'Intolerable is the laws of God? Yes, a stern of certainty that you shall not waste your lives but gather a rich rewards at the close; that you shall not be sowing misery yet reap glad; that you shall not being selfish, yet not to be crowned with love; nor shall you be sin yet finding safety in repenting. True, our creeds are stern one, sterns with the most beautiful stern of Nature. His passion arose from your sympathy, but you see no ethics in the passions of the poor. Duty is colder than the ‘filial obedience'? What do you mean by filial obedience? Obey the souls. But if we be in the right positions, look to yours self; laws do not check their actions for the ignoring; fire will not exist to burn, because you 'did not know about it.' With equal enthusiasm did I maintain that the “virtue gave its reward,\" and that payment being on the other of the graves was unnecessary as to the incentive to right living. \"What shall we be saying to Cobbe and her contention that duty will grow cold and dark without God and immortals? Yes, for those people with whom duties is the matter of selfish calculation, and who by virtue are only because they look for the ‘golden crown' in payment on the other side the graves. Those of us who are finding joy in doing the right things, who work as work is useful to our fellows, who live as well as in such living we are paying our contribution to the world wealth, leaving earth richer than we’ve found into bed we need no payment after death for our life, for in that labour is its own ' great rewards.' But there are immortal people who do not die. But how much is it relevant to aesthetics. What is immortality? Is Beethoven’s immortality in his continuing personal conscious or in his glorious music deaths while the world is sure of? Is Shelley's true life in his existence of nature in some heavens, or in the liberties of his lyrics send through hearts of men, when they respond to the strains of the lies? Music did not die, though one instrument can be broken; thought it does not die, though one brain be shivering; love does not dead, though one heart strings be renting; and no great thinker will die so long as his thoughts echoing through the age, its melody are then the fuller-toned the more human brain send its music on to them. Not only to the heroes and the sage is these immortals are given; it is belonging to each according to the measures of his deeds; world life for world service; life for strained works; each reaping as sowing, and the harvests are gathered by each in his right order. This longings in order to leave behind a name that will be alive among men by giving the rights to men, this types for love and approval that is springs naturally from the practical and intense realisation of human nature these will be found in the strong motives in the breast of the truest people who have in our generations been identified with the Free thought and its causes. They will shine through it with the written as well as spoken words of Charles all his life, and every friend that he knows as to how often he has expressed the longings that \"when the grass is growing green on the grave, the men are working on it.” Needless to say, that, in many controversy in which I took part in, it was urged against that such motives were not sufficiently, that they appealed not only to nature which was developed, and left the average men, and all, the man below the average, with no sufficient constrain 151 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
motive for right conducts. I was held to my faiths in humanity, and the inheriting the responses of the human hearts when appealing to from the higher grounds; strong than I often think no in this intuitive confidence I had grandeur of a man, that had ruled all my thoughts, conflicting as that certainly was with my beliefs in his completely animal ancestors. Pressed too hard, I would be taking part in a passion for all who don’t hear the thrilling voices of Virtue and then love her for her own sweet sake. \"I have been finding myself heard the questions asked: 'Why should I be seeking for truth, and why should I be leading a good life, if there is no immortality in which to reap the rewards?'' To this questions the Freethinkers has one clear answer: 'There are no reasons why you should not seek Truth, if to you are in the search has been no attracting power There is no reason as to why you should not lead lives of nobility if you find happiness in leading a poor and a basic one.' Friends, who can enjoy a happiness which is very high for his capability; a book may be of intersects, but a dog who will be preferred being given a bones. To him whom the highest interest is the centre in his own self, to him whose caring only in order to gain for his own ends, to him who is seek his comfortable effort, to those man Free thoughts can have no attracting. Such people may be bribed by religions he may be led by seeking for truth, because he is hoping to gain from the reward by the searches; but Truth remains the service of the self-seekers; she cannot be grasped by hands that are itching for rewards. If Truth is not to be loved for her own pure sake, if it is to lead a noble life, if to make men happy, in order to spread brightness around us, if to leave this world better than we found it—if these aims having no attraction for us, if these thoughts are not inspiring, then we aren’t worthy to be Secularist, we have no rights to titles of Freethinkers. If you are wanting to be paid for the good lives by living forever in a lazy fashions in an idle heavens; if you want to be given bribe into noble life; if, like silly child, you learn your lesson not for gaining knowledge but to win plums, then you had to go back to your deeds and your churches; they are a rare fit for; you aren’t worthy to be set free. But we who are, having catching the glimpse of the beauty of Truths, deemed to be in the possessions of her worth’s more than all the world besides; who have made upon our minds to do our works proudly, asking for no rewards beyond the results which are coming for hard work, we will spread the Gospel of Free thinkers among people, until the sad melodies of Christianity have gone out their last mourn notes on the evening breeze, and on the fresh mornings winds shall be bringing out the chorus of hope and joy, from the glad thoughts of men whom the Truths has at last to be set free. The intellectual comprehensions of the source of evil and the methods of the extinction were the second great planks in my ethical platform. The study of Darwin’s and Herbert’s Spencer’s, of Huxley, Buchner as well as Haeckel, had not being convincing on me of the truth of evolution, but with the help from W.H. Clifford, Lubbock, Buckle, Lecky, and many more, had led me to be seen in the evolutions of the social instincts as the explanation of the growth of consciences and of the strengths of person’s mental and moral nature. If a man by studying of the condition that surrounds him and by the application of intelligence to the subduing of nature, had been accomplished so very much, why should note further persisting along the same roads lead to his complete emancipations? All the evil, anti-social sides of his natures 152 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
was an inherited from his brutal ancestors and could gradually be eradicated; he could not only \"let the creatures die\" but he could have killed them out.\" It may be acknowledged that the man inheriting from his brute ancestors from various best tendencies which are in course of eliminating. The wild beasts desiring to fight are one among them, and this has been encouraging, not checked as by religions. Another is the tendency is the lusts of the male getting to female apart from love, duty, and loyalties; this again has been encouraged by religions, as the witness the polygamy of the Hebrews—as in Abraham, David and Solomon, were not to be mentioning the concepts of the Mosaic and the bands of prostitutes in connection with Pagan temple, and the curious out bursting of sexual passions in the connection of religious revivals and mission Another tendency is the greed, the strongest grab all that he can and crushing down the weak, in the mad struggling for money; how and when has religions been modified this tendency, sanctifications as it is in our present civilisations? All this tendency will be get eradicated only by the identifying of human duty, of the social bond. Religion has not yet eradicating them, but science, by getting them to their sources in our brutal ancestors, has explained them and has showing them in their true lights. As each recognised that the anti- socialist tendency are the best tendencies in person, and that man in getting further must have evolved out of them, each also feels it part of his personal duty to curb these for himself, and so to rise further from the brutes. This rational of 'cooperating with the nature’ differentiating the scientific form the religious person, and this constrained sense of obligations is become stronger in all those who, are losing faith in God, have gained the hope for the man.\" The settings on the one side of purity and natural nature. To the Atheist it seemed that the knowledge is that the perfect of the race is the only possible by the improvement of the individual, supplying the most constrains of motive which can be imaginary for efforts after personal perfections. The Theist may be desired for personal perfection, but his desire is selfish; each right individual is right, as it was, alone, and his right is not benefitting his fellow to save as it may make him help and loving in his deals with them. The Atheist has desires for personal perfections not only for his joys in it as beautiful in it, but because science has given him the unity of the races, and he knows that each of the conquests of over the basic parts of nature, as well as each giving strengthening of the higher, is a profit for all, and not for him alone.\" Besides all of this, the struggling against evils are regarding as transitions and as necessities of constraints of evolution, losing to its bitter taste. \"In dealing with evils, Atheism is full of hopes instead of disparity. To the Christians, evil is an everlasting feature as good; it exists by the permissions of God, and, therefore, by the will of God. Our nature is the most corrupt, inclined to the evil; the devil is always near us, working all through sin and all miseries. What hope has been at the Christian faces with a world's wicked nature? What answer to the question, When comes sin? To an Atheist the terrible problems have been in it no figure of disparity. Evil comes from the ignorance, we say, ignorance of the physical and of the moral fact. Primary, from the ignorance of physical orders; parents who dwell in bad, poor un weathertight house, who live on ineffective, on nutritious and unhealthy foods, will necessarily prove to be not good for 153 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
health, will lack vitals, will probably have disease in their veins; such parents will bring them into the world ill-natured children, in whom the brains will generally be the lesser developed part of the body; such as children, by their own formations, will be incline to the animal rather than human, and by leading life of an animals, the natural, life will be defective in those qualities which are needed in social life. The surroundings as they are growing up, home, food, the associations and all are bad. They are trained into vice, educated into being criminal; so surely as the seed from the sown corn rise the wheat ears, so from the sowing of misery, filthy nature, and starving shall be arising crimes. Poverty and ignorance are the cause. Educating the children and giving them fair wage for fair work in their maturities, and crime will go and diminish while disappearing. Man is made by god, says Theists; man is made by circumstances, says Atheists. Man is the result of what his parents are, about what his surroundings have and of what they have been making for him; the results of the past he is modifies the actual, and so that the action and reactions go on, he himself the effects of what is past, and one of the cause of what is not to come. Making the circumstances feel good and results will also be good, for healthy body and brains will be built up, and from a states of composing of such diseases are gone. Thus is full of hope as no terrible things will of God have we have been struggling to go against; no despairing of future to the looking forward towards, of a world which is growing more and more worse, until it is burnt but a glad and fair futures of an rising races, where there are more equal laws, education, division, shall be eradicating poverty, destroying ignorance, nourish the independence, a future to be made up of the grandeurs by our struggles, a futures are made by getting on to the toil.\" The joyous and self-reliant world with the resolutions determined to improve that it is the character of a noble. Atheists are the days. And it is a distant factor in the middle of the selfish, luxury and modern civilization. It is a virtue in the middle of the calculation and soulful spirits which are seen in the midst of selfless people. It will have no put offs on justice to far off days of the reckoning, and it is ever spurring on by the feelings, \"The night comes, when there is no man who can work.\" Where of all hopes of personal futures, it is binding up its hopes with that of the races; not believing in any aids from God, it is struggling the more tremendously towards working out man's salvations by his own strengths. \"To us there is but a small solace in Cobble’s assurances that 'earth wrongs and agony 'will be right after that' Granting for a moments that the man survives death what was certainty have we had that to 'the next world' will be any improvements on this? Miss Cobbe had assured us that this is in 'world of God'; whose world wills the next to be, if not also in His? Will He be in stronger by there for the better that He should be set right in that world would the wrongs .He has permitted the ones that are here? Will He be able to have changed His minds, or have become weary of the contemplations of sufferings? To me the thought that the world was in hands of a God who were permitted of all the present wrong and pain to exist would be in tolerating, mad in the hopeless nature. . There are the hopes of doing things right from the wrong of the earth and the curing of pains of the earth if the reasons and skills of the man which have done so much are to breathe free to doing the rest; but if they are able to strive against omnipresent, hoping is the 154 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
future of the world. It is this sense that the Atheists look on good as 'final goal of getting ill” and believing that that goals will be reaching the sooner the more according to the efforts of each individual, he is working in the glad certainly that he is helping in aiding in the world thereafter. Not to dream of personal rewards then, not craving for personal payments from heavenly treasures that he work and loving, content that he is building of the futures in the present, the joy is going to create a present future.\" Such is the creed and the moralities which are governing my life and thoughts from the year 1874 to 1886, and with some of the misgivings to 1889, and from which I will draw strengths and happiness amidst all the outer struggles and distressing. And I shall forever remain grateful for the intellectuals and moral trainings that it has given me, for the self-reliance it was nurturing, for the altruists it was inculcated, for the deep feelings of the unity of mankind that it was fostering, for the inspirations of working which was being lent. And perhaps the chief debts of gratitude I owed to Free thoughts is that it left the mind for ever open to new truths, encouraging the most unshrinking questions of Nature, and shrinking from the new conclusions, however adverse to the old, that will be based on solid evidence. I admit sorrow that all Freethinkers do not learn these lessons, but I had worked along with Charles Brad laugh, and the Free thoughts we are striving towards spreading were strong-headed and broad minded. The antagonist attitude which was, as we shall be seen in a few moments, blazing out against me from the working platforms, was based in part on ignoring, was partly arousing by my direct attacks on Christian people, and by the combative spirits that I find myself showing in those attack, and very large by my extreme Radicalising in the politics. I had against men all the conventional beliefs as well as traditions of society in the general, and I had attacked them, not with bating breath and apology, but joy and defying, with sheer delights in the intellectual strives. I was in the firing, too, with passionate sympathies for the suffering of the poor people, for the overburdening, overdriving mass of the people, not only here but in every land, and wherever the blow was being struck at Liberties or Justices my pen or tongues break the silence. It was the carrying of the cross, and the comforting did note thanking me for shaking them for their soft reposes. Between the sides of cultured and uncultured of Atheism we came off pretty badly, being for the most part regarded, as the late Cardinal Manning termed us, as mere \"cattle’s.\" The antagonism that was growing out of ignorance regarding the Atheism as implied degraded morals and best life, and they had assailed by my conducts of not on the evidence that it was the evil, but on the presumptions that an Atheists must be are immortals. Thus, the Christian opponent at Leicester assailing from the atheist, father on my views which was maintaining in the books that I did not read but of which, before I have had ever been seeing in the National Reformers, had not been reviewing in its column as it was thus received in other London papers and had been commending for its clear statements of the Malthusian position, but not for its contentions as to free loves, a theory in which Mr. Brad laugh who was strongly opposed. Nor 155 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
