Elements of Oppression: A Study of Richard Wright’s Native Son and Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby

Abstract

The condition of the blacks in America can be described as they suffer from all kinds of racial oppression. The whites still have many prejudices against the blacks and the white supremacy is the main factor from which the blacks have to suffer. In all walks of life, blacks are given lesser opportunities. Even though slavery has been physically abolished, mentally it continues to exist. The historical factors, which have contributed to the suppression of blacks, continue to exist even today. The blacks suffer disadvantages at various levels-racial, social and sexual. The anger in the blacks because of the suppression, leads them to indulge in violent activities and they show their anger towards their females and the other blacks who are inferior to them for the black females and the lower class blacks seem to receive a rough treatment in the hands of the whites as well as their
upper class black counter parts. A brief comparison of the elements of oppression can be categorized mainly under two kinds from which the blacks in America have suffered as portrayed in Richard Wright’s Native Son and Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby. American Literature right from Mark Twain and William Faulkner has depicted the racial conflict clearly. These white writers have written about the racial conflict, but the blacks are not happy about the depiction of the blacks by the white writers. So the back writers came out with competitive works with racial prejudice as one of their major themes. Richard Wright and Toni Morrison are notable among those black writers who have given creative expression to the oppression of the blacks through their remarkable works. The novels that speak with a strident voice about the condition of the blacks ultimately came only from the black writers themselves. Richard Wright and James Baldwin are pioneers and their novels depict the sufferings of the blacks fully and highly sympathetically.