A Womanist Reading On The Blacks' Fate

In the novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland Alice Walker reflects her consistent themes of anti-racialism and anti-sexism as in her other major works. Starting from the analysis of socially-significant themes with womanist viewpoint by incorporating the struggle of black males for their manhood and their relationship with families, this thesis concentrates on the exploration of racialism and sexism have done to the southern black sharecroppers. Except for the racial oppressions and exploitations, Grange and Brownfield are also the victims of the assimilation of the white criterion of maleness. Eventually, the self-hatred causes their destruction. In the end, Walker's womanist vision of unity, survival whole and the blacks' future are shown by love, forgiveness and mutual understanding, not by hatred.This thesis is composed of six parts. The first part is Introduction, which gives some information about Alice Walker's life, works and themes of her major works and some theorists and critics' viewpoints about her works. Part Two is about Grange's first two lives which divided into three parts; the first one examines the process of Grange's struggle for manhood and the denial of the manhood both physically and emotionally; the second part discusses that the destructive master-slave relationship caused his degeneration; the third one shows their husband-wife relationship is affected and deteriorated by his degeneration. Part Three mainly focus on exploring the parent's, especially Grange's, influence over Brownfield and which causes his degeneration and the repetitious life as his father. Part Four analyses black men's hope for the future and the better life is destroyed by the destructive social forces, i.e., sharecropper system and white men's criterion on manhood. Part Five is about love being the right way for Grange's successful rebirth and Brownfield's denial of it that leads to his total degeneration and the loss of humanity eventually. The last part is a conclusion.