were the attacks limited to the transcription to my theory which I was unable to hold, but agents of the Christian Evidence Societies, in their streets which was cleaning, making the false allegations to mankind. Remorse were addressed to Mr. Engström, the secretary of the society, bringing volumes of protest of disowned and disapproved; but as the mere agent that were continuing in their employment, the apologies were of the small value. No accusation was on the course, no slandering was too useless in for circulating by the men; and for the long times of indignities caused me bitter suffering, outraging my pride, and soiling my good name. . The time has come here when I shall throw that good names to the wind for the sake of the miserable nature, but in the early day where I had done nothing to the merit, even fostering done on such attacking. Even by the educated writer, who should have been better, than the most volatile accusation of violence and destruction were brought against Atheist; thus, Power Cobbe writing the Contemporary Reviews that lose the faith in Gods would bring about the secular or destructive of all cathedrals, church, and chapel. \"Why have I written such answers \"should cathedral, church, and chapel be destroyed? Atheists will utilise, not destroy, the beautiful faces which, once wasted on the God, shall be hereafter be concentrated for man. Destroying Westminster Abbey, with the exquisite arch, its glorifying tones of softer, richer colours, in its stonework lights as if of clouds, its dreamy, subdued twilights, soothing as the 'shadows of a great rocks in a weary lands'? This was not the deconstruction of humanity. The fat people who are tumbling over guns and banner on soldier graves will faith that can be removed to some spots where their clumsy form will be no longer marching in the upward-springing graces of lines of pillars and of arches; but the glorious buildings wherein now barbaric plans are to be chanted and drones canons preaching of Eastern folly, shall hereafter echoing the majestic musical of Wagner and Beethoven, and the teachers of the futures shall there unveil to throng multitude the beauty and the wonders of the world. The 'towers and spires' will not be effected, but they will not be longing be symbol of a religions which sacrifice earths to heavens as well as Man to God.\" The moral purity and elevations of Atheists are teaching were overlooking by many who had heard only of my bettering attacks on Christian theologist. Against the teaching of external tortures, of the astonishment, of being dependent of the Bible, I was levelling all the strengths of the brain and tongues, and I had exposed the history of the Christian Churches with sparing hands, its precautions, its wars, its cruelty, its oppression. Smart under the sufferings inflicted on by him, and wraths with the cruel pressures continuous puts on Freethinkers by Christians, speaking under the constant threat of prosecution, identification Christians culture with the political and social causes of Christianity, I used all the weapons that history, science, criticising, scholarship could be giving against the Church; eloquence, sarcastic, mockery, all were calling on to making breached in the walls of traditional belief and class superstitions. For the arguments and reasoning that I was not ready to listen, but I was turning a front of defying all attempting to compel assents to Christianity religion by appeals to the force. \"The threats and the enforcements of legal and social penalty against unbelievable can never compel 156 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
beliefs. Belief must be gaining by demonstrations; it can never be getting forced by punishing. Persecution is making the strong weaker; the weaker among us hypocrite; it never has been made and never can be making an honest conversion.\" That the people are now doing not able to speak as well as thin as openly as they are doing, that the broader spirits is visible in the Churches, that hereby is no longer being regarded as moral disgraceful in these things which are very largely due to the active and militants propaganda being carried on by Brad laugh, whose near and most friend that I was. That was my tongue was in the early days bitter than it should have been, I am acknowledging; that I get ignored by the service done by Christians and threw light only on it is crime, thus committing injustices, I am ready for admitting it. But the faults were to be conquered as long as I left the Atheistic camps, and they were the fault of my personalities, not of the Atheistic philosophy. And my main importance of being made ; from many of the Christian people today may be hear the echoes of the Free thoughts teachings; mind of men have been awakening, their knowledge enlarging; and while I condemning the unnecessary harsh nature of some of my languages, I am rejoicing that I have played my parts in that education of England which has to be made impossible for more the crude superstition of the past, and the repetitions of the cruelty and injustice under which people before have suffered.. But the extreme political views had also done to do with the general feelings of hatred among which I was regarded. Politics was done, I did not care about, for the necessary compromise of political lives was intolerant to me; but where they touched on the lives of the people, they became of the interests which were burning. The land questions, the incidences of taxation, the cost of Royalty, the obstructive power of the House of Lord. These were the matters which I have put in my hand; I was a ruler of home, also, of course, as well as passionate opponents of all injustices to the nations weakening on their own, so that I have found myself in opposition to the Governments of the day. Against our most aggressive and oppressive policies in Ireland, in the place of Transvaal, in India, Afghanistan, Burma and Egypt, I lifted the voices from the rising, trying to touching the conscience of the person, and to making them feel the immortals of stealing the land, piracy policy. Against the war, against capital punishments, against flogs, demanding national education instead of big gun, public library instead of warship no wonder that I was given as an agitating, firebrand, and that all orthodox society is turning into one world. 6.5 CRITICAL REVIEWS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY Most of the socialist saw Besant who was converting conservatism to socialism. Hence, the place of an ethics positives within the teaching helped to explain as to where not only Besant, but also such people such as Herbert Burrows and L. Haden Guest looked upon as theosophist as the fulfilling their socialist ideas. Guest had argued that theosophy leads to calling for social reconstructions along the lines exhibiting a Fabians mixing of elitism and humanitarian nature. 157 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Charlotte was seen in the theosophy as the true inspiration behind her socialist and suffragist approach; and the socialist joined the International Fellowships of Worker, an organisation affiliation to the Theosophical Societies, with Walter Cranes as its president.103 In the same way, the socialist, . Orange had been organised a Theosophical Groups in the 1890 after getting himself in Blavatsky writing, as well as before going on to become the editors of the influential journal called the New Age. All kinds of people are combining socialist, or a losing progressive humanitarian nature, with theosophies, or a vague mystic. Besant herself was equated in the theosophical ideals of a universal brotherhood with the social moralities that she had come to see as on the true basis of a socialist societies. Moreover, her kind of socialism, like that of many others of the Fabians, had an elicited rings to it, doing the emphasis being on an intellect elite organising societies for the good of all, technocrat doing their duties by the poor. The same attitudes appear in her theosophy... She looked to a spiritual elite kind of people, who were led by the Mahatmas themselves, in order to work for the advances done to humanity. Members of the elite who have been defined by their mental and moral strengths, not by their births, and it was on their own strength that are being placed upon them from the special burdens. As Besant had told her fellow theosophists, 'that it is the weak that have all the rights, the strong have their duties'. Theosophy is like socialism, which worked for the upliftment of everyone, and human communities based on an ethics of solidarity. Besant was of the opinions that for century the leader of Christians thought spoke about women as the necessary evil, and that the great saints of the Churches were among those who deprived women the most, \"Going against the teachings, of the giving sympathy, on the teaching of the Bible, I have levelled all the strengths of my brain and tongue, and I have exposed the history of the Christian Churches with unsparing hands, its persecution, its war on religion, its cruelty, its suppressions.\" In the section which is named “The evidence are unreliable” of her works on \"Christianity\", Annie Besant presented the case of why the Gospel are not authentic: \"before about the period of 180 A.D as there is no traces of FOUR gospels among the Christian. 6.6 SUMMARY • Earliest of biographers have been failing to find any intellect continuity in life of Annie Besant. They have been failing to do so, it seems to me that, because they have been operating, an implicit, with an objectivity of concepts of rationality that has been required them to see New Age thoughts as a flight from the reason. Because they have dismissed Besant theosophies that are irrational, the only continuity left with them to find them in her life were the emotional ones and the sort of need that might be explaining her abdications of reasons. In contrasts, I have been operating with weak 158 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
persons, contexts concept of rational that is opening up the possibility of our seeing New Age thoughts as reasonable in the contexts of certain prior commitments and problem. • Besant's life was representing conquer of truth within the intellectuals and social contexts of Victorian Britain. Her experiences of the widespread crisis of faith posing dilemma as she spent the rest of the life trying to resolve it. She sought the truths were understood as a scientific accounts of nature that were excluded the supernatural’s, and she had sought a way of sustained concern with social duties by showing the moral laws to be parts of nature. • The cultural and social pressures were encouraged by her towards seeking these things in certain type of movement. She was brewing pushed by her educational backgrounds towards the movements that are used as an accessible theories as on the basis for propaganda and agitation, and she was being pushed by the failures of her marriage towards movement that was encouraging unconventional ways of living. It was Besant crisis of faith which was moderated by specific social pressure that was leading her to secular, socialist and theosophies. • It was her thoughts which departed from cultural to social people and later from socialist to theosophies; do not represent completely breaking brought on by the arrivals of a new person in her life. They reprehensive of successive attempt towards answering the basic questions, with each of the new answers also bringing a response to the failing of the earlier ones. • From her perspective, as opposed to our, her socialism united the diverse demands of her earlier secular radicalism into scientific programmes, while her theosophy accounted for the new psychological facts that had been revealed by the spiritualists and that she could not account for from her secular socialism. From her perspectives, as opposing to our, her socialist natures was united the diverse demand of her earlier secular ridiculing into a single Scientifics programming, while her theosophies accounted for the new facts that had been revealing by the spiritualist and that she could not be accounting for from within her secular socialist nature. • Besant began turning to theosophy for conquering the truth, not as hiding emotional needs leading her to adopting irrational beliefs. Moreover, I have tried showing her intelligible quests for truths overlapping with that number of other who is changing belief are known to other. If her popularity, and to less extent the very diversities of her activity, making her a unique figures, the reasons that she had for turning in to each of the movement she did were sharing by many other within those movement. • Besant in her quest for the truth exemplifies many of the key characteristic of the intellectual lives of late Victorian of Britain. Her crisis in faith resembling that of many of her contemporary in order to canter on Biblical literacy and atonements. It was that the crisis of faiths that in different guise leading not only to her but others us as Aveling, Burrows, Brad laughs, as well as Charles Watts, for secularism. Aveling, Burrows, and 159 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
also Shaw providing example of secularist who are like her becoming socialist, while Olivier, Pease, Pod more, Wallas, and Web providing example of socialist getting inspired by evolutionary theories and ethical positivity. Again, Pease and Pod more are like her combining socialist and in interest in spirituality, while Ackroyd, Burrows, and number of plebeian radical like her approaching spiritualism from an overly secularist backgrounds. Again, burrows again, Despaired, Guest, and other moved from socialism towards theosophy, while number of people saw theosophies as natural extensions of their spiritualist people - Hume, Massey, Olcott, Sennett, as well as others. • The example that Besant is suggested is that of theosophy attracting people as of the way in which it was enabled to them to meet the Victorian crisis of faiths, and theosophies are a source of much of the New Age movements. Hence, we should be seeing the New Age movements act as reasonable responses to intellectual commitment and problem that have arisen in the Victorian ages. • New Age thoughts are not irrational alternatives to the rational secularising of Christian modern thoughts, rather than intelligible responses to the same intellectual commitments and problems giving rise to Victorians. • If most of the people preferred sciences to the New Age complexity, this is because of our prior theory and concern leading us to seeing the world in different ways. But, unless we are able to defend the problematic notions of the free of theory fact, we should not pretend to ourselves that our ways of seeing the world is unique and rational and rational for all the people are of no matter what their theory and concerns. We should not be able to set up our secular sciences as a universal, objectives form of rationalities against which we then can be dismissing New Age thoughts as emotional flights from the reasons. 6.7 KEYWORDS Vigour: .The intellect, physical strengths, psychological capacities for exerting. Evangelicalism: In Christianity, it is referring to the persons of church who talk about the gospels of Christianity for service to humanity. Atonement: The essential reconciling among sinful mankind as well as holy Gods. Compatible: Capacity of work, stays together and being part of systems and structures. Mystical: Spiritual kind of significance or symbolism relating to powers, wonders, spirits and many more. 160 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
6.8 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Explain in detail the important features of Annie Besant’s Autobiography in the diagram below Annie Besant's Autobiography 1)__________ 2) _________ 3) _________ 2. Discuss the difference between atheism and pantheism with specific reference to Annie Besant’s autobiography. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ 6.9 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions 161 Short Questions 1. Explain the character of Frank Besant. 2. ’Discuss the term ’Fabian Society’. 3. Annie Besant had to leave London. Why? 4. List the three main works of Annie Besant written during the period from 1920 to 1935. 5. Why was Annie Besant given the’ Doctor of Letters’ in Banaras Hindu University? Long Questions 1. Explain the roles and responsibility that Annie Besant had performed (such as reformer, political activist, president, secularist etc.).Explain with some examples. 2. Describe in detail the Home Rule Movement and its relevance in the India’s struggle for freedom with few points. 3. Discuss the idea of theosophies as well as Besant’s contribution to the same. 4. .List the literature elements that have been observed in the Autobiography of Annie Besant. Explain giving examples. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. The real surname of Annie Besant was _____________. a) Besant b) Wood c) Sood d) None of these 2. Annie was a supporter of _________ and __________ rules. a) British b) Indian c) Both British and Indian d) None of these 3. Annie was the leading speaker of ____________. a) Fabien Society b) Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) c) Both Fabien Society and Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) d) None of these 4. The first of the books published by Annie Besant was _______________. a) The Law of Population b) Why I Am a Socialist c) Karma d) The Political Status of Women 5. Besant had launched the All-India Home Rules League along with Tilak in the year ___________________. a) 1919 b) 1916 c) 1915 d) 1913 Answers: 1-(b), 2-(c), 3-(c), 4-(d), 5-(b) 6.10 REFERENCES Textbooks • Briggs, J. (2000). A Woman of Passion: The Life of E. Nesbit. New Amsterdam Books. • Chandrasekhar, S. (1981). A Dirty, Filthy Book: The Writings of Charles Knowlton and Annie Besant of Reproductive Physiology and Birth Control and an Account of the Brad laugh-Besant Trial. • Chandra, J. (2001). Annie Besant: from theosophy to nationalism. • Cole, M. (1961). The story of Fabian socialism (No. 47). Stanford University Press. 162 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
