Literary Patricide And The Black Protest Tradition

James Baldwin (1924-1987), one of the most famous contemporary American writers, is equally powerful as a novelist, essayist, playwright, and polemicist. His works include six novels, four plays, and more than ten essay collections.Since World War II, James Baldwin has been acclaimed as a prominent writer in Afro-American literary field. His first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, together with Richard Wright's Native Son and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, is generally considered to be the model of black literature in 1940s and 1950s. And his contradictory attitudes to his precursor Richard Wright draw many criticisms. Baldwin thus becomes one of the most controversial writers in America.In the late 1940s, Baldwin began his harsh attack on Wright's Native Son with the publishing of Everybody's Protest Novel in the magazine Zero. Later, in 1951, Baldwin wrote a more controversial essay entitled Many Thousands Gone, in which he threw stones directly at Wright and the black protest tradition. And during the course of his unrelenting polemics against Wright, Baldwin gradually grew to be the leading figure of Afro-American literature. However, because of his ungrateful denouncements of his former benefactor and precursor as well as his new approach of racial reconciliation, Baldwin invited a lot of severe criticisms. Nonetheless, his creative practice in breaking through the limitations of the black protest tradition and exploring racial reconciliation has exerted a strong influence on the later writers.It is safe to assert that Baldwin's harsh denouncement of Wright, his precursor, is the literary patricide, as described in Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence. This thesis is to discuss this literary patricide in three chapters.Chapter One mainly introduces the familial and social causes that lead to the formation of Baldwin's literary patricide. Baldwin's application of the patricidal tactics in literature, which is intimately related to his Patricide Complex in life, is the recurrence and development of his unharmonious relationship with his father. Besides, with the social changes in American society, Afro-American literature was transforming from naturalistic protest school that Wright represented to modernism triumphantly achieved by Ralph Ellison. Accordingly, Baldwin's challenge to Wright and his protest fiction actually starts the upcoming turn.Chapter Two centers on the true nature of Baldwin's literary patricide. Baldwin's works in different periods reveal that his racial attitudes are quite different from what his critics have condemned. On the contrary, he is neither anti-Wright nor anti-black. Baldwin's disapproval of the black protest tradition and his acknowledgement of the whites'humanity constitute the formation of his racial politics. His experience of expatriation in Europe enhances his racial attitudes. The freedom that he enjoys there makes him ponder over his responsibility for his own country. He begins to identify himself as an American writer instead of a mere black and devotes himself to the service of his country.Chapter Three focuses on Baldwin's inheritance and transcendence of Richard Wright and the black protest tradition. Baldwin is much encouraged and inspired by Wright and his achievements, as witnessed in The Fire Next Time and Going to Meet the Man. Yet, he wisely senses the limitations of the black protest tradition, thus he attempts to break through the confinement of it and begins to write in a different way, which is evinced in Go Tell It on the Mountain and Another Country. Baldwin finds a new approach to discuss the black humanity, the black culture, and racial reconciliation.Hereby the conclusion is drawn that Baldwin has not only inherited the black protest tradition, but also transcended it. What's more, being an important black writer, he never really withdraws his respect for Wright, his precursor, and his love for the black people. The positive effects of his patricidal actions in his literary creation cannot be denied. And Baldwin should always be remembered as a pioneer of the new tradition of black literature.