Citation: Nasir HASHIM & Sulaiman Ibrahim SAFANA (2021). Realism in African and African-American Female Writings: A Comparative Analysis of the Literary Works of Maya Angelou and Phebe Veronica Jatau. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 9, Issue 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660
REALISM IN AFRICAN AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN FEMALE
WRITINGS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LITERARY WORKS OF MAYA ANGELOU AND
PHEBE VERONICA JATAU
By
Nasir HASHIM
Sulaiman Ibrahim SAFANA
Abstract
Different authors use different styles and
techniques of writing whether consciously or unconsciously. In any case, a
piece of literary work is often judged based on the ability of its author to
use a particular writing style effectively. Realists claim that reality is not
a metaphysical thing; it can be known to an author who is willing to present it
as truly as it is. This paper explores realist depiction of Poverty and
sexuality in Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Phebe Veronica
Jatau’s The Hound. By so doing, the paper examines how Realism as a literary
writing style is used in depicting reality as ontologically independent of
human conceptual plans, linguistic practices and beliefs. The study uses a
qualitative method which corresponds with a text-based analytical research. The
study concludes that The Hound and I know Why the Caged Bird Sings are good
examples of realist texts from Africa and African- American respectively.
Key Terms: Realism, Poverty, Destitution, Morality, Cultural Norms
1.0 Introduction
Realism
could refer to a form of modern literary style of writing, literary/artistic
movement, Philosophical mode of thinking (one of the dominant schools of
thoughts in International Relations theories), and so on. This study looks at
realism as a style of literary writing, particularly by female writers of
contemporary time. African female writers as well as their African-American
sisters use realism intentionally or unintentionally to narrate their stories
in the face of male domination and exploitation. Among others, they explore
social issues such as poverty, patriarchy, sexism, love and sexual abuse. A few
people are self-contented and confident to be proud of their being female,
black, poor, tribal, and so on which others sees as the cause of their
inferiority complex. The study investigate how effectively and efficiently the
African and African-American female writers use realist style to expose sexual
abuse or assault by men at the different levels— family, places of work,
markets, shops, and so forth. Due to ever increased cases of sexual
exploitations and harassments, such female writers are left with no option but
to go against African traditions as well as Islamic and Christian norms, which
frowns against discussing sexual matters openly is as serious act of social
deviance.
1.1 Methodology
This is a qualitative research (a text-base). As
a text-base, the study draws all its data from written materials, namely
primary and secondary sources. The primary sources are the two novels: Maya
Angelou’s I Know why the Caged Bird Sings and Phebe Veronica
Jatau’s The Hound while the secondary sources include critical
writings on literary theory and criticism, philosophy, among others. Some of
these materials are in soft copy and other in hard form.
1.2 Review of Related Literature
Without
foreign influence on African people, open discussion about sexual matters is
very rare. They regard it as an act of immorality and disrespect against
religion and their cultural norms and values. Thus, owing to such cultural and
religious influences, it is important to note that sexual matters in whatever
situation are rarely discussed. Aside from religious and cultural impositions,
stigmatization is another social factor. In Africa, victims of sexual
harassments or abuses suffer in silence due to fear of reprimand and
stigmatization. In United States of America likewise, among African-American
community, victims of sexual harassment tend to be stigmatized owing to the
fact that despite being cut away from African environment, some elements of
African cultural values are still relevant to their lives. Department of Health
and Human Services (as cited in Alana Miller-Cayton 2010) “over 70,000 children
under the age of 18 were sexually abused in 2008”, yet it is believed that this
figure is underestimated as many cases of sexual abuses are not reported to
authorities concerned. It is also estimated that about 25 – 30 percent of
women, and 13 percent of men in the United States experienced sexual abuse in
their childhood. Cayton observes that, of all American communities,
African-Americans are more likely to feel ashamed and devastated by previous
experience of sexual exploitation.