• D'arcy, F. (1977). The Malthusian League and the resistance to birth control propaganda in late Victorian Britain. Population Studies, 31(3), 429-448. • Grover, V., & Arora, R. (Eds.). (1993). Great Women of Modern India: Sucheta Kripa lani (Vol. 6). Deep and Deep Publications. Reference Books • Legg, S. (2010). An intimate and imperial feminism: Meliscent Shephard and the regulation of prostitution in colonial India. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28(1), 68-94. • Kumar, R., & Pruthi, R. (1981). Annie Besant's Rise to Power in Indian Politics, 1914-1917 (Vol. 3). Concept Publishing Company. • Pruthi, R., Devi, R., & Pruthi, R. (Eds.). (2003). Annie Besant: Founder of Home Rule Movement. Pointer publishers. • Manvell, R. (1976). The Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Brad laugh. Horizon Press. • Orosz, K. J. (2002). The Affaire des Sixas and Catholic Education of Women in French Colonial Cameroon, 1915-1939. French Colonial History, 1(1), 33-49. • Nethercot, A. H. (1961). The first five lives of Annie Besant. • Taylor, A., & Besant, A. (1992). A biography. Oxford. • Uglow, J. S., & Hendry, M. (1999). The Northeastern dictionary of women's biography. Upne. Websites • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Besant • https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Annie_Besant • https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-ecclesiastical- history/article/annie-besants-quest-for-truth-christianity-secularism-and-new-age- thought/11D6B6F4DA5C920040749DA413522677 • https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/annie- besant/AFDEE0319AE94AD8A8E22B6BF9827DE6 163 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
UNIT-7: RICHARD WRIGHT’S “BLACK BOY”, 164 CHAPTER 1 STRUCTURE 7.0 Learning Objectives 7.1 Introduction 7.2 About the Author 7.3 Analysis of the Text 7.4 Character Analysis 7.5 Plot 7.6 Themes 7.7 Motifs 7.8 Literary Elements 7.9 Critical Reviews 7.10 Summary 7.11 Keywords 7.12 Learning Activity 7.13 Unit End Questions 7.14 References 7.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, student will be able to: • Explain the work/s of Richard Wright. • Differentiate different types of autobiography. • Outline a personal autobiography. • Explore the art of literary writing. • Analyse the settings of the story. • Comprehend the themes of the story. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
7.1 INTRODUCTION The book Black Boy published in 1945 is written by Richard Write, an American author. Black Boy is a memoir of the author in which he gives details of his upbringing. His youth was spent in the South. Along with describing these days, he also details his move to Chicago where he became associated with the Communist Party and he also established his writing career. Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, In the book, the deep and honest depiction of racism in America, caught the readers interest and it got high acclaim across the United States. Black Boy was published after it was written in 1943.This was one of the works that marked the early years of Richard Wright’s writing career. The narrative of the book is autobiographical in parts and a number of anecdotes have roots in real experience of Wright’s childhood. Wright’s family spent majority of their life suffering poverty, hunger and illness. The moved around the country frequently in pursuit of making their lives better. The author clearly mentions that his childhood circumstances and his family are the main influences on his writing. In particular, the religious presence of Wright’s family through his entire childhood was a strong influence on his writing and religious outlook. Also, the author’s experience with poverty and hunger led to considerable discomfort which he also references frequently in the book. According to him the racial inequalities that he witnesses during his travels in the States, have influenced the narrative of the book the most. Wright learned the power of reading and writing as a means towards “new ways of looking and seeing” at a young age. When he was seventeen, he left Jackson to find work in Memphis where he became heavily involved in literary groups and publications and expanded on his use of words as the weapon “to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for the life that gnaws in us” that is seen in Black Boy. According to Wright, the reason he chose the experiences which he has written about in the book is his attempt to “look squarely at his life, to build a bridge of words between him and the world. 165 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
7.2 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Richard Wright, (born September 4, 1908, near Natchez, Mississippi, U.S.—died November 28, 1960, Paris, France), novelist and short-story writer who was among the first African American writers to protest white treatment of Blacks through two of his novels – Native Son published in 1940 and Black Boy published in 1945. He started a trend which was adopted by the other black writers as well after World War II. Wright’s family background was not very illustrious, his grandparents had been slaves, and his father abandoned his family when Richard was just five and growing up poor, he had to often shift houses living with relatives. He worked at a number of jobs before joining the northward migration, first to Memphis, Tennessee, and then to Chicago. In Chicago, after a stint at a few unskilled jobs he came across the Federal Writer’s Project through which he got an opportunity to write. In 1932 he became a member of the Communist Party, and in 1937 he went to New York City, where he became Harlem editor of the Communist Daily Worker. • Uncle Tom's Children (New York: Harper, 1938) (tales) • The Man Who Was Almost a Man (New York: Harper, 1940) (short tale) • Native Son (New York: Harper, 1940) (novel) • The Man Who Lived Underground (1942) (short tale) • The Outsider (New York: Harper, 1953) (novel) • Savage Holiday (New York: Avon, 1954)(novel) • The Long Dream (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958) (novel) • Eight Men (Cleveland and New York: World, 1961) (tales) • Lawd Today (New York: Walker, 1963) (novel) • Rite of Passage (New York: Harper Collins, 1994) (short tale) • A Father's Law (London: Harper Perennial, 2008) (unfinished novel) • The Man Who Lived Underground (Library of America, 2021) (novel) • Non-fiction: • How \"Bigger\" Was Born; Notes of a Native Son (New York: Harper, 1940) • Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States (New York: Viking, 1941) • Black Boy (New York: Harper, 1945) • Black Power (New York: Harper, 1954) • The Color Curtain (Cleveland and New York: World, 1956) • Pagan Spain (New York: Harper, 1957) • Letters to Joe C. Brown (Kent State University Libraries, 1968) • American Hunger (New York: Harper & Row, 1977) • Black Power: Three Books from Exile: \"Black Power\"; \"The Color Curtain\"; and \"White Man, Listen!\" (Harper Perennial, 2008) 166 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Special Achievements • The Spingarn Medal in 1941 from the NAACP[51] • Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939 • Story Magazine Award in 1938.[25] • Richard Wright was featured in a postage stamp in the US in April of 2009.This stamp costing 61 cents and two ounces was the 25the in the literary arts series. The stamp shows Richard's portrait in front of snow peaks tenements of South Chicago. A scene similar to the setting of his book Native Son.[52] • In 2010, Wright was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.[53] • In 2012, the Historic Districts Council and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, in collaboration with the Fort Greene Association and writer/musician Carl Hancock Rux, erected a cultural medallion at 175 Carlton Avenue Brooklyn, where Wright lived in 1938 and completed the novel, Native Son. [54] The plaque was inaugurated in a public ceremony arranged by the group which was graced by the presence of playwright Lynn Nottage and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. About the Book Black Boy marks the culmination of Richard Wright's best-known period, his so-called Marxist period. As such, it must be treated separately from the books that followed. It could be possible that Richard would have written his autobiography detailing his childhood in a similar manner some more years later and at that time his perspectives might have been different because of the influence of the transition in his political philosophy. Black Boy is deeply American and also it is a vivid chronicle of black life. The book was written during a phase in Wright’s life when he was a fervent Communist and the narrative explores the theory of human behaviour moulded by environmental factors. Still embedded in its fatalism is the author’s eventual escape from a rigid set of rules just to survive. The environment during Richard’s boyhood did not have elements that could allow for a personality like his to blossom freely. Both the white and the black social structures conspired against personal freedom. He was also treated in a very harsh manner at home so that he does not have to experience such treatment outside of home. His entire family including his parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles enforced the code of conduct that was handed over to them by the white power structure: The core belief of this code was that black children must never strive to be more than black children; if they fail to comply then they will suffer a terrible fate, but their families will as well. This way of life leads to a kind of society which has been called \"pre-individualistic.\" This pre individualistic behaviour is forced on one group by the members of another community. In the context of the Black Boy, the elite southerners discriminated against people based on race. This led to the oppressed losing their identities. Still this discrimination even impacted the dynamics within the oppressed group. In these communities individualism was discouraged by asking children to start obeying the oppressors from a young age. The premise 167 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
for this insistence was that if a child does not conform to the ways of the oppressors, they will put not only themselves but even their community in danger. This state of pre individualism existed in the black communities which recently got freedom from slavery. The only silver lining was that these circumstances brought the black community very close and strong bonds started getting formed within the community. However, to some extent this bond got disturbed when some sections of the black community migrated to the North and the cities existed to escape from the life at home which they found intolerable. The author was not accepting this repression from the white as well as from his own family since his early days. This alienation of Richard Wright forms the main theme of the book. His protest springs from what the Spanish writer Unamuno calls \"the tragic sense of life\"; that is, it is more than a record of personal abuses. During the narrative, the protest takes on more than one meaning both as personal anguish as well as a metaphysical cry of agony on the state of humanity. Tragedy is fallout of the attempt to go beyond one’s present conditions and Black Boy captures this perspective of tragedy and beyond. The tone of the book is what sets it apart as a noteworthy book in the American literature. The tone is that of Blues – ironic and lyrical. It is like a song that follows the reality of tragedy that is pure in its form. It is accepting of the circumstances and is blue to create art from suffering. Ralph Ellison has written that \"as a form, the Blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.\" There could be no better way to describe Black Boy and its unique voice in American letters. 7.3 ANALYSIS OF THE TEXT The book ‘Black Boy’ brings to light he theory of human behaviour that is moulded by circumstances. Yet, innate in its fatalism is the author-narrator’s ultimate escape from a rigid set of rules for survival. Since his boyhood, Wright’s independent thinking personality was not allowed to develop freely not just by the white community but also by his own family. It was as if the white social structure and the blacks conspired against his personal freedom. In order to prevent his being treated harshly in the outside world, his family meted out brutal punishments to him at home. Richard’s entire family including his parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts strictly enforced the code of conduct passed on to them by the power structures of the white community: children from black community must never aim to achieve more than their status; if they do not conform, they not only them but their families will also suffer. This way of life leads to a kind of society which has been called “pre-individualistic.” List of Characters • Richard Wright The author-narrator, the \"black boy\" of the title. • Ella Wright is Richard's mother. Though she is dedicated to her children, her illness keeps her from taking care of them. 168 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
• Nathaniel Wright, Also called Nathan is Richard's father. He is a victim of the Great Migration and abandons his family during the early days of Richard's childhood. • Alan Wright is Richard's sibling. Most of his life Alan lives with Aunt Maggie in Detroit. • Grandpa is Richard's mother, Ella’s father. He is a veteran of the Union army and was disabled. • Granny is Richard's maternal grandmother. She is a seventh day Adventist. And the one with whom Richard and Ella had spent most of their days. • Aunt Addie is Richard's aunt and Ella's sister. Addie is a religious teacher and teaches Richard at school but at home she acts like his archenemy. • Aunt Maggie is also Ella's sister. Richard likes a lot because she has a sympathetic attitude and is independent minded. • Uncle Hoskins is Aunt Maggie's deceased husband who gets killed by the whites. • Professor Mathews is Aunt Maggie's second husband. His whereabouts always remain a mystery since he is chased away by the whites. • Uncle Clark is a childless and cold man who lives in Greenwood. He takes Richard to live with him. • Aunt Jody is wife to Uncle Clark. As she is very strict by nature, Richard does not like her. • Uncle Thomas for Richard becomes a symbol of all that is hypocritical and weak in a black man's character. • Miss Simon runs an orphanage where Richard stays briefly. She fails in her attempt to win Richard's trust. • Griggs is one of Richard's classmates and represents a typical black boy. • Reynolds and Peas are two co-workers who are white racists. • Mr. Crane He is a white Yankee and one of Richard's employers. He is the one who advises him to go to the North. • Mrs. Moss Richard used to rent her place. She was kind but had a suffocating personality. • Bess She is Mrs. Moss’s daughter who wanted to marry Richard. • Shorty He is Richard's friend who works as an elevator operator. And gets himself humiliated every day at the hands of the whites for some money. • Mr. Olin He is a white foreman in the optical house who tries to create a rift between Richard and Harrison. • Harrison He is a black man who works for a rival optical house. He is used a pawn by whites to put Richard in trouble. • Mr. Falk He is an Irish catholic who works with Richard and helps him get access to library books. 169 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The book marks the culmination of the best-known period for Richard Wright – the Marxist period as referred by him. .It could be possible that Richard would have written his autobiography detailing his childhood in a similar manner some more years later and at that time his perspectives might have been different because of the influence of the transition in his political philosophy. Black Boy is deeply American and also it is a vivid chronicle of black life. The book was written by Wright at a time when he was a fervent Communist. The narrative explores the theory of human behaviour that is moulded by circumstance. Yet, innate in its fatalism is the author-narrator's ultimate escape from a rigid set of rules for survival. Since his boyhood, Wright’s independent thinking personality was not allowed to develop freely not just by the white community but also by his own family. It was as if the white social structure and the blacks conspired against his personal freedom. In order to prevent his being treated harshly in the outside world, his family meted out brutal punishments to him at home. Richard’s entire family including his parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts strictly enforced the code of conduct passed on to them by the power structures of the white community: children from black community must never aim to achieve more than their status; if they do not conform, they not only them but their families will also suffer. This way of life leads to a kind of society which has been called \"pre-individualistic.\" This pre individualistic behaviour is forced on one group by the members of another community. In the context of the Black Boy, the white southerners discriminated against people based on race. This led to the oppressed losing their identities. Still this discrimination even impacted the dynamics within the oppressed group. In these communities individualism was discouraged by asking children to start obeying the oppressors from a young age. The premise for this insistence was that if a child does not conform to the ways of the oppressors, they will put not only themselves but even their community in danger. This state of pre individualism existed in the black communities which recently got freedom from slavery. The only silver lining was that these circumstances brought the black community very close and strong bonds started getting formed within the community. However, to some extent this bond got disturbed when some sections of the black community migrated to the North and the cities to escape from the life at home which they found intolerable. The author was not accepting this repression from the white as well as from his own family since his early days. This alienation of Richard Wright forms the main theme of the book. His protest springs from what the Spanish writer Unamuno calls \"the tragic sense of life\"; that is, it is more than a record of personal abuses. During the narrative, the protest takes on more than one meaning both as personal anguish as well as a metaphysical cry of agony on the state of humanity. Tragedy is fallout of the attempt to go beyond one’s present conditions and Black Boy captures this perspective of tragedy and beyond. The tone of the book is what sets it apart as a noteworthy book in the American literature. The tone is that of Blues – ironic and lyrical. It is like a song that follows the reality of tragedy that is pure in its form. It is accepting of the circumstances and is blue to create art from suffering. Ralph Ellison has written that \"as a form, the Blues is an autobiographical 170 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.