The Surrealism In Amiri Baraka's Dutchman

Amiri Baraka is a contemporary famous African American poet,playwright and social activist especially known among American for for his radical racial stand,and Dutchman is the start-point of his fame.Since the debut of Dutchman in 1964,due to its controversial racial views and immense value as a drama,it has never lost the spell upon critics,especially for itspolitical significance.However,it has long been ignored that how Baraka presents his political views.This essay aims at a close reading of Dutchman as a play,so as to illustrate its surrealism—the means by which Baraka applies in expressing himself.It is the absurdity and dedicated depiction of spiritual reality in Dutchman that are in perfect agreement with the literary advocates of surrealists.In Chapter ?,theory of Surrealism is illustrated from following three perspectives:its absurdity contempt upon logic,its focus upon subconscious,dream and desire as the sur-reality,and how it transcend objective reality.In Chapter ?,the absurdity in Dutchman is demonstrated from first the contradicting behaviors of Lula,and secondly from the bizarre yet attracting conversation between leading characters through a comparison with that in The Zoo Story by Edward Albee.Conversation in Dutchman is overly fractured,violent,repetitive,and full of allusions,is not typical of the usual communication between strangers.In Chapter ?,the sur-reality underneath the apparent absurdity of Dutchman is discussed.Lula should be the embodiment of Clay's subconscious,and then the absurdity in her behaviors shall make sense.Clay is a black youth trapped in his psychological predicament brought by his loss of a true black identify and impossible complete assimilation into white society.Clay's death first indicates that rebellious attitude is dangerous and would cause sacrifice and secondly this plot design reveals Baraka's worry about the tragic outcome of protesting against white society and the following fear in Black people.Through a realistic portray of an absurd occasion in which a beautiful white woman seduces,abuses and kills a black youth in the end,Baraka has presented the spiritual predicament of black people in America as whether to be assimilated into white culture or defend their own black culture.