Eric Nieves

Professor Allred

ENG

14, March 2019

Unvanquished Train Scene

          In the novel “Unvanquished” on page 81 we see the boys talking and seeing the Train, something they have never seen before. as they looked at it they are very astonished by what they are seeing, and it surprised me as well. The reason that I was surprised is because it is something you take for granted. So to hear them in awe by the sight of a train was very interesting. Not to mention what seeing a train meant to them as it went by. For starters it reminded me of the wild west, how the world they knew was changing around them, as buildings were built in front of them making the West irrelevant. another thing it reminded me of is this idea of freedom the characters must have felt. That is what seeing the train meant for them, a figurative and literal freedom right in front of them. To see that the world was changing again, it meant change for the boys. The change of race, gender, and life itself was changing for the better. All in all the train represents change, and for the boys change means everything.

I think it would be very interesting to look into media coverage (tabloids especially) of events concerning race in America during the 30s. In Native Son, Wright is consistently pointing to the cultural and material importance of the mass-produced word. He also rages against the role of the press as a tool of state repression and cultural conditioning. In my research, I will look to analyze how major tabloids (or other similar publications) covered events that captured public interest and involved racial dynamics. I find this period in American (and world) history particularly interesting, as it was a time of immense social, technological, and political change. Mass media from this era will undoubtedly provide important insight into these developments.

For my final project I want to continue exploring Ideas about agency and resistance within the creative imaginary of Black female subjects, particularly focusing on the ability of these woman to use the creative imaginary to inscribe. I began to think about this topic when I undertook the role of the conjure women in the group game and thought about what the modern conjure woman might look like. Although the conjure women existed within an opressive framework, they were able to create a “goopher” and manipulate the situations around them. I my project I want to connect this act of “goophering” to the present-day author by relating it to the work of Claudia Rankine and the way she uses poetry and lyric as her own sort of goopher against the oppressive forces that she is critical of in her novel. Through my project I hope to explore the creative ways that Rankine inscribes her ideas on the page and argue that it connects to a practice linked to the same essence as the “goopher” in “conjure Woman”. I hope to analyze what exactly this essence is and how it plays into crating social change.
As My first source I hope to use information from Workings of the Spirit: The Poetics of Afro-American Women’s Writing by Houston Baker. This book evaluates black female writing and its relation to Afro American intellectual history. It also deals with the folkloric and spiritual aspect of female black resistance writing. I am also interested in reading about the historical figure of the conjure women and witch women that inspired the conjure women that Chestnut includes in his stories, in an effort to tie writers such as Rankine to this tradition of using a creative inscriptive format to resist and inspire change against oppressive forces in society. I also plan to read Diasporic Avant-Gardes: Experimental Poetics and Cultural Displacement and analyze of it may relate to Rankines inscpriptive practices.

I’m most interested in the inscription upon women’s bodies, notably in Chesnutt’s “Conjure-Tales” (in particular the stories “Po’ Sandy”). While Uncle Julius tells his well-thought and plotted stories of slave life in America approximately one generation after the abolition of slavery in the United States, weaves in what limited access to power the slaves had in relation to their masters. The female African-descended slaves had the ability to exercise power through voodoo, or “goopher” in order to reorder the laws of nature and human existence at their discretion. Two examples of this are the transformation of Sandy into a tree, and then concocting a potion that would give Master James bad dreams so he would be “persuaded” to treat his slaves less harshly.

         I would hope to research an article on the depiction of women in literature in the West and the implications that has made on the “gender imaginary” and how that imaginary has helped shape the psyche of its readers. To research any conclusions on the latter I would look up an article on Gender Studies, or on Human psychology that studies the impact of media upon human psyche/self-development.

For my final project, I aim to consider the ways an image of the self materializes in society through interaction and writing–and specifically the image of a self situated in a minority subject position; this can of course be extrapolated to other operators within this structure, and while I may make reference to this, my writing will focus on the struggle to realize a sense of self in the context of oppression. By the image of self, I am not referring to an intrinsic, immutable soul, but instead an image which exists in the social dynamic. I am thinking of dynamics such as Bigger’s first interactions in Native Son with Mary and Jan, or his state of mind when entering the Dalton residence, or how Ringo feels that he has been “abolished” when the social and economic structure has been radically altered in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished. I will posit that the self is often an illusory phenomenon generated by the material conditions of a society and the roles which it is assigned through bureaucracies, governments and other social roles and contracts; I will refer to Kafka’s work in this case for examples of harsh portrayals of bureaucracy and social function. In centering these themes on the self and the generation and function of the self, my work will make use of Du Bois’ notion of double consciousness and how, for those in marginalized groups, a doubled sense of self can cause a distorted generation of simulated versions of oneself as the result of the “longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge […] double self into a better and truer self” (DuBois). In this I will make use of the variety of texts we’ve read for this class to demonstrate the creation and dynamic struggle of the self on the page. I will also use works from outside of the class to reinforce the points I’m making. I have provided here a list of texts I plan on consulting during the research of this project. This list may change during the writing and research of this project.

In demonstrating the illusory phenomenon of the self, I intend to highlight the absolute threat that forces of oppression have over human lives. If the self can be constructed by social forces, then we can understand the severity and absolute control both physical and social marginalization can have over a people since it penetrates down to the deepest foundation of a human psyche: one’s own seemingly private sense of self.

Outside sources:

Baldwin, James, et al. The Fire Next Time. Taschen, 2017.

Barthes, Roland, et al. Mythologies. Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Baudrillard, Jean, and Sheila Faria. Glaser. Simulacra and Simulation. Univ. of Michigan Press, 2014.

