The Question of Slavery in American Literature - Essay Example

The American Dream Deferred and Realized The American dream is victory in the continuing struggle for racial justice and decency in America. The American dream deferred, will ultimately become the American dream come true. The former will ultimately be attained and finally become the latter, because the dream is already there. It is all a matter of time and one’s vision of the future that will dictate the solution to the central problem of moral life. There are the realists who see the future as a long time that reaches into infinity. Because they cannot see the end they also cannot see the subtle changes that take place in transit. The others are the idealists who see the changes, who continue to dream, and will not surrender. It is on these optimistic ones, the idealists, that the task of recovery and sustainability of ethical idealism and conditions, personal and societal, that would make fatalistic surrender understandable. It is the belief of these idealists that social idealism, the commitment to a better society is closely tied up to individual moral obligation. Social justice to them, is the collective expression of idealism deeply felt by individuals. Take the play, Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. The story focuses on the Youngers, a poor black family’s struggle to attain middle class status. All members are confronted with their own thwarted ambitions hence we may say each of them to begin with, have a dream deferred. The tale of the Youngers is fiction and it is just one family to begin with. In this particular example, dreams deferred become the American dream. This is Hansberry’s dream for her people. When an honest-to-goodness family. Like the Youngers proliferate into a large number of equally successful families, then can we say that the American dream shall have been realized. Credit is given to Hansberry for encompassing the dream to happen even only as a dream deferred. Her story is a significant instance wherein people who originally despair of their lives, given the courage, intelligence, experience, attitude and hope, things are bound to get better. The main protagonist Mama, when she explains to Walter her act of buying the house at Clybourne Park says, “Son, I just tried to find the nices place for the least amount of money for my family.” (Hansberry, 85). Dreams deferred are merely dreams postponed. In due time they become dreams come true. The Known World is a brilliant, challenging novel woven together by multiple strands of richly complex stories. The Known World’s characters interconnect during the 1800’s in the mythical yet realistically detailed Manchester County, Virginia. It is a strange time. Jones situates us in moments and spaces just before slavery decays into the Civil war, a northern victory, a failed Reconstruction and an institutional meltdown. Through it all, racism abides. Jones uses the lives of his characters to ask of his story and of us, his readers, an ambitious question. What is slavery and racism’s impact on all our lives?” Afro-American writer Jones, in his novel does not fail to consider the evil of slavery itself. It exists, with one foot in racism and the other in ungoverned and unrestrained power over other humans. It can corrupt everything and everyone it touches. In Known Worlds, Jones tells a series of stories. His focus is not the life of one particular character but rather how slavery affects a whole battery of characters. Henry Townsend is the character who serves as the nexus of the novel. A former slave, henry is the owner of a plantation and “thirteen women, eleven men and nine children.” The stories of his wife, Caldonia; his teacher Fern Elston; his slave and overseer, Moses; his former master and patron in the ways of slave ownership, William Robbins; his parents; the sheriff John Skiffington and slaves. “Augustus and Mildred Townsend, Henry’s parents, buy their freedom from William Robbins and work hard to pay for the freedom of Henry as well. Not long after his has been purchased, however, Henry buys Moses, his first slave, and damages forever his relationship with his parents.” (Jones, ___). Henry and a number of other characters who are free blacks and who own slaves, has internalized the skewed standards of the antebellum, slave-holding South. If people who are known to be worthy and important members of society also own slaves, then perhaps owning slaves becomes a way of demonstrating worthiness, a way to rise in society. When a Canadian writer of sorts suggests to Fern that for a free black woman to own slaves would be like him “owning his own family.”, she replies, “It is not the same at all.” She argues that “all of us do only what the law and God tells us we can do.” (Jones, ___) Jones’ novel reiterates the same idea: Humans with almost limitless power over others can easily become corrupted. When Henry’s former master Robbins sees Henry wrestling and playing with his slave, Moses, he tells Henry, “the law will protect you as a master to your slave. You are the master and that is all the law wants to know.” Henry then becomes a stern owner that he later sanctions the mutilation of runaway slave Elias’ ear as punishment for attempting to escape. The story of Robbins himself sheds light on other human truths within slavery. Robbins locks his beloved slave Philomena under lock and key together with their two children in a house in town but will not allow her freedom to a point of chasing her back when she attempts to flee. The Known World’s Philomena is treated as well as a slave an be treated, but is nevertheless a slave and one who will not find freedom for a long time. The internal struggle slavery brings is given external life through two of the novel’s minor characters – Sheriff Skiffington and his cousin Counsel. Counsel is a well-to-do white plantation owner who gives his cousin a young slave girl as a wedding present. Although the Sheriff and his bride have always been opposed to slavery, they are pulled further and further into the culture of slave ownership. The Sheriff finds himself patrols for runaway slaves to satisfy Robbins and other slave owners. In the case of Counsel, an epidemic of smallpox plunges his family and slaves into chaos in the plantation. Counsel becomes a modern-day Job – burns his own house and sets off wandering. Penniless and alone, he finds his cousin John and becomes his deputy. Counsel fails to understand his wrongs or to realize that slavery, the manner in which he has treated slaves and Afro-Americans is wrong. Finally he destroys his cousin’s body, in the same way that his gift years before destroyed his cousin’s soul. The slave Stamford has led a thoughtless life though a slave, he tries to exert power over others until he is badly beaten and nearly dies. One night he came to understand that it is only by caring for others and through selflessness and sacrifice that one attains redemption and knows peace. The novel points out that after Robbins, Henry and their peers fade from memory, Stamford and his legacy of helping others will continue to live on. Since none of the characters in Known World is free from the clutches of slavery, we may say that, to begin with, all have dreams that are deferred. But hope springs eternal as they say and towards the end of the story, the author provides that hope in the characters of the slave Stamford. The reader senses a movement towards the American Dream. And when there is the slightest sign of improvement, there follows encouragement and optimism that leads to success – the attainment of the Great American Dream. In the Known World, the evil presence of slavery seeps out in subtle and unforeseen ways. The recognition that free black citizens like Henry and Fern owned slave does not detract from the horror of slavery. It shows instead the insidiousness of slavery itself. The novel proves to the reader that slavery was not the act of a single person – madman or tyrant, but an open and legal social system sanctioned by the society within which it operated. Both Hansberry and Jones can see the pitch-dark insidious character of slavery, but both are idealists in that they can see light at the end of the tunnel. Both have done their part in contributing to the eradication of racial segregation – a vestige of slavery through the power of the pen. It will be a joyful day when the world wakes up to find the last traces of the scourge called Slavery and all its cohorts, including racial segregation, disappear from the face of the earth. References Blue, C.P., “The Known World.” Black Issues Book Review, Vol. 5, Issue 6 Cooper, D., “Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun”. Explicator, Fall93, Vol. 52 Issue 1, 1993 Danford, N., “The Known World” Publishers Weekly; Vol. 250 Issue 32, 2003 Hansberry, L. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Signet, 1987. Jones, E., The Known World, HarperCollins/Amistad Kodat, C.G., “Confusion in a Dream Deferred: Context and Culture in teaching A Raisin in the Sun”, Studies in the Literary Imagination; Spring98, Vol. 31 Issue 1 Yarbrough, S. D., “The Known World”,  Magill’s Literary Annual 2004, Read More