Yearly Archives: 2014

Lila Mae Watson

This entry was posted in The Intuitionist and tagged black female light-skinned on by

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Character: Lila Mae Watson

Source Text:  Whitehead, Colson. The Intuitionist.  New York: Anchor Books, 2000. Print.

Entry Author: James Tyler

It is unclear at the outset as to whether Lila Mae Watson is half-black, or as to whether her skin tone enables her to obtain a greater form of acceptance from her white colleagues, or to “pass.” Colson Whitehead chooses to focus marginally on Lila Mae’s relations with her father, who was black and who taught her “white folks can turn on you any minute,” but little mention is made of her mother (Whitehead 23). Although it is made clear that they occupied the same house, when Lila Mae recalls her elevator repairman father showing her and her mother his uniform, it is never made clear as to whether her mother might have been half-black. Aesthetically, Lila Mae exemplifies a “mixed-race” paradigm by her acceptance within a political minority, “the Intuitionists.” Within this political minority, she holds the unique and isolated status as the only black woman “Intuitionist.”

Watson finds herself within a racial identity equation of James Fulton and Pompey, both African American characters who choose to “pass” within white society, although Fulton’s identity is not made clear until well into the novel’s climax. As such, Lila Mae leads a lonely existence in the dark, with few African American role models other than Pompey, who is a conformist, and who appeases the white community, because success as an elevator inspector will ensure a better life for his family. Lila Mae is more determined and more of an individual, even if she has the capacity to be self-centered. She remains focused in the face of obstacles, and openly questions her culpability in the failed elevator inspection, rightfully insistent that there is something more to this situation and embarking on a “quest” to uncover the details in relation to the accident, and, in effect, finds herself discovering more about her own racial identity in the process. Effectively, Colson Whitehead inserts Lila Mae within the context of one of the oldest literary traditions, the “Quest” narrative, a narrative also ascribed to Danny in Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat and Lila Mae’s literary ancestor, Janie Mae Crawford, in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

On this “quest,” Lila Mae is undeterred and un-intimidated when thugs invade her apartment, when she uncovers the deception of Natchez’s, and certainly when Chancre’s cohorts kidnap her. Still, Watson is compliant to a degree. She calmly accepts her Inspectors Academy room, a converted janitor’s closet. She is excruciatingly polite, even when under pressure, and she dresses conservatively and neatly, clearly invested in not doing anything to offend the sensibilities of a predominately white environment, and fully aware of the significance of her role as a black woman elevator inspector. Like Conrad’s Jewel in Lord Jim, Lila Mae is objectified by those around her; but while Jewel is objectified in a conventional sense, Lila Mae is utilized shamelessly by the Intuitionists for political gain, as proof of their diverse credentials, in contrast with the more conservative Empiricists. Lila Mae is an invaluable political tool as the only female, black elevator inspector, who just happens to be an Intuitionist. As such, whether or not she is willing to admit it or assume kinship with Pompey, she, in effect, is “passing” to a degree, as well.This is where her resemblance to James Fulton, the figurative father of Intuitionism, is most crucial. Both Lila Mae and James Fulton emerge as essential to the novel’s message, and are intrinsically linked to the novel’s theme of social advancement in the context of identity politics. Both hail from a period in which the only African Americans allowed in the department store were employees, although Fulton had more direct experience. James Fulton, a light-skinned black man, plagued by the necessity of “passing” racially, singles out Lila Mae Watson out in his private journals for a significant role within the Intuitionists. This leads one to wonder exactly to what degree he empathized with Lila Mae Watson. “He notices he has written Lila Mae is the one in the margins of his notebook,” Whitehead writes. “That’s right… She doesn’t know what she’s in for, he thinks, dismissing her from his mind” (Whitehead 253).


Danny

This entry was posted in Tortilla Flat and tagged Caucasian Indian male Mexican Spanish on by

tortillaflat
Character: Danny 

Source Text:  Steinbeck, John. Tortilla Flat. 1935. New York: Penguin Books, 1963. Print.