\" There could be no better way to describe Black Boy and its unique voice in American letters. Chapter 1 As a four-year-old boy, Richard is ordered by his mother to stay quietly in his grandmother’s house in Natchez Mississippi. But with nothing to occupy himself with, Richard starts toying with the broom, lights the stray straw in the fireplace to see them burn. He sets the curtains on fire for the fun of it, but this proves to be dangerous as the fire grows out of control and burns down the house. Because of the fear of punishment Richard keeps hiding in the burning house till he is rescued by his father. Upon escaping from the house, his mother punishes him so brutally that he becomes unconscious and is in a delusional fever for some days to come. Wright then muses, in a stretch of intensely descriptive writing, on his fantastical and sentimental reflections upon the world around him. Once Richard recovers, his family move to Memphis where his father takes up the job of a night porter for a drugstore. His duty hours demand he stays up at night and gets to sleep in the day. One morning when Richard and his brother find a kitten and start playing with it, they disturb Nathan’s sleep. In frustration, Nathan shouts, “Kill that damn thing!” Even through Richard realises that his father does not want them to kill the kitten in literal terms, he feels resentment because of his father’s domineering behaviour. And so, he decides to follow the orders and kills the kitten. At this, Nathan becomes very angry, but Richard reminds him of his orders and feels a sense of victory. His mother is very angry at Richard and she punishes him by asking him to go in the night and bury the kitten all alone. This makes him afraid. Soon afterwards Richards’ father abandons them for another woman and leaves them to fend for themselves. They have to face constant hunger. One day when unable to bear hunger, Richard begs his mother for food; she tells him that his father has left them. On hearing this Richard makes an unpleasant connection between hunger and his father. Once, when Ella sends Richard out to buy groceries, a gang of boys rob him. Richard’s mother sends him to the grocery a second time and again Richard is robbed by the same gang. The third time, Ella gives Richard a stick and tells him that she will whip him if he comes back without the groceries. Richard is afraid of unleashing violence, but he manages to fight the gang with the stick and manages to beat many of the boys. After the attack, those boys go back home and complain to their parents who then in turn come out of their houses to threaten Richard. But in return the now emboldened Richard tells the parents that they will also get beaten up if they come after him. As a mischief, Richard hides with the other boys behind the row of open back outhouses and watches while people relieve themselves. Ella comes to know of this and to keep Richard out of trouble, starts taking her along when she goes to cook in a white household. Richard abhors seeing the white family eat the plentiful food available to them while he himself goes hungry. Soon, Richard discovers another way to keep him amused by peeping into the saloon nearby and observing the antics of the drunkards. One day, a customer pulls him into the saloon and has him drink. He is also paid money if he repeats curse words. Richard becomes obsessed with this activity and soon becomes a drunkard who is just 171 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
six years old. Ella intervenes and punishes him so that he stops drinking. She also pleads with him, but all this has no effect on Richard. As a final step to make Richard stop drinking, Ella leaves him and his brother in the care of an old black woman who keeps a close watch on them. This monitoring by the old woman, makes Richard lose interest in alcohol. Gradually Richard starts to learn how to read by going through children’s books. He also learns how to count to hundred from a delivery man who is benevolent enough to spend an hour teaching him. Soon, Richard’s curiosity about things around him starts increasing. He starts getting aware of the complicated relationship between the white and the black communities. But is not able to discuss this topic openly due to the conservative attitudes of the other people. . He gets more confused regarding the difference between whites and blacks as he realises that his grandmother though is a black woman, looks white as per the colour of her skin. His notions on human relationships are so naïve at the beginning that when he gets to know that a white man beat a black boy, he assumes that the white man must have been the boy’s father as he believed that only parents have the right to beat children when needed. Ella tries to correct Richard’s misunderstanding in reading the situation, but she also is not too vocal in discussing the real issue .This leaves Richard even more confused about the white community and in particular about the reason why a white man would beat up a black boy. As Richard begins first grade of school, he gets so terrified on his first day in school that he is unable to even speak. During the break, a group of some older boys tell Richard the meaning of the curse words that he had was paid to repeat at the saloon. On learning the meanings of these words, Richard becomes so eager to share his newfound knowledge with others that he starts writing those curse words on all the windows available in his neighbourhood. A horrified Ella makes him clean all the windows while the neighbours witness this with both amusement and pity. Ella invites the church preacher from the local black church for dinner. She plans to offer him fried chicken. Richard waits in anticipation for the fancy meal, but Ella denies him fried chicken until he finishes his soup. But he is unable to do so as he is very excited for the chicken. As Richard watches the preacher enjoy the fried chicken, he gets more and more upset. So much so that he eventually runs away from the room screaming that the preacher would soon finish the entire meal. While the preacher takes Richard’s action in good humour, Ella is not pleased with Richard’s actions and as a punishment does not offer him any more dinner. In order to receive adequate child support, Ella sues Nathan. But Nathan is able to convince the Jury that he has provided her whatever he could. Richard prefers to not meet or think about his father, though he does not hate him. The ensuing poverty, forces Ella to put Richard and his brother in an orphanage for an entire month. During their stay there, the children are given two miserable meals a day and have to tend to the lawn by pulling out grass by hand. Miss Simon, the director of the orphanage takes a liking to Richard and asks him to help her in the office in blotting envelopes. However, one day for no evident reason Richard freezes with fear in Moss Simon’s office and is unable to do any work. On seeing this, Miss Simon gets angry 172 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
and asks Richard to leave from her office. That night Richard decides to run away from the orphanage. But after escaping, he loses his way and meets a white policeman subsequently. The first reaction that Richard has on seeing the white policemen is of fear as he has heard stories where white policemen beat black boys. In stark contrast, the policeman appears to be friendly and brings Richard back to the orphanage. After his return, Miss Simon lashes Richard as a punishment for running away. In the coming days, Ella decides that she and her children should move to her sister’s house in Elaine(Arkansas).She asks Richard to leave the orphanage and go ask his father for the money that they need for the journey. As seems plausible, Nathan refuses and claims that he has no money. He is also amused learning that his children are going hungry. The nonchalant attitude of Nathan and his mistress irk Richard and Ella and an altercation ensues. Post which Nathan offers a nickel to Richard which he refuses even though at heart he wants to accept the money. At the end of the meeting, Richard vows to see his father next after twenty-five years. After all these years when Richard does meet Nathan, the latter is old, poor and a toothless sharecropper. Seeing his father in this state makes Richard feel pity for him. He reflects that while his father was not able to make a success of his life in the city, Richard had fared much better and had turned around his life coming from humble beginnings. Even though the book’s narrative is primarily autobiographical, many a times, the book does not seem to be an autobiography in the conventional sense. For instance, after Richard describes his almost fatal illness, he immediately gets into a detailed prose on his emotional response to the natural environment. Phrases such as “the tantalizing melancholy in the tingling scent of burning hickory wood” and “the aching glory in masses of clouds burning gold and purple from an invisible sun” shift the focus of the narrative away from concrete facts and toward more nebulous depictions of Richard’s imaginative mind. All these phrases give life to inanimate things by exhibiting strong subjective feelings that are mostly associated with works of fiction and poetry. Since Black bot contains such artistic passages along with biographical passages, it is terms as an autobiographical novel. Similar to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Richard Wright through Black Boy creates a balance between fiction by describing the events of his early childhood. A central concern that Wright mentions in Black Boy is the subtle nature of racism prevalent in the States. At a cursory level, this might not be evident in Chapter 1.Instances when Richard is fearful of the white policemen and the one when he resents the white family that is his mother’s employer contain no outright conflicts which are racial in nature. In a similar context while Richard tries to learn the reason behind the beating of the black boy by the white policemen, he is unable to find the cause. This only exhibits Richard’s curiosity regarding race which he is finding difficult to quench. Still, in Chapter 1, Richard tries to portray racism in a subtle manner. His encounters with the white policemen and the white family points towards an association between white people and injustices in the society. This seems very detrimental as Richard views this association as something that is a natural order. 173 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The unanswered questions that Richard has about race reveal that the society in which Richard lives not only comprises of whites, but it fosters an environment where the blacks also contribute to making the situation worse. In a racist society comprising of oppressors and the oppressed, the former fears the curiosity of the latter as questioning is a tool that can remove the cloak from the false foundation from which the oppressor functions. Thus, the oppressor can go all out to stifle this curiosity. In extreme cases of oppression, even the oppressed discourage curiosity among their own ranks and unknowingly help the oppressed. This is what Richard family has had being doing regarding his curiosity. In a broader sense, the black community often discourages anyone who wants to raise his voice fearing that the rest of them will fall into trouble. Chapter 1 reveals the unpredictable behaviour of Richard – passive aggressive/ over reactive. Some instances giving a glimpse of this pattern are – Richard burning down the house and getting thrashed as a consequence when his parents ask him to remain silent, Richard killing a kitten and as a result angering his parent to rebel against his father’s overbearing nature, Richard fiercely attacking the gang and threatening his parents to overcome his fear of the gang of boys, his quiet fascination with the saloon converting into alcoholism. And finally, Richard channels his love for knowledge on neighbourhood windows even though at school he is unable to express any enthusiasm to collect knowledge. All these instances show that Richard was unable to maintain rapport with the society and even with his family, friends as per general expectations. Seen from another angle, the punishment meted out to Richard by his peers is very much like their disengagement with his curiosity concerning racism. Richard’s unpredictable behaviour was also considered a dangerous trait for the oppressed in a racial society. Richard amazes by acquiring reading and counting skills. He exhibits relative ease and intellect in acquiring these skills. For example, he leans how to count to hundred in just an hour. Also, more importantly, Richard acquires these skills on his free will and is not forced by anyone to do so. This clear indication of Richard’s intellectual prowess lays the foundation for his future. Chapter 1 Analysis The very first chapter of the book itself narrates the themes and conflicts related to the story. Readers need not look for symbolic meaning as the author narrates his emotions in a lot if detail. The reader can get a clear picture just by being sensitive to his emotions and understanding his circumstances. As most of these negative experiences take place during the author’s childhood, he is too young to fathom their impact on him as an adult. However, the orderly narrative provided by the author minimises the chaos. In the beginning of the book itself, Richard speaks of distance by viewing himself in third person by speaking of the four-year-old boy sitting in his grandmother’s house in Mississippi. As his grandmother keeps unwell, his mother had warned him many a times to remain quiet but because of his rebellious personality he cannot comply and exhibits his rebellion by burning 174 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
down the house. The reader realises the true nature of the narrator not just by the description of the scene but also by his objective tone and cool demeanour. It becomes fairly clear that he very well understands himself as a child. The writing serves as a telescope: it is the medium by which the past is clarified. He is used to being punished by his mother but sometimes gets surprised at the harshness of the punishment. In one instance she punishes him so harshly that he almost dies. He becomes unconscious and starts hallucinating about the udders of white cows hanging over him. He is petrified that the liquid coming out of these udders will cause him harm. This seems like a psychological reaction to his mother’s beating which was ruthless and makes him hate life symbolised as her milk This incident establishes his rebellious nature and the strong headedness which are unmoved by any amount of punishment. . It seems as if such harsh beating by his mother has an effect that is opposite of what is expected. Rather than complying he is no more afraid of surviving beyond the limits of human endurance. Immediately it is made clear that as per the complex structure of the pre individualistic society, seemingly opposites like cruelty and kindness, reward and punishment, love and hate go hand in hand. Despite the harsh punishments that his mother gives him, he is sure of her love for him and even though he does not demonstrate hi affections, the mother- son love is something that he takes for granted. The theme of the book is based on his perversion of this love because of the upsetting influences of oppression and slavery. After moving to Memphis, the entire family faces horrifying circumstances. Richard’s father becomes aloof and violent. He even makes Richard kill a kitten because of a careless command. Soon Richard realises the gravity of his actions and his horror is amplified by the superstitious nature of his mother. She fills him with guilt for taking away a life and warns him of dire consequences. All these events hint at Richard’s future reactions to his later life. For example, even though Richard is unaware of the long-term effects on his psyche of his father’s behaviour, he is still responding to the effects in this case by killing the kitten. His father feels the pinch as a black man who has been uprooted from his rural setting into the urban landscape and he feels like a misfit. This makes his frustrated and leads to his impatience and anger. Richard has a similar reaction to him. If his father behaves badly, Richard’s behaviour will be even worse. Proving the extent of Richard’s aggression. Throughout the book, Richard models his relationship around this behaviour. He exhibits intolerance for cowardice and does not shy away from humiliating others with his masculinity. He abhors men who allow the whites to castrate them. Like his father the away his mother punishes him by creating a fear of God in him and by beating him harshly has deep impact on Richard’s behaviour in the years to come. The fear of God creates an image on an oppressor who is as merciless as the white society. This image of God seems like a tyrant who demands 175 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
