In Black Midas, Aron represents the West Indian exile who is an exile within his own homeland, due to the colonizing zeal of the Europeans. He is subjected to waves of cultural alienation from birth and embedded into cultural fragmentation, evident through his internal dilemmas of self-worth and self-discovery. As a significant landmark of the West Indian literature, Black Midas is an attempt through literature to cope with its colonial past and assert its desire for autonomy. Aron seeks to find his identity in a number of ways, but none of them seems to be successful. His own internal dilemma makes him an outcast in his own society, and Aron is never fully comfortable among the people he relates to, as he is either too educated or too cultured. In turn, this causes him to seek wealth as a tool for power and a superficial sense of dominance that is contingent upon his possession of money.
Aron’s education deeply affects him, and he becomes divided between the world of books, the distant lands and the rhythms of his environment. “Mahaica was a womb out of which I had been wrenched and I did not want to return it… On one hand the language of book shad chalked itself on the slate of my mind, and on the other the sun was in my blood, the swamp and river, my mother, the amber sea, the savannahs, the memory of self and wind closer to me than the smell of my sweat” (Carew 42). Through Aron, the reader gains a sense of cultural fragmentation that accompanies his loss of cultural root in a colonized land. He is an alien to his own homeland and to those who own it, and Aron begins to use his sexual relationships as a way to discover his own identity.
In Black Midas, Aron’s sexual relationships represent a need for him to use people and to d...
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... voices seem to represent the dark legacy of colonialism. While Aron initially experiences a sense of liberation in the nature, the quest for gold and diamonds ultimately alienates him from the landscape. Like the pork-knockers who view themselves “as giants subduing a wide world,” Aron comes to view it as simply an external object against which to define his self-identity (Carew 114).
In conclusion, Jan Crew’s Black Midas tracks the protagonist’s journey for selfhood in a colonized world through his sexual encounters and relationship with the nature. In the end, Carew does not answer Aron’s question as to who he is or where he belongs. Aron is essentially powerless to the voices trying to save him from himself. What the book does suggest is that Aron finds a sense of peace in knowing that he cannot find his place nor his identity through materialistic possessions.
Alexie also touches on the idea and practice of appropriation and alludes to the pain and
This extract emphasises the lonely, outworld feeling that would have been felt living in such settings. This puts into perspective the feeling that will be felt during the coarse of the plot development.
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
The main character is completely alienated from the world around him. He is a black man living in a white world, a man who was born in the South but is now living in the North, and his only form of companionship is his dying wife, Laura, whom he is desperate to save. He is unable to work since he has no birth certificate—no official identity. Without a job he is unable to make his mark in the world, and if his wife dies, not only would he lose his lover but also any evidence that he ever existed. As the story progresses he loses his own awareness of his identity—“somehow he had forgotten his own name.” The author emphasizes the main character’s mistreatment in life by white society during a vivid recollection of an event in his childhood when he was chased by a train filled with “white people laughing as he ran screaming,” a hallucination which was triggered by his exploration of the “old scars” on his body. This connection between alienation and oppression highlight Ellison’s central idea.
In Cry, the beloved country, Alan Paton tells the story of his journey across Africa, his experiences with the colonized Africa, and the destruction of the beautiful, pre-colonialism native land of Africa. Heart of Darkness also tells the story of a man and his experiences with colonialism, but a man who comes from a different time period and a very different background than Alan Paton’s Stephen Kumalo. Although, both Joseph Conrad and Alan Paton portray the colonized areas as very negative, death filled, and sinful places, it is when one analyzes the descriptions of the native lands of Africa that the authors reasons for their disapproval of colonialism are truly revealed. When comparing the writing styles of Alan Paton and Joseph Conrad, their descriptions of the land and the people in both works reveal their different attitudes and views towards colonialism. While Paton and Conrad ultimately oppose colonialism, Paton is concerned with the disappearance of African tribal tradition, whereas Conrad is concerned with the perceived corruption of the white colonists.
This book addresses the issue of race all throughout the story, which is while it is probably the most discussed aspects of it. The books presentation is very complex in many ways. There is no clear-cut stance on race but the book uses racist language. The racist language durin...