Entry Author: James Tyler

In The Grapes of Wrath, Mexicans only warrant vague mention as a massive throng of scabs threatening the prospects of Californian farmers and Midwestern migrant workers (Owens, 60). John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, a novella based on a Medieval Mexican folktale, presents its two main characters, Kino and Juana, more as symbolic victims of circumstance than as introspective human beings exhibiting any control over their situation. Despite the fact that a majority of John Steinbeck’s novels are set in California, one familiar with his work could very well argue that Steinbeck’s literature offers few complex Mexican-American characters.  A refutation to this argument would inevitably have to include a discussion of Tortilla Flat (1935). In this variation on the Legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Tortilla Flat’s hero, Danny, outwardly emerges as the level-headed voice of reason and authority figure; in effect, the “King Arthur” figure of the “Paisanos.” A “Paisano” is defined by Steinbeck as “a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods. His ancestors have lived in California for a hundred or two [hundred] years. He speaks English with a Paisano accent and Spanish with a Paisano accent” (Steinbeck 2). Like the other “Paisanos” of Tortilla Flat in Monterey, California, Danny is of Mexican-Anglo-Indian descent, described as “related to nearly everyone in the flat by blood or romance” (Steinbeck 3). Danny’s willingness to open his doors to the other “Paisanos,” when he inherits two houses from his grandfather, establishes him as the unofficial leader of this racially mixed group.

As such, Danny emerges as the focal point of the story and the calm center around which the comparatively more colorful Pilon, Pablo, and Big Joe, revolve. Unlike the stereotypical authority figure, however, Danny is unhappy with this arrangement. He hails from wealth, but is entirely unenthused with the finery of “influential relatives,” choosing to live as a “vagrant wresting his food and wine from an unwilling world” (Steinbeck 3). Burdened with the responsibility of managing not one, but two houses, Danny is obligated to abandon these vagabond ways in favor of focusing on property management and fiscal responsibility. He seethes with frustration for a month, before disappearing from the house and embarking on a crime spree, or a “quest,” if you will, leaving the town of Tortilla Flat in almost complete disarray. Upon the realization that this act has not changed his situation, he grows disillusioned and descends into alcoholism. Danny’s friends’ best attempts to help him fail, and most spectacularly with a party in his honor. Danny descends into madness and throws himself to his doom after erupting into hysterical fits of violent anger, likely induced by heavy drinking.

The source of Danny’s rage is ambiguous and Steinbeck dances around the legitimate cause of Danny’s almost quixotic disillusionment with life, choosing to assign its origins to a populist yearning for independence from legitimate responsibility. But, could Danny really have exhibited a difficulty adjusting to civilian life and finding his identity following his WWI service? According to historian Gregory Rodriguez, WWI “accelerated assimilation” for the Mexican community, and “some soldiers returned home having experienced prejudice at the hands of Anglo officers” (Rodriguez 154). If Danny’s anger is motivated by a latent insecurity over his racial identity, it is unclear. Nonetheless, Steinbeck establishes Danny’s racial identity enigma almost from the start, when he describes the Protagonist’s behavior when asked about his race. “Whenever [Danny is] questioned concerning his race, he indignantly claims pure Spanish blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm is nearly white” (Steinbeck 2).  Described as “dark and intent” with a skin color like “a well-browned meerschaum pipe,” Danny attributes his complexion to sunburns, vehemently denying any mixed ancestry (Steinbeck 3).  Interestingly enough, Danny is not above his own racial antipathy towards the very Caucasians he tries to claim kinship with. Upon learning of his new inheritance, he chooses to target Italian fishermen by assailing them with ethnic slurs. “Race antipathy overcame Danny’s good sense. He menaced the fishermen. ‘Sicilian bastards,’ he called them, and ‘Scum from the prison-island,’ and ‘Dogs of dogs of dogs.’ He cried, ‘Chinga tu madre, Piojo.’ He thumbed his nose and made obscene gestures below his waist” (Steinbeck 6). Although the Italians hardly take his mockery seriously in the least, with an identity crisis of this magnitude, it is no wonder that Danny eventually was goaded into virtually losing contact with reality. Although Steinbeck does not attribute it to Danny’s descent into madness, neither does he absolve his inner conflict over racial identity from complicity in Danny’s Arthurian fall from grace.

