one of the thorniest problems with which America had been beleaguered, the racial question, the book pushed it into the reader s mind in a manner no one had ever done before. For the African Americans the message is clear, that they are human beings and should be treated as such, and that if nothing else can help to assert their dignity and identity, then it is legitimate to resort to violence. For the whites, the message is equally clear, that the moment has arrived when they have to come to terms with their African American fellow-men, and that, if they are not ready yet, they have got to be quick or they will have to take the consequences. Bigger Thomas, the hero of the book, embodies a new type of African American personality. Rebellious by nature, he is never able to feel at peace with the world in which he finds himself. The vehement violence which breaks out of him and which eventually leads him to the electric chair has been brewing in the bosom of his race for over three centuries, ever since the first of his ancestors were brought to the land of their enslavement over three centuries ago. The bitterness has fermented, and the patience and humility of the African Americans are not inexhaustible. If not given the recognition that is due to them, the African Americans are perfectly ready to take the law into their own hands. Thus Bigger Thomas, more than any other African American fictional figures, represents a higher level of African American racial awareness. In him and his actions , the African Americans saw their identity and the whitestheir folly and obligation. Richard Wright has been censured for his unabashed portrayal of violence and of a violent man as hero, but he would not have been as effective as he was, had he not written he did in Native Son. Richard s Wright s influence over subsequent African American writers has been great.Work 2: Invisible Man Invisible Man tells an archetypal existential story of modern times. The protagonist-narrator is nameless apparently because he is invisible. The very opening of the book states the existentialist crisis of modern man in explicit terms. Speaking from the hole in the ground which he says in like a grave, he relates his bitter experience of having lived a death of a life for some twenty years until he discovered his invisibility. He tells us how he began life with great expectations and won the approval of the whites of his region who pleased with his humility, sent him with a scholarship to a state college for Negroes in order to Keep this Nigger-Boy Running. There he became the protagonist of Dr. Bledsoe, the president, who, however, expelled him for having shown a white benefactor of the institution administration stipulates, blacks should be invisible. What he tried to do was to be seen. In a factory on Long Island he incurred the displeasure of his fellow workers unintentionally in a disturbance. Later, on the occasion of an old African American couple being driven out of a flat, he made a radical speech which subsequently put him in touch with a brotherhood , a Communist affiliation, but he was amazed to find that the brotherhood saw the cause of the African Americans only as one of so many pawns on its chessboard. His dreams all evaporated, and he went into hibernation in an underground cellar. It is from there that he speaks. The book ends with the narrators awareness that even an invisible man has a socially responsible role to play, and that who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you? The concluding section of the book is important, particularly in view of the fact that when the narrator thus speaks for youhumanity at large, he transcends the physical limits of an African American individuality, becomes, all of a sudden, anyone, an Everyman, and his dilemma, thus generalized and magnified, assumes a universal magnitude. One becomes suddenly aware that what he has been talking about all along concerns the plight, not merely of an African American individual, not ever of the African American race alone, but of the modern existence of man as a whole. The repeated rejection that the protagonist suffers at the hands of so many people and institutions becomes a metaphor for the rejection of the individual by society. The question that the book ultimately raises is one of a universal nature. It is the question of the interrelationship between the self and the world. The world (or the community or society) requires that all individuals conform to its standards and values and comply with its demands. This could not be done except through the individual giving up at least part of his individuality to fit as parts into the machine. Thus the world can be the enemy to the existence of the self. This could be one sense in which Grandpa s injunction can be understood. The self is placed in the enemy territory: it is in an ever on-going confrontation with the world around it. This is apparently everyone s dilemma in an age in which self-awareness and self-identity become increasingly serious considerations. How people should behave in relation to others and to society at large: this is the question that the novel tried to help solve. Ellison s Epilogue addresses this beautifully well. It redefines the correlation between social responsibility and self for role-playing: self depends upon society for self-definition. These two, self vs. world, should not be mutually exclusive ; in fact they are mutually complementary. There is no complete freedom or independence. Denial of self is not good; neither is social denial. Life being what it is, a part of us has to die in order for us to live in fellowship. The thing that matters is to strike a happy mean between these two. Invisible Man thus ends with counseling participation in life on this new level of awareness. In all probability, the protagonist is climbing out of his hole: Here I ve set out to throw my anger into the world s face, but now that I ve tried to put it all down the old fascination with playing a role returns, and I m drawn upward again. This is where Ellison makes it everyone s business to identify with the protagonist. Indeed, Ellison s aim in writing the novel is to represent what he termed the American theme , and he achieved a great success in turning the impressive story of a young African American boy s life into an odyssey of modern man s quest for self-realization and turning, incidentally, the book into what a critic calls a resolutely honest, tormented, profoundly American book. Work 3: Beloved Toni Morrison is best known for her fifth novel, Beloved. The book is remarkable in its skilful fusion of its form with its thematic concerns. The major formal feature of Beloved is the use of magic realism. Morrisons ghost does not make the book a ghost story. There is this obvious magic and supernatural element