The destructive nature of cultural collision is symbolized when Emily’s lover, Rose, kills herself because of “how fuckin’ hard it is to be an Indian in this country” (Highway 97). The suicide of Rose, which happened when Rose “went head-on” into a “big 18-wheeler...like a fly splat against a windshield” shows the brutality of cultural collision (Highway 97). The rape of Zhaboonigan is an indicator of the violence inflicted on Natives (especially Native women), and functions as a metaphor for the “intrusive, destructive impact of one society on another” (Nothof 2). Cultural collision results in a fragmented society, where the subdued struggle with their identity as a result of the violent colonization of the dominant
Greenblatt, Stephen, and M. H. Abrams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print
Richard Wright introduces the main character in his novel, “Native Sun”, as a poor black man, named Bigger Thomas, living in the ghetto. In book 1 “fear”, I analyzed how Bigger lived and learned who his true character was. I also learned how he felt towards himself, family, and his friends. Bigger Thomas’ character is a very angry and violent person towards anyone who makes him feel afraid or out of place. Richard Wright uses imagery, sentence syntax, and symbolism to express how Bigger Thomas truly thinks.
History is rich with culture and tradition. Culture and traditions greatly influence people’s behaviors, the way they perceive others, and the way they are perceived by others. Environment also plays into the development of culture and the decisions people make. Although each person has an individualized idea of what culture is and practices their own unique traditions, the fact remains true that every human being is subject to the effects of culture and tradition. Three classic authors accurately portray culture through setting and tradition in order to affect the reader’s view toward the characters and the authors themselves in Zora Neale Hurston’s “The Gilded Six-Bits”, Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”, and John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable.
• AW’s work is deeply rooted in oral tradition; in the passing on of stories from generation to generation in the language of the people. To AW the language had a great importance. She uses the “Slave language”, which by others is seen as “not correct language”, but this is because of the effect she wants the reader to understand.
A main theme in this novel is the influence of family relationships in the quest for individual identity. Our family or lack thereof, as children, ultimately influences the way we feel as adults, about ourselves and about others. The effects on us mold our personalities and as a result influence our identities. This story shows us the efforts of struggling black families who transmit patterns and problems that have a negative impact on their family relationships. These patterns continue to go unresolved and are eventually inherited by their children who will also accept this way of life as this vicious circle continues.
...zation leads to Gogol’s discovery of his true identity. Although he has always felt that he had to find a new, more American and ordinary identity, he has come to terms that he will always be the Gogol that is close to his family. While Gogol is coming to this understanding, Ashima has finally broken free from relying on her family, and has become “without borders” (176). No longer the isolated, unsure Bengali she was when arriving in Cambridge, Ashima has been liberated from dependent and powerless to self empowering. The passing of her husband has forced her to go through her life as a more self-reliant person, while at the same time she is able to maintain her daily Indian customs. This break-through is the final point of Ashima’s evolution into personal freedom and independency.
In Black Skin, White Masks, Fanon begins by discussing the dual nature of the black man, as
Her text, “Who Is That Masked Woman? Or, the Role of Gender in Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks” critically assesses Fanon’s treatment of gender in his first book. She focuses primarily on his psychoanalytical approach and challenges the supposed discrepancy between psychoanalysis and the politics of racialization so common in the interpretation of Fanon’s work (75). For Bergner, “race and gender are mutually constitutive” as the “white gaze produces multiple subject positions.” She provides a comprehensive summary of Fanon’s contribution to psychoanalysis and shows how he reinterpreted some of Freud’s central assumptions to include race as an analytical category. She contends that Fanon’s approach largely excludes women, acknowledges their subjectivity only in their sexual relationships to men, who use the female body as a mediating object in their struggle for power (80). She contends that Fanon merely replicates Freud’s misogynistic model, with the difference that he assigns the feminine role to black men, thus creating a white men-black men binary, a male-centered model of liberation, which reinforces the colonial structure Fanon wants to overcome, at least with regard to gender (84). Bergner suggest that a synthesis of postcolonial and feminist psychoanalysis could remedy the shortcomings in Fanon’s approach