Hiro Protagonist

This entry was posted in Snow Crash and tagged black Korean male on by

 

snowcrashCharacter: Hiro Protagonist

Source Text:  Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Print.

Entry Author: Erin O’Kelly

Stephenson’s character Hiro is half-American Black, half-Korean, and all protagonist. A talented programmer and hacker, Hiro is instrumental to the world of the story even before its events drag him into an informational intrigue, having helped to create and develop the immersive Internet equivalent known in the novel as the Metaverse. When the story opens he’s working a high-risk, low-pay job as a futuristic pizza deliveryman, but that quickly comes to a crashing halt when he crashes the Mafia-owned delivery car, sending him back to his backup job as a freelance information-gatherer. Soon he is embroiled in a high-tech struggle for a new sort of infoweapon that his unorthodox hacker past has made him well-prepared to deal with.

 

While his ability to deal with the plot twists leading up to the final showdown is not predicated on his race, the course of the story makes several turns that do rely on racially charged events to get from plot point A to plot point B to plot point Z.Hiro’s role in the novel covers everything from gathering information to protecting himself and others to chopping people up with swords and, interestingly, his mixed heritage makes subtle but important contributions in all of those areas. He uses his heritage as an American Black to make get the social results he wants in some situations, like when he forces a confrontation with a Japanese pop star to make sure that a concert he organized goes on as planned: “What the hell. This is America, Hiro is American, and there’s no reason to take this politeness thing to an unhealthy extreme” (Stephenson 132). Similarly, in the novel’s world of racially-specific closed-gate communities, a type of franchise called “burbclaves”, his Korean ancestry gives him an in to the city-franchise Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong. Without that access to the refuge of a Greater Hong Kong that his citizenship affords him, he and one of the other main characters, YT, would have likely been taken out of commission in the first hundred pages by a bunch of angry taxi drivers; later on, his ability to access the Asian-centric franchise saves him from getting shot by a bunch of Russian gunmen. His ability to bring YT into this otherwise off-limits sphere of influence also advances the plot by setting the stage for a later karmatic payback for an act of kindness performed during her stay.

The attention his mixed heritage attracts is not entirely benign, however, and also singles him out as a target for curiosity and animosity. Many people are unable to peg his ethnic background, and others’ misinterpretations spark conflict. One Japanese businessman who thinks his black heritage should deny him the use of his inherited Japanese swords challenges his honor and right to hold the weapons (Stephenson 85). A later scene makes him a target for racists who aren’t sure what his heritage is, exactly, but know they don’t like it and can’t figure out which epithet to call him (Stephenson 301). Despite this, a majority of the attention paid to Hiro’s heritage is narrative, not part of any dialogue.  Although the reader is up-to-date on the matter, Hiro doesn’t usually bother to correct the person doing the mislabeling. He simply continues doing what he always does: making effective uses of both sides of his heritage to accomplish what he wants or needs to do, and saving a good chunk of the world in the process.

Khan Noonien Singh

This entry was posted in Star Trek and tagged male multi-racial on by

 

spaceseedCharacter: Khan Noonien Singh 

Source Text:  “Space Seed.” Star Trek: The Original Series. Writ. Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber. Dir. Mark Daniels. NBC. 1967.