obedience in absolute terms and punishes nonconformity instantly. Sometimes Ella used to mention God and whites interchangeably to drive home the necessity for him to \"stay in his place.\" Whenever Richard’s mother is unable to explain something to him, she gives God different meanings to make things more understandable for Richard. He is always referred to get a solution. In the circumstances that Richard is in, God becomes a fallible figure as he is supposed to take care of the hungry but when He cannot do so he fails. Eventually, Richard realises that his father and then his mother are the bread winners and not God. The discussion around food holds importance as during Richard’s early childhood when a preacher comes to his house for dinner and finishes off the food that Richard had been eagerly waiting for, the image of the preacher as a representative of God aids in further loss of Richard’s faith in God. The reality of Richard’s hunger exists throughout the narrative and also leads to him getting alienated. Richard starts to feel constant hunger especially in relation to his father abandoning his family. Since now his mother has to go to work, he is left to fend for himself in the Memphis neighbourhood. Once he realises that he can mete out as much violence as he received, Richard feels liberated. When Richard is six-year-old he is unable to make sense of racial differences. He believes that his grandmother can be called white because that is her natural skin colour. Any other distinction does not seem to make sense to him. Leading life in streets transforms him into a drunkard who hangs around a saloon and begs from pedestrians. His mother prays for him, beats him an eventually puts him under the care of an old woman. During this phase of his life, he starts realising a hunger for knowledge and also a heightened awareness of the distinctions between blacks and whites. All these instances indicate towards the emergence of a much larger revelation since his consciousness is continuously developing. His mother’s influence on him is very strong and with time he starts appreciating her insistence on him becoming tough and independent. More than anything, Richard wants to assert his masculinity under all circumstances, this could be during his exploration of the city or in the streets or in the saloon. While exerting his masculinity, he is subconsciously always aware of the imminent castration of the black men and the black boys. In parallel, Richard increasingly becomes fascinated with the secrets of the drunkards. Richard narrates the frustration of his curiosity with the same cool objectivity as the other humiliations that he goes through. Despite the sources of information which are sometimes his mother or sometimes even the white people, the more he tries to understand the truth the more his misunderstandings increase. Richard’s world seems hostile, and he starts counteracting hostility with hostility. Sometimes this manifests in the form of shyness. Some of such instances have been his inability to perform in school; and him freezing into inaction in Miss Simon’s office at the orphanage. Gradually he learns to doubt other people putting him at risk of becoming more like the other members of his family who are unable to give or even respond to love. Only when he becomes aware of the grave consequences of a suspicious nature that he can rid himself of its shackles. As he witnesses his father scraping before a white judge to avoid 176 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
feeding his own family, Richard gets a glimpse of what he might turn into. This image of his father’s makes Richard feel extreme repulsion especially when his father shares laughs with the new woman in his life expressing sensuality but no love. Later life he is able to forgive his father’s misconduct and is able to view him as a mere prisoner of his circumstances. But as a boy he is unable to tolerate his father’s behaviour. The chapter concludes with a summary of Wright’s philosophy on both humanity and the environment. This vision of the society is what forms a framework for the entire book, Richard’s entire childhood and for the people associated with him. His father’s life gives him a peek into history, and he learns about the present by witnessing the continued ill effects of slavery on his generation. The humiliation in the lives of blacks that began with slavery did not end with emancipation. Black people still tolerated this humiliation albeit in the absence of any civilised structure in the society. They had left civilisation in Africa when they moved to the New World as slaves. They were forced to live at the most elemental level. For Richard, his father was representative of the ill effects that slavery has had at an individual level. In the coming years, Richard forgives his father for abandoning his family, but this forgiveness is not like a Christian forgiving but rather it is because of Marxist reasons embedded in history. This Marxist attitude is fundamental to the entire book and forms the basis for the Wright School of Literature. Naturalism is the aesthetic form the attitude takes because it excludes any preconceived ideas of morality. Though the narrative, Richard only presents facts so that they can speak for themselves in a manner that history does. 7.4 CHARACTER ANALYSIS Richard Wright The core of Richards’ personality is his profound belief in his own capabilities and worth. This belief sometimes makes him stubborn, disrespectful of authority and headstrong. This attitude of his is not appreciated even by his family and the section who wants his to live a degraded life feels that he deserves the miseries that he is going through. Since, everyone who is part of his life in some way thinks that his behaviour is not acceptable; he is always on the receiving end of emotional isolation and physical violence in varying measures. Even though Richard’s demeanour is insecure a, inferior and full of shame in front of the whites, his punishing childhood has strengthened his resolve to succeed even more. Moreover, the difficulties and isolation of his childhood heighten his imagination and his thirst for knowledge. He wants to add meaning to his life by writing about his journey. As an author, Wright makes the reader realise the various shades of his personality through the narrative of the book. In his young days, he finds it difficult to accept that he has inherent flaws because of his colour, intellectual curiosity and the societal norms and his lack of religion. However, the picture of Richard’s personality that emerges is that of a person who is strong willed and is agreeable to live his life on his own principles despite of the consequences. This 177 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
strong character seems to be in stark contrast with his status in the society as a poor and black man. His isolation from his family and the society begins since his early life and the responsibility to educate himself in entirely on him. In order to amass education, he uses his experiences from his stay in the sharecroppers homes or his life as a black in Jin Crow South or his cramped existence in the apartments of the Depression era while in Chicago, to gain insights. As Richard’s character is developing, we also see him imbibing negative traits like lying, stealing and violence. These instances are mentioned in the book. In a true sense he becomes a victim of his poor upbringing and in this state, he get contaminated by the negative effects of the oppressive forces existing in the society at that time. Despite these negative attributes, Richard preserves his concern for humanity both at an individual level and at a universal level. He in some ways overcomes the isolating, negative and weak aspects of his character and environment to channelize care for the people he meets. This hold no more importance as he is an outsider who inherently feels no connection to the other people but still tries to surpass these feelings to become a caring person. There is lack of equilibrium in Richard’s personality and at different points in time different traits become dominant. However, because the character of Richard Wright so convincingly contains all these traits, albeit in imbalance, he has a self-contradictory appeal that transcends the simple biographical facts of his life. The cause of Richard’s difficult relationship with his mother can be traced back to his childhood days when at times Ella beat him so harshly that he nearly died. This strife in their relationships continues throughout the early years of Richard’s life as given the circumstances of his family, his mother is the only authority figure in his life who tries to discipline him. Even though, Ella is sometimes harsh towards her children, she is a devoted mother and wants to make their lives a success after she is abandoned by her husband Nathan. Ella Wright Unlike any of the main characters in the book, Ella is very affectionate and tolerant towards Richard. For instance, when Richard publishes “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” white his rest of the family criticises him, Ella is compassionate towards Richard and is concerned that his writing might cause trouble for him when looking for a job. In a similar instance, though Ella is weak, she walks to give Richard a hug when she comes to know that he has got a job against wishes of Granny and Addie. Thus, suggesting that she sincerely wants her son to become successful. Most of the meaning of Ella’s character is shown through her illness which is a direct result of her early life that was unfair, overwhelming and unpredictable. By Chapter 3, Ella’s illness becomes a symbol of everything that is wrong in the world as per Richard. He believes that once the universe becomes just, only the unfriendly and ill meaning people will get sick while people like Ella will enjoy vitality and strength to go about earning a living and raising her children without any obstacles. But in the real world, Ella is sick and contrasting her condition 178 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
with his picture of a just world, Richard concludes that the universe is unjust. He sees a lot of similarities between the injustices meted out to Ella and the sufferings that he has been through in the form of hunger, poverty, lack of formal education and the mere fact that he was a black boy in Jim Crow South. All these misfortunes taken together constitute a big obstacle that Richard needs to overpower in order to live the life of his dreams. Granny, Addie, Tom, Pease, Reynolds, Olin, Ed Green, Buddy Nealson This is the list of characters that play supporting roles in the narrative. This list might seem inconsistent but many of the members of Richard’s family cannot be clubbed with white racist characters like Reynolds and Pease because of multiple reasons. Similar is the case with city dwelling characters like Ed Green and Buddy Nealson who are black communists. While from Richards’s perspective, all these characters belong together, but their inflexible attitudes towards things and their refusal to accommodate the independent minded opinions of people like Richard, make them misfits. Granny and Addie constantly attack Richard because he fails to abide by the religious aspects of being a good Seventh Day Adventist. For Tom, Richard goes against his belief that the young should always obey the elders even if in some instances the elders are unjustified. The whites Pease, Reynold and Olin treat Richard inhumanly as they believe that the purpose being the existence of black people is to serve the whites and be a sport for them. The characters Ed Green and Buddy Nealson start vilifying Richard when they realise that he is marching to a different tune as they strongly believe that the Communists should unquestioningly comply with the Party. In summary, all these characters refuse to accept Richard’s individuality at all costs. The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Self-Reliance that “[s]ociety everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” in that the “base doctrine of the majority of voices usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul.” Taken together, these characters represent the multitude of ways in which society “is in conspiracy against” Richard. 7.5 PLOT The book, Black Boy is an autobiography written by Richard Wright in which he narrates his early life during his difficult years while living in Jim Crow South starting from 1912 till 1927.Every chapter conveys his painful and confusing memories which led him to understand himself better as a black man and as an American writer. Even though, Richard uses adult voice for taking the plot ahead, every chapter however represents the perspective of a child. Still, the narrative is told with so much honesty and fervour that there is no margin to doubt any of the memories mentioned by Richard. By the end of the novel when Richard covers the phase of his life as a nineteen-year-old, the narration takes up that perspective. 179 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The novel’s story stats when a four-year-old Richard burns down his grandmother’s house which is situated in Jackson Mississippi. He is punished by his mother so brutally that he nearly loses his life. He eventually recoups but this incident makes capable of enduring any suffering. The family then moves to Memphis, Tennessee, where Richard's father eventually deserts the family. It is here in Memphis that Richard comes face to face with racism by witnessing the world around him as well as the behaviour of his family members in the presence of whites. He also develops alienation towards God and religion and instead a start believing in a form of love for the natural world. During his growing up phase, Richard starts realising that he might easily get into a spiral where his actions trap him as the black men have been getting trapped for since a long time, generation after generation. When his mother falls ill, Richard moves her back to his grandmother’s house for care. There are opportunities for breaking out of his preordained life and avoid becoming trapped in it. He also becomes aware of the power of religion to bypass skin colour and unite people. He also sees prayer as a means to add value to life. Though he is unable to connect with God while praying he starts getting ideas for his writing. By the time Richard turns 12, he has got alienated from most of his family and sees himself as an outsider, a role that he later finds out is shared by many of the American writers about whom he comes to know. In the following years, he excels in his studies at school but has formed no bonds with his classmates. After some time, he lands a few part time jobs but there also he feels detached from his co-workers and supervisors. Since, Richard’s behaviour is different from any typical black male, his community tries very hard to shame him into conformity, but he opposes them .By the time Richard is 16, he develops an ambition to become a writer but also realises that with his background it might be a challenge to achieve his goals in the South. So, he decides to move to the North. Once he graduates, and fails at another job, he steals money in order to escape to the North. He gets very uncomfortable with his crime as it is as per his extended family’s expectations of him. He is also ashamed because he himself is part of a spiral of crime which only brings in more sufferings in the world. And Richard wants to be associated with social good and not with the social ills. With the stolen money, Richard moves to Memphis where life is not very different from what it was in Jackson. After an especially degrading incident at a new job, Richard throws himself into reading novels and other works by American and European writers. He eventually realises that his destiny lies in becoming a writer and so he flees to Chicago. Though as a person he will still be attached to the South, but he is determining to make his life better and so his fleeing might seem like his revenge on the social system in the South. Richard's autobiography is continued in American Hunger, which was published nearly two decades after his death in 1960. Black Boy and American Hunger were published together for the first time in 1991. 180 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
