Sharecropping In Alice Walker's The Third Life Of Grange Copeland

1308 Words3 Pages

Alice Walker’s first novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland published in 1970, showcases the evil effects of racism, sexism, classism and gender dissonance amidst plantation life. The novel depicts the sufferings of yesteryear blacks under plantation system. It focuses on three generations of a black family trying to survive in a world, torn by racism, sexism and classism that are heightened by plantation system. The plantation system under which yesteryear blacks lived was one full of drudgery, and never ending slavery for generations of blacks without the hope to come out of it. The white man’s plantation was a death maze for blacks who worked on it. Walker through the novel explores the “black man’s search for self-worth” (Weston 161) …show more content…

Walker to write the novel has used her first-hand knowledge of sharecropper’s lives and the oddities faced by them, and their families, to showcase the plight of yester year blacks under the plantation system. She was a live witness to the plight of sharecroppers as a young child. Alice Walker as a child has had experienced the drudgery and poverty involved in plantation system, as her parents were sharecroppers who made less than 300 dollars a year. It was extremely difficult for her father Willie Lee to get Walker treated, when she has had an eye injury that left a scar in her eye. As a sharecropper’s child, poverty was a reality of her life. The sharecropping system in America was one where there were “no incentives to improve their lot of life; the harder and longer they worked and the greater their output, the less their reward” (Quarles 246-247). Doing so, she has shown how blacks have been undone under white hegemony for generations together. The plantation system in America made the black man the perfect host of servitude till his death. “The novel graphically delineates the ways in which racial oppression denies the status of full subjects to black men” (Dubey …show more content…

The masculine identity of Grange Copeland is at question whenever he meets his white boss Mr Shipley. The promiscuous relationship between his wife Margaret and Mr Shipley ruins his emotional and psychological makeup altogether. As a young man Grange works under his white boss Shipley along with his wife Margaret. With supplanting debt under his white boss, he becomes more of a robot, than a living being. He gets stuck up in the system of sharecropping where sharecroppers like him, do not make much money. In a constant state of debt, Grange even thinks of selling his wife Margaret, to clear his debt. He ill-treats his son Brownfield. The helplessness in him turns out to be open belligerence and anger, towards his family members. He gets stuck up in the blame game and falls down on his own. He gets addicted to drinking and womanizing. Margaret tries to help her in all possible ways. She works as a domestic helper at Shipley’s home. When Grange gets drunk and mismanages things on the domestic and professional fronts, Margaret becomes the mule and manages home and tries her level best to keep it together. Grange becomes more of a lethargic gruesome man, with least care and concern for his family in days of his

Open Document