Entry Author: Emma Baker

Perhaps the most memorable or well-known villain of Star Trek: The Original Series, Khan Noonien Singh is a genetically engineered and selectively bred man intended to possess superhuman powers, both physical and mental. Also known as an “augment,” Khan results from an experiment enacted by several scientists on Earth during the 1990s. However, these scientists did not account for the idea that, “superior ability breeds superior ambition,” (“Space Seed”) and many of the augments began to seize control of over 40 different nations. Kirk says on the subject, “an improved breed of human. That’s what the Eugenics War was all about.” (“Space Seed”) Khan, who controlled one third of the earth, from Asia to the Middle East, was the “best of the tyrants,” under his rule there were no massacres, he did not initiate any fights. While Spock found him morally reprehensible and only deserving of scorn, many humans on board expressed an admiration of his strength and abilities while still disapproving of his actions. They consider Khan, “the best of the tyrants and the most dangerous.” (“Space Seed”) He attempts to take over the Enterprise with his augmented crew with the intention of finding a new planet to conquer and almost succeeds with the compliance of Lieutenant McGivers, a white woman, who falls in love with him.  In the end, instead of bringing him to Starfleet, James T. Kirk exiles him and his crew to a planet where they can begin to colonize themselves reflecting the penal colony on Australia, Botany Bay. Later, Khan goes on to be the antagonist of The Wrath of Khan, often considered the best Star Trek movie with the cast of the original series.These “augments” were created from a variety of Earth’s ethnic groups. In the episode, “Space Seed,” Scotty says, “they’re all mixed types–Western, Mid-European, Latin, Oriental.” (“Space Seed”) On the first sight of Khan, the historian Lieutenant McGivers suggests he hails, “From the Northern India area I’d guess, probably a Sikh,” perhaps in an expression of Orientalist anxieties. Though little textual evidence points toward these augments as of a mixture of several different ethnic groups within each individual, rumors among some fan understanding suggest that Khan himself is a mixture of several races, perhaps the end result if all races were mixed. The concept revolves around the beneficial combination of several different ethnic groups to create superhumans that share the best aspects of all races and culminates in the most prominent of the augments, a man who is not white.As such, Khan’s role both challenges and maintains the status quo. A non-white person presented as the superhuman product of the genetic engineering and selective breeding remains rare even in modern day media. In the 1960s, it was arguably revolutionary. The rumor of not only the inclusion many different ethnic groups in genetic engineering but perhaps the explicit mixing also challenges a status quo concerned with historical intents of eugenics movements. Instead of the preservation of a “pure” race revolving around white supremacy, this experiment produced superhumans of all races and the potential of mixed races. Interestingly, the seeds of constructing mixed race as a herald of modernity and a post-race society are recognizable in this interpretation.

Golden Gray (2nd exhibit)

This entry was posted in Jazz and tagged bi-racial black male white on by

jazz_cover2Character: Golden Gray

Source Text:  Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004.

Entry Author:

The majority of Jazz’s narrative takes place in a lower class African American community in Harlem during the 1920s. The plot centers on the violent love triangle formed when Joe, married to Violet, began an affair with a young girl named Dorcas. However, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th century American South. The novel introduces Golden Gray, the son of a rich white Aristocratic woman, Vera Louise, and her family’s African American slave, Henry LesTroy. He unites the past of Violet and Joe: He was raised by Violet’s grandmother, True Belle, and as an adult saved Joe’s mother while searching for his father, Henry.The narrator connects the anxiety Vera Louise’s father experiences upon discovering his daughter’s pregnancy by a slave to the fact of there being seven mulatto children on the plantation. Those mulatto children represent the unspoken, yet well known secret about the transgressions in Southern society wherein white male slave owners had sexual relations with their black female slaves, creating mixed race generations. The anxiety stems from the possibility that Gray’s mother would’ve unknowingly committed incest with one of her half siblings, who was born to one of the female slaves.

Gray’s racial identity threatens the structure of the society because his racial mix is identical to those born as slaves to African American mothers, and yet his mother’s racial identity directly connects him to the supposedly elite white family. Golden Gray brings up interesting questions: by law he could be a slave, but his upbringing has created permanent features in his way of carrying himself that translates into whiteness.

Superficial aspects of his appearance create a thin veil hiding his identity. His mother would have regretted him just as she did her affair and given him away if not for his “golden” aspect.

“When [they] bathed him they sometimes passed anxious looks at the palms of his hand, the texture of his drying hair. … True Belle just smiled, and now he knew what she was smiling about, the nigger. But so was he. He had always thought there was only one kind – True Belle’s kind. Black and nothing. Like Henry LesTroy. Like the filthy woman snoring on the cot. But there was another kind – like himself,” (149).