7.6 THEMES The Insidious Effects of Racism As an issue, racism has been written about in many literary works, but Black Boy explores racism not just s an odious belief but also as a problem that is deeply intertwined in the very fabric of the society. According to the portrayal by Wright, people like Pease and Olin are evil people but in a chilling manner, he also adds a perspective that shows them just as participants in a huge drama of fear, oppression and hatred. In Richard’s view the issue with racism is not just its existence but it being so deep rooted in the American culture that it seems difficult to fathom that racism can be uprooted without causing major damage to the culture itself. Black boy has elements which are over and above an autobiography as it represents the culmination of Richard’s passion to observe and then reflect on the racist world that exists around him. Throughout the entire narrative, we see that Richard observes the damaging effects of racism on not just the relationships between whites and blacks but also on the relationships among the blacks. Wright entitles his work Black Boy primarily for the emphasis on the word “black”: this is a story of childhood, but at every moment we are acutely aware of the colour of Wright’s skin. America is not a place where Richard is just growing up rather, he is growing up black. This is so deep found that as Richard is growing up, he is unable to dissociate himself with the label of ‘black boy’. The Individual versus Society Richard is fiercely independent, and he keeps maintain that his desire is to unite with the society on his own terms rather than be forced into a category as per societal wishes. In order to stand steadfast with this belief, Richard has to fight against the dominance of the white culture in the South and the North along with struggling against his very own black culture. The book clearly shows that both the white and the black cultures have no idea as to how they can handle an intelligent, strong willed black man who has self-respect. Richard comes to realise that his options are only – to conform or to get destroyed. And he is not satisfied with either of the options and wants to create his own middle path. Richard’s defiance of these options takes many different forms throughout the novel. In his early days while he is living in Granny’s house, he defies her insistence on spirituality. At school, he defies the principal when he is asked to either read an official speech or forget about graduating. In Chicago, he defies these options when the Communist Party asks him to either comply with what they say or get expelled. In this final instance, Richard creates his own path by leaving the Party as per his own wishes as opposed to conforming. Thus, Richard has always gone against the call to conform. His rejection of conformity creates strife and difficulties for Richard not because he is cynical towards either people but because of his approach. Even though Richard is independent minded, he wants to have a connection with others on a spiritual level. Hence, as an artist, Richard struggles but still wants to display compassion even towards communities who do not want to acknowledge his existence. 181 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The Redemptive Power of Art In an instance when Ella as a schoolteacher whispers the plot of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives to Richard, he becomes so transfixed that he says that the story has evoked for him what can be termed as his first “total emotional response.” A similar trend continues through the book and many experiences prove enlightening for Richard and make him feel alive. He starts appreciating the purpose, meaning and vivid textures of his life. Some of these experiences include him hearing the Bluebeard story, him reading horror magazines and science fiction, him writing the story of Indian maiden, him discovering H.L.Mencken, him writing “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” and finally him deciding to use his writing to advance the cause for which the Communist Party stands. All these experiences are rooted in the use of his imaginative faculties either in the form of reading or writing. This further reinforces his belief that creative pursuits enhance the meaning of life. This is a core idea in the history of philosophy, first articulated by Schopenhauer, refined by Nietzsche, and then taken up by the existentialists, with whom Wright grew fascinated. In fact, his writing of Black Boy seen singularly, shows that through this novel, Richard is attempting to bring in order to his life experiences by using the power of creativity. 7.7 MOTIFS Hunger The frequent reminders of hunger in the book not only refer to the hunger for food but also mention the hunger for things like engagement in political and social issues, artistic expression and literature. Even though Richard is faced with physical hunger in a number of instances, his eventual conclusion is that there are other problems in the world that are graver than hunger for food. He believes that more than a cure for physical illness, the world needs a solution to bring about unity. The need for connection is a very important requirement for the world at large. His hunger for food is just a fallout of the inhuman and brutal life that Richard is forced to live in his early days. Throughout the narrative Richard expresses a strong desire to create better life for himself by connecting with the world. Just as hunger for foods creates the instinct to eat, similarly the other forms of hunger give rise to instincts through the book. The hunger that Richard has for intellectual pursuits and to experience emotions proves as fuel that takes his life to a better place and keeps the readers hooked till the end. Reading In the novel, Richard speaks of the hunger for reading with a passion as strong as the desire to eat when hunger strikes. ‘In fact, both these sensations are shown to be closely linked. Sometimes this link breaks and the two desires work in parallel. For instance, in Chapter 5, Richard smells fried meat being cooked in a neighbour’s at the time when he is reading. This smell distracts him from the thoughts formed during reading to fantasising about eating plenty 182 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
of meat. In Chapter 15, Richard conveys one of his images where he is eating food while reading the novel ‘A Remembrance of Things Past by Proust. Showing that Richard was nourishing both his body and his writing simultaneously. And was using Proust’s writings as part of his weight gain plan. This blurring of literary and physical appetite is most explicit when Richard remarks, “I lived on what I did not eat,” suggesting that, at some level, reading takes the place of food. As such, reading works as a counterpoint to the motif of hunger in the novel. For Richard, his emotional and spiritual emptiness are symbolised by hunger and reading represents the bread and water that fuels his perseverance. Violence Richard is faced with violence many times in the course of his life, he was beaten , cursed or even slapped at times when he would stand up to Granny or any other elder no matter how justified he was. The whites also used to resort to berating him, slapping or manipulating him if they found his behaviour unacceptable. Even when he disagrees with the views at the Communist Party, he is denounced, and his career is sabotaged. Very clearly, violence in the form of physical and mental abuse is a constant throughout the narrative. Whenever Richard asserts his views, violence from his family of from his society is a consequence he has to suffer. In addition, Richard uses violence to counter the overbearing and violent treatment meted out to him by his family. He acts out in violent ways like by burning down the house, wielding a knife against Addie and more. In a broader sense, violence percolates the black community either from within or from that imposed by the whites. The incident that shows the harsh reality of violence starkly is when Olin instigates Richard and Harrison against each other claiming them of murderous intentions. While Harrison and Richard know that the other does not have any such intentions, still they know that due to the demands of the racist culture they would have to fight each other. The cause of this fight was Olin’s feigned friendship for the men. Thus, showing the readers that in racist world violence has taken many forms beyond just physical violence. 7.8 LITERARY ELEMENTS Symbols Ella’s Infirmity According to the Renaissance and Gothic literature, any deformity or physical impairment often serves as an outward sign of an evil soul. This way of symbolism suggests that universe in a just place where evil souls have mangled bodies. However, the reality in the novel is the exact opposite where Ella(Richard’s mother) who seems to be the only person in his family and otherwise who thinks well for Richard, but still she is inflicted with incurable ailments and has paralysis in the leg. She is suffering despite being a good soul. In contrast the other members of Richard’s family use their abundant physical strength to physically abuse Richard 183 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
for trivial matters. In this context, Ella’s illness makes Richard realise that the world is unfair, and things here happen randomly. The Optical Shop in Memphis In the microcosm of the optical shop in Memphis, Olin is a representative of the Southern white racist community who is willing to terrorise the blacks just to amuse him and Falk represents the Southern whites who have genuine sympathy for the black community and are willing to offer them help. Shorty represents the black workers who pander to whites but inwardly retain their racial and personal pride. The anonymous porter working in the building who keeps complaining about working in the same place daily is representative of the embittered group of black workers living in the South. Several Ku Klux Klan members and Jews also work in this office. As such, the Memphis optical shop is a microcosm of racial stratification in the South. The author creates a single physical space to exhibit that sometimes the people who we misunderstand to be better than their peers actually turn out to be no different than them. 7.9 CRITICAL REVIEWS As a literary medium, since time in memorial, autobiography has been one of the most effective means to portray any kind of protest – personal, religious or political. This is because when a man criticises, he society on the basis of personal experiences, there is almost no room for doubts on the validity of the claims. This might not be the case with objective criticism. Some historical precedents of Black Boy have been the Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau and St.Augustine’s Confessions. But there are certain points on due to which these works differ from one another. Sartre, in his essay \"For Whom Does One Write,\" shows what is exceptional in Richard Wright's work. He says, \"Each work of Wright contains what Baudelaire would have called 'a double, simultaneous postulation'\" that is, Wright is addressing himself to two different audiences when he writes. As an author, Wright is addressing both the blacks and the whites using appropriate information for the respective communities. While for the blacks, his experiences are self-explanatory through which he wants to share common experiences which might provide tools for the others from the community in dealing with their oppression. However, since the whites are not able to fathom the entire meaning of the author’s black background. And also, they cannot be expected to do so. Thus, the information provided for the whites should be very different from that for the black community. He must, by his tale, induce in whites a feeling of indignation that will lead them to act. This dual purpose, Sartre says, is what creates the tension in Wright's work. For Wright it becomes inevitable to use naturalistic form. He must maintain an objective voice for his white readers. And in parallel he must narrate the experiences and the circumstances that are most families and that invoke painful memories for the blacks. Since he is speaking of 184 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
his personal experiences there is no doubt on the authenticity of his truth else the narrative would not have had the intended impact. Wright, in his novels relies on his own experiences to weave the narrative as fiction might never have the same degree of authority as an autobiography possesses. Since, fiction is a form that can seem devious at times in which the author can manipulate personality types to create a preconceived effect. Autobiography has the revolutionary value of \"telling it like it is.\" During the time he was working in the Black Boy, Wright was totally involved with the Marxist ideology and with the activities of the Communist Party. In an article he published in New Challenge, a black literary monthly started in 1934, he wrote: \"It is through a Marxian conception of reality and society that the maximum degree of freedom in thought and feeling can be gained for the Negro writer. Further, this dramatic Marxist vision, when consciously grasped, endows the writer with a sense of dignity which no other vision can give.\" With this vision he wrote his autobiography and thereby put the reality of living experience into Marxist ideology. Black Boy is not just a collection of his personal tragedies but a way by which he registers his social protests with the aim to bring about positive changes. Few of the experiences that Richard went through as a boy and later as a man helped to strengthen these attitudes in his personality. For instance, his father who like thousands of blacks in the Great Migration moved to the city from the southern countryside. This was during the time that preceded and also while World War I was going on. As Richard’s father became a casualty in this migration, he had to come back to the Jim Crow society. When Wright started his own migration northward in 1925, the country was on the brink of the Great Depression. Till the commencement of World War II, both the black and the white community became badly impacted due to the economic collapse in the country. There was almost no opportunity for pure art to prosper. The centre for black culture was Harlem and Greenwich Village was that for the white culture, but both these communities were more influence by politics rather than by aesthetics and other events. The New Deal and communism were developing along parallel lines each was an attempt to cope with the effects of the Depression on the country and the world. At the centre of white culture - Greenwich Village, there were white radicals and artists like Carl van Vechten, John Reed, Max Eastman, Walter Lippman, Lincoln Steffens, and Sinclair Lewis. At the centre of black culture -Harlem, there were Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, George S. Schuyler, Paul Robeson, Jean Toomer, and Josephine Baker. Surprisingly, there was a contact and exchange of ideas that took place between these communities. Which was based on a sense of mutual differences and on a search for a common ideal. The politicians and intellectuals from the black community of pre-war days discussed in Harlem the same ideas that we speak of in today's time. Black Nationalism, the Black Power movement, the matter of assimilation or integration these were common points of difference then as now. The great exception is that communism then played a strong role in the social state of mind and many intellectuals believed that it would solve the problems of separation. 185 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
During Richard’s shift from Chicago to New York, he saw that the society around him was actually reflecting many of his own concerns. Though, Wright had produced some works of literature for Communist Party before Black Boy, this book despite its Marxist conclusions went on to establish many records even with a restricted set of audience. Wright was conscious of this paradox when he wrote: \"Negro writers must accept the nationalist implications of their lives, not in order to encourage them, but in order to change and transcend them.\" Richard by writing his autobiography for the people who had minimal political power, wanted to bring about transformation in their minds rather than in their lives so that they can acquire the knowledge needed to further their actions. . The narrative of the book was bound to ruffle feathers in both the black and the white communities as it did not speak highly of anyone rather it examined each side very critically. 7.10 SUMMARY • The novel is narrated by the author himself and he narrates details of his early life from his childhood till he is about twenty-nine. • Since the text is stylised, the narration is almost always in first person. However, in some parts there is speculation on what the other characters might be thinking or feeling. These instances are always conditional on the fact that the narrator is a real historical figure who has limited knowledge. • Setting: (Place)Primarily Jackson, Mississippi; West Helena and Elaine, Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; and Chicago, Illinois, with detours to rural areas in the Deep South and to New York City. • Richard is an independent minded and intelligent person; these are the traits which were believed to be cause of trouble for black men living in Jim Crow South. In this backdrop, Richard has to struggle with the whites, blacks and even with .his own stubbornness. • Rising Action Ella (the schoolteacher) tells Richard the story of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives; Richard writes his story “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre”; Richard graduates from public school and enters the workforce only to be terrorized by the actions of racist whites. • Richard’s obsession with reading and writing begins after he reads H. L. Mencken’s A Book of Prefaces and Richard flees the South permanently; he goes to Chicago with the hope to have a better life there and to fulfil his ambition of becoming a writer. • Richard comes to understand the psychic pain of growing up black in America and realizes his duty to record his experiences and his environment through writing; he enters the Communist Party and W.P.A. programs, coming into contact with serious writers and outlets for writing about his ideals; he is ousted from the Party but comes to a new vision of himself as an artist. 186 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
• The insidious effects of racism; the individual versus society; the redemptive power of art. • The sharpest foreshadowing is the activity mentioned of Comrade Young in the Communist Party. The fact that a madman participates in the workings of the Party without being detected suggests that the Party is fallible. Another example is Richard’s relationship with his family, a relationship that foreshadows how his personality will conflict with white authority. 7.11 KEYWORDS • Vital: urgently needed; absolutely necessary. Hunger still a vital part of my consciousness. • Frail: physically weak; I was frail, not weighing a hundred pounds. • Clamber: climb awkwardly, as if by scrambling; I stuck it out, reeling at times from hunger, pausing to get my breath before clambering up a hill. • Florid: inclined to a healthy reddish colour; I was hired by a florid-faced white man at the rate of fifty cents for nine holes. • Jim Crow: barrier preventing blacks from participating in activities; I was feeling the very thing that the state of Mississippi had spent millions of dollars to make sure that I would never feel; I was becoming aware of the thing that the Jim Crow laws had been drafted and passed to keep out of my consciousness. 7.12 LEARNING ACTIVITY 1. Read the autobiography of Richard Wright or listen to the audio book and record your own impressions about the book. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 2. Read the “Uncle Tom’s Children” by Richard Wright and discuss the theme of the book. ___________________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________ 7.13 UNIT END QUESTIONS A. Descriptive Questions 187 Short Questions 1. Why do you think Wright titled his autobiography Black Boy? 2. Why does Richard’s family treat him so harshly? 3. How does this treatment affect our impression of the family? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