Graeber, David. Utopia of Rules. Melville House, 2016.

McQueen, Steve, et al. 12 Years a Slave.

I want to try and reconcile multiple threads that I believe come back to Native Son. Between the murder at the base of the plot and the existential overtones, I was reminded in my reading of what I understand to be the plot of Camus’ The Stranger. However, there are a few extant pieces noting that and comparing these contemporaneous novels, which I wouldn’t want to crib from. As a result I’d like to try synthesizing a view of Native Son on two fronts simultaneously- high and low culture, literature and movies- that focuses on crime and its depictions. The decade preceding Native Son’s release was studded with some of the most legendary films of crime and punishment; the one that came to mind immediately was I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, which inspired actual prison reform, and follows a sort of reversal of Bigger’s situation. I also am thinking of incorporating a gangster movie like Little Caesar both to further the idea of his media-influenced mindset and to examine the racial difference embedded into stories that celebrate (if briefly thanks to the Hays Code) criminal lifestyles. By looking in two directions at once (past and future, high and low, in-group and other, existential and materialist) and with the planned use of some of Foucault’s writing in Discipline and Punish, I plan to examine how the idea of the “criminal” is constructed through societal messaging and how crime relates to ideas of the self.

I was interested in dissecting and comparing 2-3 scenes from the film to the novel. I noticed several big differences while he’s with Mary and Jan and then in Mary’s death scene. For instance, when he first picks up Jan, Bigger approaches him directly and tells him that he knows who he is because he has read about him. While literature in this instance, brings him power (which is also different in the film since he does not watch it in an ad at the movies) Mary takes away such power by stating that he should not believe everything he reads. In addition, the car scene is shortened completely, and it is Mary who suggests the restaurant and knows the address without having to ask Bigger. There does not seem to be much overstepping of boundaries. Instead, there is a clear segregation where Jan and Mary are in the front and Bigger is sitting by himself in the back. The racial tensions are later heightened when Bessie approaches him and states “I’ll go back to my place”. It is clear in this moment that there are strong racial divisions still among them. I also want to analyze the drinking scene because Bigger is not depicted as being pressured to do so. Instead, he is offered the moment that Bessie ignores him, and it appears as if he voluntarily wanted to drink because of Bessie. In addition, in the book there is a clear back-and-forth between Bigger and Jan+Mary where it seems more like an interrogation where they are overstepping their boundaries. The film has Bigger willingly revealed his history when he states, “My dad, he as an accountant, one day he just dropped dead.” There are no short replies suggesting discomfort but rather a longer story which can propose that Bigger felt comfortable. Mary’s death scene is the most different because she appears half naked, trying to seduce and initiate sex with Bigger but he continues to ignore all her advances.  

Sources:  

Brueggemann, John. “Racial Considerations and Social Policy in the 1930s.” Social Science History, vol. 26, no. 1, 2002, pp. 139–177. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40267773. 

Bremen, Brian A. “DuBois, Emerson, and the ‘Fate’ of Black Folk.” American Literary Realism, 1870-1910, vol. 24, no. 3, 1992, pp. 80–88. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/27746506. 

Weir, Christine. “‘White Man’s Burden’, ‘White Man’s Privilege’: Christian Humanism and Racial Determinism in Oceania, 1890-1930.” Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race 1750-1940, edited by Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard, ANU Press, 2008, pp. 283–304. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24h8th.15. 

Bolton, Philathia. “The Potential of a Moment: Race Literacy and Black American Literature.” Teaching with Tension: Race, Resistance, and Reality in the Classroom, edited by Philathia Bolton et al., Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 2019, pp. 283–304. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv8d5sf6.20. 

Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963. The Souls of Black Folk. New York : Avenel, N.J. :Gramercy Books ; Distributed by Outlet Book Co., 1994. Print. 

Bessie is an incredibly important character in the story. She often represents the harsh reality and what the audience is thinking, especially in moments of danger. For instance, when Bigger wants her to help him she argues she can see her life ending and that she does not deserve it when she states “Lord, don’t let this happen to me! I ain’t done nothing for this to come to me! I just work! I ain’t had no happiness, no nothing. I just work.  I’m black and I work and don’t bother nobody.” This is significant because by using the words “I’m black” and “dont bother nobody”, Wright uses her as a representation of the black community. He suggests that even when Blacks are working and not getting into trouble, they still have an unfair fate awaiting. Wright shows how unjust the community is for Blacks. It resembles a prison system that encompasses Black community by not giving them the freedom to escape trouble and death. She also states she has never been happy which also ties in with not having freedom and being forced to live without making mistakes in order to ensure her safety. Bessie’s character seems to be more aware of the racial divisions and the consequences that one may face if they overstep, than Bigger. In both the film and novel, she sees Bigger’s association with Mary and Jan as wrong and becomes upset with him. Her interaction in the novel is shorter but still tells Bigger she did not know he had “company.” By using the word “company” it is evident that Bessie views Mary and Jan as outsiders. She does not last long before she leaves which is also important because she is not properly introduced which proposes that whites and Blacks at the time did not associate themselves. This is clearer in the film because at one point Mary mentions that she never caught her name and Bessie still does not interact with her. She has no interest in speaking with Jan or Mary and therefore, only speaks directly to Bigger. Bessie’s character exemplifies the rules and standards in her community. Thus, she also serves as a warning for Bigger but he chooses to ignore her and the societal rules in hopes to advance. As a result, he ends up in danger. However, it is important to note that even though Bessie does not do anything wrong and follows the rules, she still ends up dead, which again suggests the invisible prison system around Black communities  that exists at all times and criminalizes them.