When Gray confronts his father, he seems to project on him all the anxieties and the cognitive dissonance and desires that his newfound knowledge burdens him with. Lestroy narrows in on his fears and confronts him by saying, “‘I know what you came for. To see how black I was. You thought you was white, didn’t you?’” Lestroy offers him ways to be comfortable with his identity and Gray retorts, “’I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.’” He is sensitive to the psychological impact of the categorization even though the reality is the same for him.  Lestroy replies, “‘Be what you want – white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up – quicklike, and don’t bring me no whiteboy sass,’” (173).

Morrison takes care to note that Gray’s torn identity comes not only from the mix of his race alone, but from the way it locates him in between classes and races, making his full membership/authenticity in either group contested.

“What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture,” (160).

The reality is that he can choose which race he performs, but the knowledge of his parentage has made him confront the reality that race is a performance. Gray’s crisis results from having become a self-conscious actor in this broadened playing field of racial identity. Being aware of his choice and the fiction of race, but still afloat in the world of identity politics, he no longer feels naturalized in the choice of either identity.

Bertha Mason

This entry was posted in Jane Eyre and tagged Creole female on by
janeeyreCharacter: Bertha Mason

Source Text:  Brontë, Charlotte. “Jane Eyre.” Introduction and Notes. Ed. Stevie Davies. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2006. Print.

Entry Author:  Crystal Carpenter

Bertha Antoinetta Mason is the mysterious and problematic character placed in Rochester’s and Jane’s life to provide shock value and growth to the progression of the storyline. Bertha’s purpose was to be set apart from Jane in intellect, appearance, delicateness, and sanity, because Brontë uses her as ‘a throw away’ character to cause a distraction as a way to hit a certain romantic climax between Jane and Rochester. Bertha is chained and bound to the assumptions of her culture, in that she is physically locked away and verbally abused because of her mixed race. Words like beast, strange wild animal, dark, grizzled hair, wild mane, hyena, maniac, purple face, and bloated features are used to define BerthaBronte’s representation of Bertha…develops two lines of argument: that Bertha is “imagined as white – or as passing as white – In the novel’s retrospective narrative,” and that she “become[s] black” in “the form in which she becomes visible in the novel.” That form, she argues, is marked by racial stereotypes of the “non-white” (Thomas 1).Bertha is forced to play a role in the degradation of her lineage without her side of the story ever being told. The reader accepts how Bertha is described by Rochester – “Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard! …Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points” (Brontë 337) – as truth because being a white wealthy aristocrat gentleman is perceived as credible; and the reader wants Jane and Rochester’s romance to flourish.

Bertha is left without a voice and in place of it is a growl. Her character depicts the masculine nocturnal beast that wanders Thornfield Hall at night and hides during the day. Bertha has a brother, Richard Mason, who is never depicted in any way as beast like. He is treated like an English gentleman, which is interesting because he comes from the same family line as Bertha. Brontë is making a reference to how woman are locked away in the domestic sphere, forced to comply with men as the head in the public sphere.

It is, of course, taken from Jane Eyre, where the madwoman, Bertha Mason, is quite literally confined in an attic, but it becomes emblematic of the female subversive desire to challenge all-pervasive patriarchal standards – a desire which can be expressed only through images of irrationality, passion, and imprisonment (Foster 95).

Women writers had no choice but to have multiple undertones within their work. Bertha’s character is compromised for the advancement of feminist’s rights. However, for the sake of the feminist movement Bertha’s race and self-worth is being sacrificed. During the 19th century the progression of white woman was the objective, not woman of color. Bertha is a symbol for many cultures exploited and repressed by the British Empire. Brontë writing Bertha as the “mad woman” represents the fear that the English had if miscegenation was to occur between the British and “other” cultures. Racial lines would be blurred and mixed race children would be the product of imperial reign, which would ruin the racial dominance of the British over their colonies. Brontë locking Bertha away is a way to control and stop further assimilation with the English culture.

Creole: Generally, the term signifies a European native of the West Indies but it can also refer to persons of mixed race or black people (Davies 567).

 

Work cited:

Foster, Shirley. “Monsters and Madwomen – The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer

and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert; Susan Gubar.”

NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 14.1 (1980): 94-96. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Thomas, Sue. “The Tropical Extravagance of Bertha Mason.” Victorian Literature and Culture

27.1 (1999): 1-17. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2013.

Georges

This entry was posted in The Mulatto and tagged black male white on by
GeorgesCharacter: Georges

Source Text:  Séjour, Victor. “The Mulatto.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed. Henry L. Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. Second ed. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print.

Entry Author:  Crystal Carpenter

“Master,” he said…But you know, do you not, that a Negro’s as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him, the laws curse him.” This begins the second paragraph of The Mulatto, a story told by an older freed slave. Slaves were forced to believe the life whites provided was the best for them. The slaves who rebelled were punished so there was no risk of an uprising. This story is about Georges (a mixed race, tragic mulatto) searching for his identity in the name of the father he does not know.The story begins with the rape of Laïsa by her master, Alfred, which leads to the birth of Georges. Not knowing who his father is causes some identity confliction. Georges would beg his mother for the name of his father hoping this would help him gain some of his identity. Georges held on to the closest father figure he knew, his master, Alfred. These symptoms of identity confliction are a natural trope of the tragic mulatto’s characterization.

The tragic mulatto/a is normally characterized as a mixed-race figure who finds him- or herself depressed, suicidal, fratricidal, and/or patricidal due either to a lack of identity or to an innate, biological corruption. According to the stereotype, these individuals do not know whether they fit into white society or into black society and are often made to choose between their dual identities, passing either into whiteness (the most familiar trope) or into blackness (Daut 2).

The tragic mulatto, based on gender, is depicted differently. Both have similar aspects but men usually have an oedipal complex. The plot for a male tragic mulatto usually goes through a pattern of identity confliction, loss, power reversal, revenge and rebellion (and sometimes death). Georges use his revenge on Alfred as a way to reverse Alfred’s power over him, and rebelling against his father in an emblematic way. Any slave born out of “the violation of identity caused by miscegenation” (Daut 12) becomes more intense in their revenge and need to kill – as a way to sever the ties between the absent father. Once Georges has reversed the power roles and now holds Alfred’s fate in his grasp, he will seek justice for his mother, wife, and himself by making Alfred the victim. After Georges has discovered that Alfred is his father he commits his final act as the tragic mulatto, taking his own life. Georges as the tragic mulatto stirs mixed emotions within the reader, because his fictional story as a mixed race slave becomes real to the reader. The motivation of his actions was not to kill for the sake of it, but to right the wrong Alfred would not. If Georges had known Alfred was his father he would not have killed him so readily. This is what makes Georges so tragic he became entwined in a false identity of passionate revenge, and never had the chance to mend his own identity.

 

 

 

Work Cited

Daut, Marlene L. “”Sons of White Fathers”: Mulatto Vengeance and the Haitian Revolution in

Victor Séjour’s “The Mulatto”.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.1 (2010): 1-37. JSTOR.

Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Squeak/Mary Agnes

This entry was posted in The Color Purple and tagged black female South white on by
The Color PurpleCharacter: Squeak/Mary Agnes

Source Text:  Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. The United States of America: Harcourt, 1982. Print.