4. Discuss the role of art in Richard’s life. How does Richard talk about art? Does he value art? 5. What significance do Richard’s feelings about art have for an overall interpretation of Black Boy? Long Questions 1. Describe the evolution of Richard’s attitude toward white people. At what points do we detect a shift in his attitude? 2. In what ways does Wright, as an adult writing his autobiography in retrospect, colour the description of events and experiences as they unfold? 3. Discuss Richard’s thoughts on stealing. How does he justify it? Does his justification of stealing imply a justification for the violent way his family treats him as a child? 4. Richard’s mature character is formed both by the kind of knowledge only gained through experience in the world and by the kind of knowledge only gained through reading books. With respect to Richard, does one of these types of knowledge seem more important than the other? Why or why not? 5. What role does hunger play in the autobiography? How does Richard view hunger at the end of the novel? Has his attitude changed? B. Multiple Choice Questions 1. In his childhood and early youth, how does Richard react to the submission of other black Americans to white authority? a) With contemptuous astonishment b) With understanding c) With approval d) With amusement 2. What is Granny’s religious affiliation? a) Methodist b) Seventh Day Adventist c) Methodist d) Unitarian 3. Which statement accurately describes Richard’s relationship with Granny? a) It is affectionate b) It is practically non-existent since they rarely interact. c) They do not have a relationship, as she died before his birth. d) It is filled with conflict and hostility. 4. Which of the following best describes Richard’s education? a) It is entirely self-acquired. b) It consists of some formal schooling and lots of self-directed reading. c) He has only an elementary-school education. d) He has a high-school education. 188 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
5. How does Richard react to his mother’s first stroke? a) He begins to feel that the world is a hostile place. b) He becomes extremely religious because the church offers him comfort and security. c) He develops close ties with the black community and his family because they offer emotional and financial support. d) He becomes depressed and suicidal. Answers: 1-(a), 2-(b), 3-(d), 4-(b), 5-(a) 7.14 REFERENCES Textbooks • Brignano, Russell C.Richard Wright: (1972) An Introduction to the Man and His Works. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. • Fabre, Michel. (1985)The World of Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. • Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. and K. A. Appiah, eds. Richard Wright (1993) Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad. • Hakutani, Yoshinobu, ed. (1982) Critical Essays on Richard Wright. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. • Kinnamon, Keneth. (1973) The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study of Literature and Society. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Reference Books • Margolies, Edward. (1969)The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. • Miller, Eugene (1990) E.Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. • Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: (1995) A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. • Wright, R. (2020). Black boy [seventy-fifth anniversary edition]. HarperCollins. • Wright, R. (2021). Black boy. eBookIt.com. Weblinks • http://positivedisintegration.com/ • https://brainly.in/ • https://www.thefamouspeople.com/ 189 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
UNIT-8: SHARANKUMAR LIMBALE’S THE OUTCASTE STRUCTURE 8.0 Learning Objectives 8.1 Introduction 8.2 About Sharankumar Limbale 8. 3 Analysis of the “Outcaste’ 8.4 Central Theme 8.5 Character Analysis 8.6 Motifs 8.7 Literary Elements 8.8 Critical Reviews 8.9 Summary 8.10 Keywords 8.11 Learning activity 8.12 Unit End Questions 8.13 References 8.0 LEARNING OBJECTIVES After studying this unit, student will be able to: • Explain the salient features of Dalit Literature. • Demonstrate the translated studies as autobiographical element. • Demonstrate the socio-economic conditions of contemporary society. • Appreciate the character-sketch of Sharankumar Limbale. • Examine critically the realism, symbolism, social milieu of contemporary India. 190 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
8.1 INTRODUCTION Sharankumar Limbale is one of the most acclaimed writers of contemporary Dalit literature in India. His most recent book, an assortment of 28 short stories named The Dalit Brahmin and Other Stories, further concretes his standing as the voice of Dalit writing. The Outcaste is composed by Sharankumar Limbale, depicts the agony and ludicrous encounters of his life as a Dalit. The Outcaste catches the effects of viciousness and oppression Dalits. In this novel the creator is spooky by the emergency of personality. Do I have a place with upper station or lower position? This is a personal novel which shows the clouded side of India where the Dalits are persecuted. He utilizes the analogy, figures of speech and symbolism to investigate his internal sorrow and mission for character. He confronted the segregation at the school when he was an understudy. The pupils from high caste like Brahmin and Wani sat in class and the Mahar boys sat at the entrance of the door. The schoolteacher called him the son of a witch. When he joined the school on the first day other boys throw stones at him and called him the child of the Mahar. He says hunger makes a man, thief and a woman becomes a whore. They picked up the lumps of dung and washed the dung in the river water, collected only the clean grains. Then his grandmother dried in the sun and ground into flour. According to Graham Green, “Writing is a form of therapy: sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human situation.” Sharan Kumar Limbale is an illustrious Dalit writer in India who has authored extensively up to forty books including his autobiography Akkarmashi (The Outcaste) and is currently Professor and Regional Director of Yashavantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University and his creative interest rests on the Dalit struggle and identity. Dalit Literature emerged as a distinct part of Indian Literature. It is considered as the voice of the oppressed. It was firstly commenced in Marathi literature as the voice of the protest against the injustice in social system. Dalit literature is acclaimed as a literature which highlights caste discrimination, exploitation, oppression, struggle and protest against the age-old system in Indian Society. These writers expressed their experience in a realistic manner using their native language. Their language sketched pictures of their experiences rather than their observations. Dr. C. B. Bharati claims, \"The point of Dalit Literature is to challenge the set-up framework which depends on shamefulness and to uncover the insidiousness and lip service of the greater ranks. There is a critical need to make a different feel for Dalit Literature, a style dependent on the genuine encounters of life\" (The Esthetics of Dalit Literature). The Dalit authors thought about personal histories as the most productive weapon to depict their embarrassments. Collections of memoirs are by and large composed by acclaimed characters towards the finish of their lives. In any case, Dalit life accounts were written at an early age. It was likewise noted for its portrayal of excruciating past that has influenced the 191 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
historical backdrop of a local area. Writing, being the implicit turf of the Savanas, over which their control was unchallenged, had always been unable to deliver works that could get a handle on the way of life, music or workmanship that had a place with the local area of individuals who they had made 'untouchables'. At the point when Dalit writing showed up first, it was disdained, dismissed as a 'writing' itself. Nonetheless, Dalit (read: Ambedkarite) journalists have perceived the need to guess the writing they have been composing. What induced them to guess their writing? Didn't their writing as of now have a hypothesis? Furthermore, how did every benefactor assemble this hypothesis with his/her own understandings, generally moulded by the experiential world they imparted to the cognizance of their local area? Baburao Bagul's work, Dalit Sahityache Krantivigyan (generally deciphers as 'Progressive Science of Dalit Literature') was one of the first and splendid endeavours to give hypothesis to Dalit writing. Being his archetype in this space of hypothesis making, Sharankumar Limbale widened the extent of such endeavours. Brought into the world in 1956 in Maharashtra, Limbale's life was difficult. In the event that one ends up perusing his personal book, Akkarmashi (signifying 'Outsider') one feels discomforted, and obviously, one may dislike it for its unmistakable portrayal of Limbale's life. It likewise isolates itself from the experiential discerning universe of perusers whose perusing tastes were sustained by the writing of Savarnas. Limbale's Akkarmashi is without a doubt a fundamental book by its own doing. Nonetheless, Limbale's greatest commitment to Dalit writing is his book, Towards an Esthetic of Dalit Literature. NS Phadke, a Brahmin author and pundit of Dalit writing, said: 'The sorts of settings and occasions that are expected to add tone to a novel are not found in Dalits' lives'. Obviously, the obliviousness of authors like Phadke towards Dalit writing originates from their chronicled visual deficiency towards Dalit lives — which they would never interface with, at an experimental or hypothetical level. Through Outcaste Limbale reveals his inner conflicts of being a Dalit. He is from an oppressed community where he felt like locked up like a patch of leprosy. He has lived the life of an untouchable, as a half-caste and the upper caste people humiliated him by calling him an Akkarmashi. As a result, he had to live with the burden of oppression. The more he tries to think about the question of the identity more it becomes complex and agonizing for him. The story discusses the sufferings that the author and his friends came across, during a picnic. Being marked as Mahars (an oppressed caste) they couldn't join the higher caste students in their games. This sort of discrimination didn't end up in their games alone, but during their lunchtime, they were forced to sit under another tree. The incident that humiliated them, even more, is when they didn't have good food to eat. They had only bombil curry and dry bhakari (round flat unleavened bread) with them. Even then they shared their food. Limbale explains the pathetic conditions of his community through their hearty appetite. Even when the high- caste girls offered him their food, he was ashamed of what he had and felt sorry for eating it. The teacher asked the high-caste students to collect leftovers and give it to the Mahars. They 192 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
were really wolfish and stuffed themselves without thinking about those victims of famine in their homes. Next day when the teacher had asked everyone to write an essay on the picnic, Limbale was not able to write anything as he kept thinking about the incidents he had undergone. The story ends up with a rational question on how Limbale should start writing the essay his teacher had asked for. 8.2 ABOUT SHARANKUMAR LIMBALE Sharankumar Limbale (born June 1, 1956) is a Marathi language author, poet and literary critic. He has written in excess of 40 books, however, is most popular for his collection of memoirs Akkarmashi. Akkarmashi is interpreted in a few other Indian dialects and in English. The English interpretation is distributed by the Oxford University Press with the title The Outcaste. His basic work Towards an Esthetics of Dalit Literature (2004) is considered among the main deals with Dalit writing. On following the historical backdrop of abstract analysis in India, you'll see that the composed writing of India — in the vernacular just as English dialects — has been moulded by the experiential material of mastery. This means — Brahmins composed and fundamentally took a gander at other Savarnas' works. Sharan Kumar Limbale is a famous Dalit essayist in India who has composed widely up to forty books including his life account Akkarmashi (The Outcaste) and is right now Professor and Regional Director of Yashavantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University and his inventive interest lays on the Dalit battle and personality. Sartre once said: \"The abstract article is a particular top which exists just in development. To make it materialize a solid demonstration called perusing is essential, and it endures just as long as this demonstration can last.\" Since the idea of the station framework precludes Brahmins from perusing the Dalits' lives in sum, Brahminical scrutinizes of Dalit writing are invalid as well as abusive. They emerge from obliviousness, just as a compelling impulse to nullify the presence of Dalits. While clarifying the fundamental shortcomings of Phadke's composition, Limbale clarified, \"Phadke thinks that it’s hard to fabricate this design from the cabin of the untouchables, however Arun Sadhu, Jaywant Dalvi, and Madhu Mangesh Karnik, [all are Savarna essayists, accentuation is this columnist's] have composed books on Dalit life. Dalit essayists have distributed various books. Due to his formalistic viewpoint, Phadke can't see occasions and settings in the existences of Dalits as deserving of holding fiction.\" Limbale's scrutinize and his hypothetical definition about the obliviousness of Brahminical organization sounds develop since it was figured when Dalit writing had accomplished a huge status, particularly outside India and was being given genuine idea by researchers abroad. By the by, it is a victory of Dalit scholars like Limbale, who composed intensely — across types — to recover their personhood, to declare their humankind. Crafted by Dalit scholars were the 193 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
blocks that assembled the mass of hypothesis around Dalit writing. In this view, Limbale's commitment to Dalit writing is huge. Limbale has composed in excess of 40 books. Akkarmashi and Towards an Esthetic of Dalit Literature gives the setting of Dalit writing, taking reference from Black, Marxist and Russian writing and delineating the directions of encounters required with the goal for something to be come to fruition as a piece of workmanship. Also, to comprehend why Brahminical essayists in India didn't concentrate on Dalit writing, we should think about what Limble says: \"An impressive extent of Savarna evaluates of Dalit writing experience the ill effects of shallowness. Additionally, there is a particular propensity to uncover the cases of uneven, dreary and unacceptable composition and distributing found in Dalit writing. There is likewise an endeavour in Savarna scrutinize to cut off the Dalit journalists' connections with custom and culture. Furthermore, at last, there is an all-out shortfall of sociological scholarly measuring sticks. Every one of these constraints highlight the requirement for a Dalit abstract analysis\". Sharankumar Limbale is regarded as the most prolific writers of contemporary literature. He is a Marathi novelist, poet and literary critic. He has penned more than forty books and is well known for his autobiographical novel Akkarmashi (1984). The English translation is published by Oxford University Press with the title The Outcaste (2000). His critical work Towards an Aesthetics of Dalit Literature (2004) is considered amongst the most important work and Dalit literature. According to Limbale, Dalit Literature is “ that literature which artistically portray the sorrows, the tribulations, slavery, degradation, ridicule and poverty endured by Dalits, the anguish and the burning cry of untouchables against the injustices of thousand years, collectively expressed” (Towards An Aesthetic of Dalit Literature 15). Limbale’s The Outcaste was penned at the age of 25. It depicted his life as a Dalit and an individual of Mahar Community. In the preface to the first print of The Outcaste, he wrote as: Every time the dominant classes attack and exploit the weak, they violate their women. The sexual endeavours of the men among the devilish exploiters draw authenticity from their position, riches, society, culture and religion. Be that as it may, what of the abused lady? She needs to convey the assault of her belly. The assault must be borne, taken care of and raised. Furthermore, this assault gets and carries on with a day-to-day existence. My personal history holds in it the misery of such a daily existence. My encounters are my words. What will stay there in the event that you remove insight from a daily existence? A living corpse. (xxiii) The Outcaste mirrored Limbale’s birth and life. Thus, the autobiography of Limbale portrayed the writer’s rootlessness, poverty, segregation in educational system and inequality in the society. Hence while focusing the suffering endured by him, he also questioned the torments, and this made the readers of the work to be an active participant of author’s pains and tortures. The child of a Patil father and a Mahar mother, Limbale understood that he was considered akkarmashi, or one of unclean blood. His grandma had a live-in relationship with a Muslim. Limbale accepted this as his social, hereditary and passionate legacy. He named his life account 194 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
