The Struggle with Race in Literature

You cannot change what you are come into this world with. Wealth, hometown, position within the family: these are all ascribed statuses that you have no control over. Why was I born into this? Why was it me?

In William Faulkner's Light in August, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, Joe Christmas, Pecola Breedlove and Tayo, respectively, are characters living in communities deeply affected by another ascribed status: ethnicity and skin color. Their individual cultures are so fixated on particularities of this issue that it threatens to plague the minds of even the most individualistic of its host's members. All three characters battle this sweeping force, and all three have varying levels of success.

In comparing the three characters, it is of importance to describe the specific cultures they are placed in by the authors. Joe Christmas is of a mixed race, half white, half black, living in a predominately white Alabama. The culture's feelings towards those of mixed ancestry are summed up in a scene where Joe Brown is being questioned by the town's sheriff on the murder of Joanna Burden. At first, the sheriff doubts Brown's accusations that Christmas was the killer ("'You better be careful what you are saying, if it is a white man you are talking about,' the marshal says."). His thoughts change though when Brown alerts him of Christmas' mixed heritage ("'A nigger,' the marshal said. 'I always thought there was something funny about that fellow.'") (Faulkner 98-99).

The "destructive element" of the Light in August culture is pure racism against African Americans. This discrimination comes in many forms: from Doc Hines, the grandfather of Christmas, who views "Negro ancestry as a token of the Devil"; and from Joanna Burden, who sees the existence of the black man as a consequence of the white man's sins (Swiggart 133-134).

Pecola Breedlove is an eleven-year-old living in Lorain, Ohio, a black community, unlike that of Joe Christmas. Because of this difference in setting, the racism Pecola's culture experiences is much more subtle, hidden in the twinkling white smile and blonde hair of advertising and the media. The "destructive influence" Pecola must face is the culture's self-degradation, their acceptance of "white" as the standard of beauty.

"The text, it is implied, is that blue eyes and cleanliness are valuable because in this society such values are imposed upon its members," Donald Gibson says in his analysis of The Bluest Eye (110). Investigation into the novel unearths many examples of how the belief is imposed. Pauline Breedlove, Pecola's mother, recounts her visits to the "picture shows," the "education" that ended her ability to "look at a face and not assign it some category in the scale of beauty..." (Morrison 122). With the mention of Greta Garbo and Ginger Rogers earlier in the book, it is no secret to the reader that the chief movie stars of the times were Caucasian (Morrison 16).

Tayo, of Silko's Ceremony, returns from action (and Japanese imprisonment) in World War II to an Indian reservation. One night at a bar, Emo, one of Tayo's fellow war veterans, rants about the manipulation of the Native American culture. "We fought their war for them�â'¬ï¿½But they've got everything. And we don't got shit, do we? Huh?" (Silko 55). Emo's words were similar to many of the Indian's feelings of bitterness and jealousy towards the white materialistic world, especially after the period of bloody loss. The detrimental facet of Indian culture that Tayo fights in the novel is the "giving-in" to hate. While Pecola tries to reject the idea that to be beautiful you must be white, Tayo must combat the notion that whites are the cause of Native American problems, what "the witchery" has taught them to be true (Austgen).

Out of the three characters, Tayo is the most successful in overcoming the negative influences. Throughout Ceremony, there are many passages that hint at Tayo growing more and more upset, more obsessed, with the white culture. With the help of a medicine man named Betonie, though, Tayo is reconnected to the land and freed from the witchery's spell (Austgen). The culminating scene in Tayo's healing occurs on page 253, when he is about to attack Emo, Leroy and Pinkie who have just tortured and murdered his friend Harley:

"The witchery had almost ended the story according to its plan; Tayo has almost jammed the screwdriver into Emo's skull the way the witchery had wanted...He would have been another victim, a drunk Indian war veteran settling an old feud."

Tayo had resisted a life of hatred and violence, had decided to take up a life of love, and, in the process, resisted Native American culture's most destructive element.

Whether Joe Christmas succeeds in rebuffing a racist culture is up to the reader, the answer only truly known by William Faulkner. Michael Millgate believes that "the supreme act of violence by which Christmas frees himself from Miss Burden is the direct cause of his become finally categorized by society as a 'nigger murderer...'" Millgate thinks that, by the end of Light in August, Christmas has accepted the racist world and has actually played into it, purposely, so he can finally have the "rest and quiet" that his environment on Earth will not allow (46-47).

It is plain to see, though, that Pecola Breedlove fails in loving herself for who she is. Whether it is staring at the smiling, blue-eyed girl on the Mary Jane wrappers and then calling a sprout of dandelions "weeds," or drowning herself in milk just so she can drink out of the Shirley Temple glass, Pecola shows no interest in The Bluest Eye of accepting her blackness and her beauty (Morrison 50 & 23). After Pecola visits Soaphead Church in hopes that he can grant her blue eyes like those of white children, Breedlove becomes immersed in her wish, and, many would argue, goes insane.

Light in August, The Bluest Eye, and Ceremony detail the lives of three characters who deal with various struggles associated with their ethnicities. The differences between the characters come in what they deal with, and how they deal with it.

Works Cited

Austgen, Suzanne M. "Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and the Effects of White Contact on Pueblo Myth and Ritual." Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony. March 3, 2004.

Faulkner, William. Light in August. New York City: Vintage Books, 1990.

Gibson, Donald B. "Text and Countertext in The Bluest Eye." Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. 1990.

Millgate, Michael. "Joe Christmas As a Sacrificial Victim." William Faulkner. New York City: Grove Press, 1961.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York City: Plume Publishing, 1994.

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. New York City: Penguin Books, 1986.

Swiggart, Peter. "Religion and Racial Violence in Light in August." The Art of Faulkner's Novels. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962. pp. 133-134.