Entry Author:  Claire Tierney

Squeak is a minor character in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, but she is essential, as she is the only character expressly identified as mixed race, having both white and black ancestry. Squeak’s story is one of growth and transformation. Squeak becomes Mary Agnes, and in the process becomes strong, independent, and appreciated.She is called Squeak because she is quiet, and assumed to be ineffectual. She is often called “little Squeak”,  as she has been conditioned by society to respond affectionately and feebly to everyone, especially the men, around her. She constantly calls her lover Harpo “baby” and cries when she is ignored (84). She believes her light skin is the primary reason Harpo is with her, suggesting her race is a large aspect of her identity. She asks Harpo, “Do you really love me, or just my color?” (97).Initially Squeak begins a life with Harpo after Sophia leaves him, creating a natural point of comparison between the two females. At the beginning of the novel, Squeak acts as a foil to the thick-skinned and confident Sophia, who does not accept disrespect from anyone, male or female. After Sophia is imprisoned for defending herself against the mayor’s assault, the characters are distraught, and are considering solutions when Squeak asks, “What can we do?” (90). Squeak figures out she is the blood-relative of the white warden, and Celie and the other women “dress Squeak like a white woman” (93).She is passing for a white woman when she goes to the prison to plead for Sophia’s release, only to return having been raped by the warden. This event changes Squeak, causing her to realize her power and self-worth. Her first words to Harpo after he recognizes she has been attacked are “Shut Up, Harpo. I’m telling it” (95).After she is raped, she fights against Harpo just as Sophia did, and ultimately leaves him just as Sophia did. She becomes a singer like Shug, providing herself with a job that relies on her feminine singing voice, which is “high, sort of mewing” according to Celie(98). While she initially sings Shug’s songs at the juke joint, she eventually writes her own. Additionally, she helps Sophia take care of the Mayor’s children. In doing this, she becomes a part of a community of strong women of color.

Squeak’s character is shaped largely by her relativity to the other women in the novel. Readers are introduced to her as Harpo’s new girl, where she is slightly villainized as she is seen as Sophia’s replacement. This is evidenced when Squeak’s teeth are knocked out by Sophia during a confrontation. By the end of the novel, Mary Agnes’s character is as dependable and competent as any of the other female characters, and this forces the characters and readers to respect her. This transformation and this sense of separation from the other characters is evident in her song,

They calls me yellow,

like yellow be my name

They calls me yellow

like yellow be my name

But if yellow is a name

Why ain’t black the same

Well, if I say hey black girl

Lord, she try to ruin my game

(99).

Squeak stands strong with the other women in the novel, while also claiming her own independence and identity as a woman of mixed race, as an outsider looking in. This separateness becomes a point of independence for Mary Agnes. At the novel’s beginning Squeak is an outsider in her world. She stood pale in comparison to strong characters like Shug and Sophia. By the end of the novel, she proves that she is not to be compared to other women, that she stands alone.

Frankenstein’s Creature

This entry was posted in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus and tagged alive dead human male monster non-human on by
FrankensteinCharacter: Frankenstein’s Creature

Source Text:  Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. New York: Illustrated Editions, 1932. Print.

Entry Author:  Claire Tierney

Mary Shelley originally published Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus in 1818.  The epistolary novel details the story of Dr. Frankenstein as he creates a human made of disparate parts, which he gathers from countless dead bodies. It is possible that he is created from several bodies of different race and ethnicity. Nevertheless, background is undoubtedly mixed, so he is perceived as an outsider and as disturbing. Every character who sees or interacts with the monster is both frightened and disgusted by him, even his creator, who reacts with “breathless horror as disgust filled [his] heart” upon first seeing him(52). His creature soon leaves and the doctor becomes depressed and ill. Meanwhile the creature lives as an outside observer of society, becoming eloquently spoken well-versed in classical literature. He has a human brain; it is his physical appearance which labels him non-human and uncanny.

Frankenstein’s creature is not only mixed with respect to his physicality, but he is also mixed with regard to his identity. Torn between human and nonhuman, he was created “for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (51). He is stuck between two binaries, alive and dead. The doctor’s creature is forced to live on the outskirts of civilization as all who encounter him find him abject and horrific.

After living in solitude for a time, the monster finds his creator and asks nothing more of him than to create a partner so that he could be less lonely. As a mixed character, the monster has no community or others with which to identify. Dr. Frankenstein finds the notion of a female monster to even more terrifying and reviling than his male creation, saying, “shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world?” (151). Frankenstein’s discomfort with a female monster has many implications, including a fear of female sexuality, as well as a fear of the two creature’s reproducing and creating proof of their relations. This discomfort with a complication to the feminine ideal is comparable to society’s discomfort with female mixed race, in that multi-racial women are portrayed to be exotic, yet tamable.The Doctor’s fear of his creature reproducing is also reflective of society’s fear of containing the non-dominant binary, of creating something which cannot be contained. By giving the creature his own life-force, his own ability to create life, he is giving up control of this new “race”.