Akkarmashi (The Outcaste), and when it was distributed in 1982, it was hailed as a milestone in Marathi writing. The word Akkarmashi meant a person’s whose birth was illegitimate. In this autobiography, Limbale claims himself as an outcaste. Mahar Community claimed him an outcaste because his father was a high caste man and the high caste people called him an untouchable because his mother belonged to Mahar Community. In the author’s note, Limbale said: I regard the immorality of my father and mother as a metaphor for rape. My father had privileges by virtue of his birth granted to him by the caste system. His relationship with my mother was respected by society, whereas my mother is untouchable and poor. Had she been naturally introduced to high standing or would she say she were rich; would she have submitted to his apportionment of her? It is through the Dalit development and Dalit writing that I comprehended that my mom was not an adulteress but rather the survivor of a social framework. I become anxious at whatever point I read about an assault in the paper. An infringement anyplace in the country, I feel, is an infringement of my mom. This shows how Mahar women were sexually exploited by the upper caste Marathas. It also portrayed the fate of the child borne because of such a relationship. 8.3 ANALYSIS OF THE ‘OUTCASTE’ According to Sharankumar Limbale (author of “The Outcaste-Akkarmashi”), the caste of an individual determines everything about his life, including the clothes he will wear, the person he will marry, and the food he will eat. Limbale depicts the existence of a man who endured the agony of not in any event, being permitted into the rank framework: he was an outcaste, beneath every other person. \"Akkarmashi\", a milestone in Marathi Dalit writing, was first composed by Sharankumar Limbale in the Mahar tongue of Maharashtra in 1984. Through his Sharankumar Limbale words, he depicted the hopeless everyday routine he experienced as an unapproachable, as a half-rank, and as a ruined man. This work was converted into English by Santosh Bhoomkar in 2003. \"The Outcastev is about a distant family all in all and local area battles specifically. It mirrors the states of a specific persecuted class, in particular the Mahar people group about 50 years back and simultaneously gives a valid and practical image of the more obscure side of the Indian culture. The most ideal approach to discover the sufferings of the Dalits and the other minimized segments is through the words and feelings of the individuals who have survived the experience and who have the training and ability to compose so strikingly about it. One clear source is Sharankumar Limbale's life account, \"Akkarmashi, The Outcaste\". He has additionally composed numerous different books and short stories on Dalit life. Akkarmashi is a documentation of her trampled motherhood and encroachment of her body crushing herself. Sharan Kumar Limbali’s autobiography The Outcaste mirrors the adventure 195 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
of Sharan Kumar in coming in terms with his birth. While describing the horrors of caste Sharan narrates how the plight of the women is multiplied by internal and external intrigues. Sharan’s childhood was very tormenting, unhappy and awful. Two women Santamai and his mother Masomi play a very important role in his life. Sharan was brought up by Santamai and it was always love-hate relationship with his mother. The ordeals they went through to fill their tummies is heartrending as Dalits were deprived from the basic needs of life. Brought into the world of a high station father – a Patil and an unapproachable mother – a Mahar, Limbale turned into an \"akkarmashi\", as his parentage was unacknowledged through the authenticity of marriage. This scourge of being \"orphan\" followed Limbale all for the duration of his life. It turned into the most offensive of checks, a sad circumstance – being tormented for being an akkarmashi inside his family and reached out to the most de The child of a Patil father and a Mahar mothercisive minutes in his day-to-day existence as looking for a confirmation in school or school and the possibility of getting hitched. More than the overall stunning existence of Dalits, where one endures in gatherings, what influences Limbale is his detached shame of being an akkarmashi. Limbale is reminded occasionally by the general public – his situation inside the position less gathering of pariahs. He regrets, \". . . a man is perceived in this world by his religion, standing, or his dad. I had neither a dad's name, nor any religion, nor a station. I had no acquired personality by any means.\" Is not this absence of acquired character, his genuine personality? The disgrace of \"akkarmashi\" heaves around it terrible embarrassments. The storyteller hero is somebody more sub-par compared to a Dalit. It is amazing to take note of that he is an unapproachable among the untouchables. His character is that of an \"Akkarmashi\" and this is the thing that the storyteller attempts to introduce through the numerous scenes of his life. \"Akkarmashi\" in Marathi implies eleven it needs another to finish itself, to become twelve, twelve which connotes culmination. With an administration work and instruction to pad him, Limbale actually thinks that it’s hard to get a spouse. Limbale never delighted in the possibility of choosing a spouse. A solitary endeavour at lady of the hour seeing closures in a debacle. At a certain point, the peruser suspects Limbale to be happy with any lady for a spouse. He doesn't settle on a decision. He gets a spouse out of compassion and his infrequent paying off his eventual dad in-law with liquor. He takes note of, \"The young lady I wedded should have been a half and half like me to guarantee an appropriate match. A jerk should consistently be coordinated with another knave. Nobody else will wed their little girls to a knave like me\". The content turns into the observer record of the repulsions of the existences of a specific inferior local area. Experiential Writing Dalit composing is generally experiential. There isn't a lot of fiction. Maybe it has to do with the way that up to this point Dalits didn't compose or, all the more precisely, were not permitted to compose. Until 50 years prior, writing in India was the fortification of the upper stations. 196 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
The tales and customs of Dalits were oral until B.R. Ambedkar accentuated the requirement for Dalits to pronounce themselves through writing and discredit the acknowledged astuteness that composition and writing were implied uniquely for the upper ranks. Subsequently the experiential composing that presently to a great extent describes Dalit writing. The current collection of memoirs is a brief look into the existences of Dalits. The structure is the Ambedkarite development. The characters are Mahars who have changed over to Buddhism. They incorporate the youthful and the old, men, ladies, youngsters and youthful grown-ups with seething chemicals. They either bow to barbarous practice or challenge organized abuse. The settings are both metropolitan and country. Feudalism, innovation, class boundaries, ignorance, odd notion, love, injustice, daze commitment and persecution rage through the tales. They are not potboilers; they reflect the truth that Dalits live with even today. There is the age that acknowledged the treacheries. There is the age that addresses these shameful acts, trailed by the age that is trapped in a limbo of acknowledgment and dismissal of what their predecessors endured. At that point there is the age which thunders and holds onto its privileges by the throat. Yet, strife actually runs the show. The age that underestimates its privileges is yet to be conceived—social conditions have not considered that age to be conceived. Limbale catches every one of these perspectives in his reminiscent, crude, difficult and melodious stories. Limbale features the infighting among Dalits when he discusses the heads of the local area being intrigued uniquely with regards to gathering commitments. He likewise uncovered the nearly disguised need of some Dalits to convey forward the bondage of their predecessors. This is carried out with outrage and emotion in \"The Yeskar's Bhakri\", the tale of a Dalit town gatekeeper. A burglary happens on his watch and he is blamed for contribution. He attempts to discover the cheats yet can't. His discipline is a whipping given to him by individual Dalits on the sets of the town patil (clan leader). To demonstrate his innocence he hangs himself, leaving his family desperate. His post is a much desired one among his local area, and when another Dalit is selected guard, life proceeds onward as though nothing had occurred. Limbale likewise uncovered the hold that traditions have on his local area. In \"Promises\", a Dalit satisfies a pledge to the town goddess by causing his teen child to take part in a dhadka, a custom wherein the fan surges head-first into a sanctuary divider. His child passes on while doing this and the upset mother hits her own head against the divider and bites the dust too. Rather than communicating repulsiveness at the passing and the way in which they happened, different fans stress over whether the goddess will revile them in light of the fact that a lady had performed dhadka. The Life of Dalits Sharankumar Limbale utilized an individual illustrative style in his personal history to show the educational encounters of a Dalit, which incorporates imbalance, separation and lack of 197 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
interest towards them and their way of life. The creator depicts about his pitiable circumstance of not having a character, a home or spot of having a place. Limbale was brought into the world as an illicit child of a high position Patil and a poor, landless, distant mother. Therefore, Limbale neither has a place with Mahar people group nor the Maratha position; he is an Akkarmashi, for example an Outcaste. His mom lived in a cottage, and his dad in a house. Thus, the child was marked ill-conceived. Because of this explanation, he was unable to get certain papers finished paperwork for school and the school specialists would not acknowledge his grandma as his gatekeeper since she lived with a Muslim and for clear reasons, they couldn't acknowledge his last name since it had a place with a higher rank. At the point when it was the ideal opportunity for marriage, he was unable to try and get hitched to a low position young lady since his blood was not \"unadulterated\"; he was not needed anyplace. In the long run, a lush who had offered Limbale his girl would not permit her to leave after the wedding as a result of Limbale's experience. Because of his broke character, the storyteller endured as long as he can remember. Nonetheless, due to his unimaginable strength and dauntlessness, he didn't permit these socially developed dividers to prevent him from getting training and in the end distributing his story. Dalits lived in cabins outside the Village (this portrays their status in the general public). They invested the vast majority of the energy inside the transport stand. Concerning House, Sharankumar said \"To us the transport stand resembled home… we lay like disposed of transport tickets\". They completely relied upon upper station individuals. They ate extra food, accomplished sub-ordinate work and wore garments disposed of by privileged society. It is said that for filling stomachs men become hoodlums and ladies become prostitutes. Notwithstanding, because of the regrettable life circumstances, Limbale goes to the degree of saying that God had committed an error by offering stomachs to the Dalits. The state of the untouchables is with the end goal that they take, ask, sort grain from compost, bring dead creatures and eat them, to pacify their yearning. In the position progressive system, Brahmins were the predominant ones, at that point the Kshatriyas and afterward the Vaishayas and the Shudras. The fifth, which was not considered as a component of the standing framework, was Dalits, which were regularly alluded to as the \"dirtying\" station. The mercilessness Dr BR Ambedkar arrived at its tallness when the Dalits were forced with murder, assault, and a lot more such claims. Impacted by individuals like Shahu, Phule, Gandhiji and Ambedkar, Dalit scholars began stressing on their current issues. Following the way of these legends, Dalit authors started composing, zeroing in on subjects like cold-bloodedness on Dalits, request of social balance, equity, and social and monetary majority rule government. The lessons of Dr. Ambedkar woke up the Dalits. Ambedkar himself was a Dalit, brought into the world in the Mahar people group who proceeded to turn into a social dissident, a lawful master and a broadly regarded head of Dalits in India. The recently discovered political autonomy additionally helped a great deal in improving the everyday environments of the untouchables. During this period, Dalits started to decline to do the modest 198 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
positions that they once accomplished for the upper station. They likewise began requesting fairness, which was unsatisfactory to the upper positions. The Dalits understood that being instructed alone can't assist their local area with confining themselves from the impact of the station framework. Along these lines, they wanted to achieve an insurgency through writing, by including their encounters. Along these lines, auto-personal accounts comprise a huge portion of Dalit writing. Personal history has become a significant way to pass on the unpleasant experience of embarrassment and unfairness that the Dalits of India had been going through. The foundations of this foul play and embarrassment dove deep into history, for a long time. It is this torment, desolation and enduring which convinced Dalit authors to voice out their deep-rooted encounters through writing. It illuminates their way of life, customs, accepts and thinking too. Sharankumar Limbale's personal history \"The Outcaste\" depicts the most embarrassing occasions and abuses that Sharankumar and his family persevered. The storyteller censures the spoiled social framework and underscores on the difference in this framework. Narratives of Uplift Albeit the tales express all around worn and notable topics of misuse, concealment and mistreatment, there is life in Limbale's composing that raises them from stories of misfortune and self-indulgence to accounts of battle, inspire and boldness. Dalit literature Dalit Literature is another artistic ordinance with a clear negligence for structure, substance and style, and a lively articulation of the recently stirred sensibilities which recognizes it from the standard scholarly practices. It is a Literature of dissent against all types of abuse dependent on class, race, station or occupation. It rejects both the Western and Eastern hypothetical originations like Freud's Psychoanalysis, Barthe's Structuralism and Derrida's Deconstruction along with the Indian speculations of Rasa and Dhawni. The actual establishments of Indian Mythology are addressed and de-developed by the Dalit journalists. They consider the amazing figure Ekalavya as their progenitor and Shambooka - another Dalit in Ramayana who was slaughtered by Rama at the command of Vasishta, is venerated by the Dalits. These authors express their encounters in obvious reasonable way by utilizing their local discourse. Their language just as pictures comes from their encounters rather than their perception of life. Dr. C.B. Bharti claims: The point of Dalit Literature is to challenge the set-up framework which depends on foul play and to uncover the insidiousness and pietism of the greater standings. There is a critical need to make a different feel for Dalit writing, a style dependent on the genuine encounters of life. (The Esthetics of Dalit Literature). This interesting part of style is generally expressive in collections of memoirs as the encounters they depict are unconventional just to the networks in which they are naturally introduced to. Life accounts are for the most part composed by prominent characters towards the finish of 199 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
their lives and who have a lot to prove before the world, while Dalit collections of memoirs are written at an early age when the writer is neither recognized nor famous yet noted for its portrayal of a strong past that has influenced the historical backdrop of a local area. These collections of memoirs bargain with the position framework as harsh as well as portray how monetary hardship and neediness are handmaids with rank segregation. The collection of memoirs addresses an incredible, arising pattern in the Indian abstract field. Dalit writing started as a voice of dissent against an out of line social request. Today, it has accomplished the situation with an innovative artistic world, mirroring the predicament of the minimized individuals of the world, and featuring the battles of the human soul against the well-established abusive practices against them. In the changed conditions, Dalits are getting schooling and are getting mindful of their privileges. The strategy of reservation guarantees occupations for the informed ones. 8.4 CENTRAL THEME OF OUTCASTE The focal subject of The Outcaste was the tricky creator's character. Limbale had depicted himself as a survivor of a severe social framework which denied him of his personality. As per him, this rootlessness made him \"to live with the weight of mediocrity\". Due to birth as an outcaste, he needed to turn into a subject of scorn at numerous occurrences. At the point when he was in the seventh norm, he was prodded by Maula's child as \"the base conceived\". At a case, in his personal history Limbale scrutinized his way of life as: My dad and his progenitors were Lingayat. In this manner I am one as well. My mom was Mahar. My mom's dad and progenitors were Mahar; subsequently I am likewise a Mahar. From the day I was brought into the world until now, I was raised by my granddad Mahmood Dastagir Jamadar. My granddad in the sense he lives with my grandma, Santamai. Does this mean I am Muslim too? Why can't the Jamadar's friendship guarantee me as Muslim? How might I be high station when my mom is distant? On the off chance that I am distant, what might be said about my dad who is high rank? I'm similar to Jarasandh. A big part of me has a place with the town, while the other half is expelled. Who am I? To whom is my umbilical line associated? In The Outcaste at a moment, Limbale himself marked the application structure rather than his parent's mark. As he was unable to guarantee both of them as his folks, he felt, \"I'm an outsider. My dad isn't Mahar by station. In the Maharwada I felt embarrassed as I was viewed as a charlatan; they called me akkarmashi. However, in the town I was viewed as Mahar and prodded as the posterity of one\". He frequently imagined about his dad. He doubtly emerged questions like, \"Assume I go to Baslegaon would my dad permit me into his home? Would the mother there give me food? My dad lives in a manor, my mom in a cottage, and I in the city. Where will I pass on? Where are my foundations precisely?\" But his fantasy reached a conclusion when his supposed dad Hanmanta Limbale, Patil of Baslegaon challenged enlisting 200 CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)
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