Power and Religion in Richard Wright. Tara Tanisha Green Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 2000 "That Preacher's Going to Eat All the Chicken!": Power and Religion in Richard Wright. Tara Tanisha Green Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Green, Tara Tanisha, ""That Preacher's Going to Eat All the Chicken!": Power and Religion in Richard Wright." (2000). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 7324. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/7324 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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Higher quality 6‘ x 9* black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. Bell & Howell Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. “THAT PREACHER’S GOING TO EAT ALL THE CHICKEN!” POWER AND RELIGION IN RICHARD WRIGHT A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment o f the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Tara T. Green B.A., Dillard University, 1995 M.A., Louisiana State University, 1997 December 2000 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number: 9991748 __ ___ __® UMI UMI Microform 9991748 Copyright 2001 by Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Acknowledgements I wish to thank my parents, Edmond and Delores Green, for their love, encouragement, inspiration and support. I am also most thankful to my maternal grandmother, Mrs. Isabella Thomas, and all of my aunts, uncles, and cousins, who have taught me, in the most significant ways, the value of an education. Certainly, this project would not have been completed without the support of Dr. John Lowe, my major professor, whose intellectual insight and witty jokes helped me to reach the goal and to emerge triumphantly. Thanks also to my other committee members and professors, Dr. Carolyn Jones Meeks who has contributed to my knowledge of philosophy and religion, and also to Professor Peggy Prenshaw for sharing her expertise in Southern literature with me. I simply cannot forget all of the good people at Dillard University who believed in me from the very beginning of my college career: Professors Gayle Duskin, Sylvia Ballard-Huete, Mona Lisa Saloy, Henry Lacey and administrator, Dr. Gerri Elie. Lastly, thanks to my LSU sisters and brothers for everything: Cynthia Downing, Stephanie Hall, Anita Harris, Kim Chavis, and LaJuan Simpson. Thanks also to Mrs. Elizabeth Lee at Baton Rouge Community College for encouraging my academic endeavors. Along my journey, I have met so many wonderful people who have given me a warm smile, shared a story, or just told me to “keep on moving.” I cannot acknowledge them all, nor the contributions they have made to this study. But, I Thank God For You All. ii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Acknowledgements ...............................................................................................................ii Abstract ................................................................................................................................ iv Chapter One “That Preacher’s Going to Eat All the Chicken!”: Power and Religion in Wright........................................................................................1 Douglass Demonstrates Dialectic..................................................4 Hegel and Wright .............................................................................6 Review of Wright Criticism........................................................... 9 African-American Religion...........................................................12 Two Stowe’s Call and the Wright Response: Assessing the Power of Religion....................................................................................................... 24 Three Mommy Dearest: Wright’s Mothers and Sons........................................63 Four “Woman as Image of a Body”: Wright’s Black and White Lovers.... 110 Five “I don’t want to be organized”: Richard Wright’s Politics.................. 158 Six “Religion is the Opiate o f the Masses”: The Final Analysis................ 205 Works Cited ......................................................................................................................212 Vita.....................................................................................................................................221 iii Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Abstract This dissertation explores the ways that Richard Wright’s work reflects both history and his own personal experiences (memories) of the South. These two elements— history and memory—served to inspire Wright’s, the writer’s, imagination, and to fuel Wright’s, a Black man’s, anger and hostility. Wright’s technique of (re) writing or mastering the images of Black males, as they struggle in environments they perceive as hostile, is compounded by his feelings about religion. Although Wright rejected organized religions, whether Christian, tribal, or Communism, he, ironically, used the figurative language similar to that of sermons, including Biblical stories and symbols, to appeal to his readers and to develop his themes. Wright’s ideology about religion as a means of control echoes the teachings of the philosopher, G.F.W. Hegel on the Master-Slave relationship, described in Phenomenology o f Spirit. Hegel maintains that the master’s power is bound to and identified through the slave. In turn, the slave, though he is in the social position of inferiority, has limited power over the master by denying the master complete control over him, particularly in the area of labor, and subsequently forces his master to rely on him psychologically. While the master is preoccupied with control, the slave remains consistently conscious of freedom. The Black protagonists in Wright’s fiction resist control in their search for freedom. I argue that Wright read and actively used Hegel’s concepts; yet, as I demonstrate in certain sections of this study, Hegel’s dialectic is not the only approach iv Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. useful in understanding the origins and manifestations of Wright’s views about power and religion. v Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Chapter One “That Preacher’s Going to Eat All the Chicken!”: Power and Religion in Wright In his essay, “Traditional and Industrialization,” Richard Wright says of his religious beliefs, I was bom a black Protestant in that most racist of all American states: Mississippi. I lived my childhood under a racial code, brutal bloody, that white man proclaimed was ordained of God, said was mandatory by nature of their religion. Naturally, I rejected that religion and would reject any religion which prescribes for me an inferior position in life; I reject that tradition and any tradition which proscribes my humanity. (White Man, Listen! 55) The above quotation reveals the two influences that most affected Wright’s fiction and non-fiction—racism and religion. Wright, an African-American writer, who was perhaps unwillingly, but inevitably, a part of American, Southern, Christian tradition saw “that