The Doctor reluctantly agrees, yet never follows through on his promise to create a female. The creature is angered and forced to violence, which impels Dr. Frankenstein to devote his life to the destruction of his creation. He fails in his search, and his creature is last seen by the narrator walking into the cold northern tundra, “lost in darkness and distance” (239).

The title’s allusion to Prometheus compares Dr. Frankenstein’s creature to a heroic figure in Greek mythology responsible for providing humanity with fire, a intellectual and progressive achievement. Prometheus is created from clay, an origin not dissimilar to Frankenstein’s patchwork configuration. His punishment is tragic, as he is to be eternally tortured.

Frankenstein fits the trope of the tragic mulatto, never fitting into any culture, forever an outsider in his own world. Frankenstein suffers because no one is like him. No One exists who is the same as him, physically, culturally, or racially. Frankenstein is a gothic novel, acting as mirror to societal fears of of the unknown, and the abject. Just as humanity repeatedly finds the notion of fellow humans that look and sound different to be threatening, so Frankenstein is perceived as a menace.

Sophie Mol

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The God of Small ThingsCharacter: Sophie Mol 

Source Text:  Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks,2008. Print.Entry Author:  Apollonia Roman

In the multi-layered novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, Sophie Mol is the half Caucasian, half Indian nine year old visiting her two younger cousins in India. Even though there are several other tragedies in the book, including the molestation of her cousin Estha and the death of the “untouchable” Ammu, Sophie’s death is the locus from which the entire novel revolves, even though she is physically present in only a few chapters. While tragedies are covered up, Sophie’s rises to importance because is part white and has been raised in the west. Her Westernness makes her special in the novel. She is the only character who is referred to with any excitement by the others.

Sophie has been raised in England away from her biological Indian father, Chacko. Chacko uses his education at Oxford University in England to elevate himself in his Indian family, with whom he currently lives. He previously married  Sophie’s mother, Margaret Kochamma, to combine his most proud accomplishments: receiving an education and obtaining a white wife (Roy 114). Sophie and Margaret have come to visit Sophie’s Indian relatives in Ayemenem after the death of Sophie’s step-father, Joe, who she “loves most in d’world” (Roy 72). Joe is everything Chacko is not; he is “steady, solvent, thin…a wedge of light” and presumably white (Roy 118). Sophie idolizes him and regards him as her true father, while Chacko is just her less important “realdad” (Roy 72).  This gravitation towards a man so different in personality and race both elevates and distances Sophie from her Indian family and father.

Sophie’s only physical likeness to her “realdad” is a similar nose, “she had [her grandfather’s] nose waiting inside of hers” (Roy 68). This nose is sign of intelligence, “a moth-loving nose,” an “entomologist’s nose,” because it is something that gives educated Chacko pride (Roy 68). In contrast, Sophie’s white skin is described as much as her nose. This attribute is what differentiates her most from Chacko and his side of the family, binds her intimately with the white Margaret and biologically unrelated Joe. Her seven year old cousin Rahel describes her skin as precious, “she’s very delicate, if she gets dirty she’ll die” (Roy 100). After this statement, Rahel goes on to list Sophie’s other beautiful attributes: her hair, teeth, and legs. Yet, Sophie’s skin color takes precedence as her most impressive feature.

Every event in the novel, past, present, and future, refer, revolve, and lead up to the death of Sophie Mol. This is likely important because her “whiteness” makes her more valuable to her Indian family. “White” is mentioned nearly one hundred times throughout the novel, including references to white saris, lilies, insects, clouds, hair, etc. This imagery consistently reminds the reader that “white” is beautiful, fragile, and something to be treasured. Sophie Mol is treated as if she is such, even though she is obstinate, often speaking without reservations to her cousins. On page 73 Sophie declares that she doesn’t love her Indian family because she doesn’t know them. She is able to escape chastisement for infractions her cousins are not, such as being rude at the dinner table (Roy 153). The importance of Sophie’s fair skin eclipses her actions to her Indian family; she becomes more precious for her symbolically Western features makes her the crux of Roy’s critique on the problematic perception and reactions to class differences and reactions in the novel.