in the narrative : first the baby ghost causing strange voices, lights, and violent shaking, and then the ghost assuming actual human form, but behaving in uncanny ways, becoming invisible, appearing mysteriously, moving Paul D. out of Seethe s house, and exhibiting her growing psychic powers. This element shocks and jostles readers as well as the characters out of their normal way of living and thinking. It fits well into the larger realistic scheme to serve the author s purpose. Talking about her book, Morrison states the importance of dwelling on and coming to terms with the truth about the past in a land where the past is either erased, absent or romanticized. The rememory of the past is to Morrison a very important subject to write about. Morrison feels that her people have to come to some kind of terms with their past in order to find peace and happiness. Their past is a hurdle they have to jump over in order to cope well now and in the future. Seethe is guilt-ridden. Her physical scar is an emblem of her inner bleeding scar. The appearance of the ghost is in fact an externalization of the emotional wound in her life. The disruption of normal life Beloved causes forces her mother and also Paul D. , to face the fact that they need healing and renewal. She makes it imperative for them to dive deep into the past when they suffered injustice and inhuman treatment and felt such despair that the only way to emancipation was death. The ghost offers Seethe a good opportunity to explain her act and subconsciously exonerate herself from the sense of sin and self-condemnation that cripple her life all along. Seethe is supposed to be free, but she is not. She has to address the unspeakable, hidden deep down in her, which would weaken and humiliate her if she dare remember and speak about it. She has to face it in order to heal and live on a new basis. Beloved thus reopens Seethe s rebuilding self-identity. Seethe is not an isolated case. What beloved does to her is in fact also what the African Americans need as a once enslaved race. The grandmother Baby Suggs talks about the Misery, which indicates the harsh condition of the African slaves. It was worse than death. It was the reason why some salves like Seethe chose death rather than slavery: as there was nothing they could do about it, they inflicted death and pain on themselves. The sense of self-mortification afflicts and debilitates all survivors as a ghost of the past after their physical emancipation. In this sense, Beloved offers a medication and u cure for all African Americans.Work 4: The Color Purple The Color Purple is an epistolary novel. It consists of 90 letters, of which over two thirds (61 in number) Celie wrote to God, 14 to her sister Nettie, and 15 Nettie wrote to Clelie. The Color Purple is a great book both in African American women s growth against the backdrop of social and familial oppression. Celie is a good case in point. She grew up in low self-esteem, knowing that she had neither good looks nor good brains. She saw her sister running away, and subjected herself to the anguish of a loveless marriage and the drudgery of a stepmother. Exposed to abuse of various kinds, she becomes callous. As she has no one to talk withand she is too ashamed to talk with humans, she thinks of God. She writes to God but does not sign her name. This is an indication of her lack of confidence in her self-worth and in her fellow humans. Letter writing is also her subconscious way of complaining which she dare not do with anybody, of keeping track of experiences so as to understand herself in relation to her world, and learning to cope better. Life is a learning process for Celie. Ultimately through suffering, she learns about God from her blind worship through doubt to genuine faith. She learns about man: for her black folks, she moves from hate and rejection to understanding to acceptance; for her white fellowmen, she learns not to discriminate against them. She learns about love: love for others as well as for herself. And she learns about herself; she comes to see her human dignity and human worth. She is the one that eventually survives the ravages of life and gains spiritual wholeness. From a long point of view, Celie s growth covers not only the different phases of women s liberation (i. e. defenselessness in face of repression, awakening and self-assertion, and equally with men that do not end in separation from her man as often is the case with other women): she goes a step further. She reconstructs a new relationship between the two genders on a new basis of understanding and reunion in harmony. From a feminist point of view, the book relates a story of solidarity between the oppressed women in a sexist, racist world. Along with Celie and Shug Avery, there are Sofia and Mary Agnes, among others, who fight together for survival. The Color Purple marks a new phase of growth in African American consciousness. It raises questions for thought for the African Americans: they need to get to know themselves better and get ready for accountability for their own lives. These questions are relevant especially now when discrimination has to make way for a new life for both races, however reluctant it is to vanish into history. The stage is getting set for the African Americans to make the vest of what life offers for them. Harpo follows his fathers example and achieves reconciliation with his wife Sophia. Everybody learns about life. The new phase of African American awareness is also exhibited in Celie s keeping a white man in her employ: she learns to strike a racial balance. Love flourishes in her life. It redeems. This leads and adds to the happy ending.Work 5: The Joy Luck Club The Joy Luck Club consists of four parts, each of which begins with a vignette , or prologue, a brief italicized statement, narrated by one of the four mothers, which indicates the theme of the section. Each part includes four individual stories told by the four immigrant mothers or their American-born daughters. Thus in part one, Feathers from a Thousand Li Away , and part four, Queen Mother of the Western Skies the mothers speak, while the other two parts, The Twenty-Six Malignant Gates and American Translation allow the daughters to talk. For each of the four families mother and daughter each tell their separate stories. As one of the mothers (Suyuan Woo) dies recently, her daughter Jin-mei takes her place at the Mah-jongg table and tells her mother s stories as well as her own. Together these sixteen stories tell about the Joy Luck mothers past and present and their daughters rebellious growth. A dividing line can be drawn between the two generations of women. The mothers on one side tell their stories of their experiences in China while the daughters talk about their lives in America. The relationships between the