Questions for further practice: African American approaches to other literary works

and are being conducted—nor that we judge the quality of a work based on its representation of nonwhite characters. Rather, she encourages us to examine the ways in which the major and championed characteristics of our national [white] literature—individualism, masculinity, social engagement versus historical isolation; acute and ambiguous moral problematics; the thematics of innocence coupled with an obsession with figurations of death and hell—are . . . responses to a dark, abiding . . . Africanist presence. () That is, Morrison wants to analyze the ways in which canonized white Ameri‑ can literature has defined a positive “quintessential American identity” (44) by contrast with an invented Africanist identity, “raw and savage . . . bound and unfree, rebellious but serviceable” (45), against which whites have been able to define their own civilized virtues. “These topics,” Morrison observes, “seem to me to render the nation’s literature a much more complex and rewarding body of knowledge” (53). Among the many ways in which white writers have employed the Africanist presence, Morrison notes, is the use of black characters as a sign of and “vehicle for,” among other things, “illegal sexuality, fear of madness, expulsion, [and] self‑ loathing” (52) as well as “to define the goals and enhance the qualities of white characters” (52–53). For example, Morrison argues that Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not (1937), among other strategic uses of Africanist characters, employs a black crewman on a fishing boat to “solicit our admiration” (80) for the boat’s white captain, protagonist Harry Morgan, a deep‑sea fisherman. “Harry Morgan,” Morrison notes, seems to represent the classic American hero: a solitary man battling a government that would limit his freedom and his individuality. He is romantically . . . respectful of the nature he destroys for a living . . . competent . . . virile, free, brave, and moral. (0) How does Hemingway show the reader that Harry has these qualities? He does so largely by contrasting the protagonist with a “ ‘nigger’ in his crew, a man who, throughout all of part one, has no name” (70). In part two, when Hemingway switches from Harry’s first‑person narration to a third‑person narrator, the black character is “named” in two different ways: “Harry says ‘Wesley’ when speaking to the black man in direct dialogue; Hemingway writes ‘nigger’ when as narrator he refers to him” (71). The word man, however, is reserved for Harry. Furthermore, “[t]his black character either does not speak (as a ‘nigger’ he is silent) or speaks in very legislated and manipulated ways (as a ‘Wesley’ his speech serves Harry’s needs)” (71). Even when the black man is the first to spot the flying fish for which everyone on board has been waiting, Hemingway does not let him “cry out at the sighting” (73), which would be the natural thing for

him to do. Instead, the author gives Harry the awkwardly constructed phrase, “I looked and saw he had seen a patch of flying fish” (Hemingway 13) because “the logic of the narrative’s [racial] discrimination” dictates that it must be Harry, “the powerful one, the authoritative one, who sees,” even if it requires a less “graceful” syntax to achieve this goal (73). Finally, when the black crewman finally does begin to speak a good deal, after their boat has been fired upon, it serves the clear purpose of foregrounding Har‑ ry’s bravery. Morrison points out that [w]e hear the grumbles, the groans, the weakness as Wesley’s responses to his gunshot wounds for three pages before we learn that Harry is also shot, and much worse than Wesley is. By contrast, Harry has not only not mentioned his own pain, he has taken Wesley’s whining with compassion and done the difficult work of steering and tossing the contraband [the illegal goods the boat is transporting] overboard in swift, stoic gestures of manliness. (–) Thus, we admire Harry the more because we don’t admire Wesley, who is depicted as his opposite. Harry’s narrative power, so to speak—his authority, strength, and bravery—are enhanced by the black character’s silence, weak‑ ness, and cowardice. This is just one of the many ways in which an Africanist presence performs a major function in white mainstream literature, a function that merits further study. As Morrison puts it, “All of us, readers and writers, are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes” (90–91). Before we draw this section to a close, let me pause here to answer a question frequently asked by students: Why are we studying African American criti‑ cism and not the criticism of other ethnic literatures as well? Certainly, Afri‑ can Americans aren’t the only American ethnic minority to produce a body of exquisite literature. Among others, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Chicanos/as, and Latinos/as have contributed a great deal to the literary output of the United States. African American literature, however, has played a signifi‑ cant role in American history since the eighteenth century, and Black Studies has been an important field in American academia since the 1960s. In contrast, theoretically oriented bodies of criticism of these other wonderful literatures are just beginning to emerge. So it seems logical at this point in time to focus our attention on African American criticism, both to acquaint you with the work being done in this exciting field and to encourage you to investigate the literature and criticism of other American ethnic minorities, an endeavor for which a thorough grounding in African American criticism can serve as both a useful model and as a point of departure for comparison and contrast with other American literatures.