The Black Man's Burden: Ways of Coping with White Supremacy in Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

Bc. Iva Zítková

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Diplomová práce se zaměřuje na problematiku soužití Afroameričanů a bělošského obyvatelstva ve USA. Zkoumá způsoby, jakými se Afroameričané vypořádavají se svou podřazenou pozicí, a to na základě rozboru dvou románů Afroamerické literatury: Song of Solomon od Toni Morrison a The Third Life of Grange Copeland od Alice Walker.

Abstract:

My thesis examines possible ways of coping with Western people´s supremacy available to African American men. I chose two works of two African American writers as a field of my analysis, for I believe these works are sufficiently representative of the African American literature. The analysed novels are Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland. My methodological approach to the analysed novels is primarily synchronic and partially comparative. In their novels, Morrison and Walker inspect the spectrum of African American male response to the Western society. In the thesis I have distinguished four possible ways of coping with Western people´s supremacy. First, Macon Dead (SOS), decide to resist the Western people by achieving the same material status. Similar approach is aquired by Brownfield (GC), turning the hatred against the dominant society into self-hatred and in turn directing that hatred toward their own people, especially women. Milkman (SOS) convinces himself that the oppression of African Americans does not concern him. Last case is Grange (GC) who undergoes all possible attitudes and finally decide to retreat into isolation. In the introduction I present the authors´ attitude to masculinity, the general concepts of the African American masculinity together with the ways of dealing with Western people´s supremacy on general level. Consecutively, the thesis proceeds to the analysis of the actual ways as demonstrated by the individual characters in the novels. In the conclusion I give an explanation of the motives that have lead me to use the phrase ´Black Man´s Burden in the title, together with the summary of the main points presented in the thesis. The thesis concludes with the critical response to Morrison and Walker´s works.

Keywords

African American men, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Black Man´s Burden, White Man´s Burden, Rudyard Kipling, white supremacy, the American Dream, the figure of badman, the Flying Africans, Milkman, Macon, Brownfield, Grange, Du Bois, double-cosciousness

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 4. 6. 2008

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 11. 6. 2008
• Supervisor: Mgr. et Mgr. Kateřina Prajznerová, M.A.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
Philology / English Language and Literature