Whatever
the situation may be, the fact remains that the consequences of sexual assault
and abuse in Africa is quite severe than in other places such as England, USA,
France, and so on. In Nigeria for instance, poor female victims of sexual
assaults or abuses—instead of seeking justice, they are more likely to blame
the system due to corruption in the police department and judicial system.
Therefore, poorer victims and their families may decide not report such case
because they are afraid of being stigmatized. Nigeria’s Bureau of Statistics
discloses that more than 2, 200 cases of rape and assault have been reported in
2017 alone. In both Africa and USA, due to the secretive nature of Child Sexual
Abuse, conviction of sexual offenders is always difficult. According to
Finkelhor (as cited in Miller-Cayton, 2010) a study shows that perpetrators of
violent crime are much more likely to be prosecuted than offenders of sex
crimes against children, and 32% to 46% of convicted sexual abusers do not
serve their jail time.
1.3 Realism as a Style of Writing
Realism emerged in France during severe life
challenges of modern world around 1840. Realist writers portray the realistic images of things and
represents life situation as exactly as it appears to them. It is by so doing
that literature serves as truly a mirror of society similar to grand history
paintings and allegories. As a literary phenomenon, realism has two dimensions: one, “to identify a
movement in literary writings during nineteenth century that include Honore de
Balzac in France, George Eliot in England and William Dean in America, and two,
to designate a recurrent mode in various periods and literary forms of
representing human life and experience in literature (Abrams, 2009, p. 302—
303)”.
Furthermore, Snircova
(2015) asserts that realism is the beginning of revolution in the perception of
reality of Industrial Europe whose implication, significance and impact vary
from one society to another. Goodman as cited in Hyman (2006, p. 190), opines
that “realism is relative to— determined by the system of representation
standard for a given culture or person at a given time”. Despite its relative nature due to
differences of cultural and personal experiences and orientations, realism is
by no means difficult to conceptualize. Realism is equated with Aristotle’s
concept of mimesis (representation of the world as it appears to man). From the
word reality –which is synonymous with “truth”, we can easily and aptly
conceive an idea that realism is telling the truth objectively— as opposed to
speaking out subjective influence (out of emotion, opinion and imagination).
Snircova claims that “in everyday speech the word realistic tends to imply
truthfulness and objectivity” (p. 07). Snircova opines that Zola’s conception of novel scientific record
of life based on the authors conviction that it can create a faithful
reproduction of a univocal reality which precedes the text, due to the
transparency or thinness of the literary medium.
In
addition, according to Eagleton
(2010, p.126) realism refers to anything such as literary work that is near to
reality in some absolute way than non-realist literature. Realism “conforms to
what people of a certain time and place tend to regard as reality”. He observes
that in realist writing, language is made so clear and transparent that it is
possible to yield up its meaning without much resistance, and then create the
effect of presenting reality in the raw. Realism entails depiction of things
and experiences without considering restrictions by religion, culture or social
convention; and so “realistic fiction is written to give the effect that
represents life and the social world as it seems to the common reader, evoking
the sense that its characters might in fact exist, and that such thing might well
happen” (Abrams, 2009, p. 303).
Realism
should be distinguished from Naturalism. Eagleton argues that realism is
different from naturalism, in that while in realism change is caused by human
factors based on their situation of their interactions, in naturalism, every
happening depends on natural cause. According to Abrams, naturalism tends to
gives representation more accurate than realism. He further claims that “the
naturalistic selection and management of subject-matter and its austere or
harsh manner of rendering its materials are apparent in many modern novels and
drama” (p. 304). For example, in realist fiction death is often caused by human
action while in naturalist fiction death happens through natural causes such as
illness, plague, sudden death, and so on. Realism is again different from
Modernism. Eagleton argues that, whereas modernism shows that complexity and
uncertainty of modern world affect literary works, in realism works are as
transparent as possible.
1.3.1 Major Ideas of Realism
· From literary point of
view, it is believed that everyday life and the modern world are suitable
subjects for art. From philosophical perspective, realism embraces the
progressive aims of modernism, seeking new truths through the re-examination
and overturning of traditional systems of values and beliefs.
· Realism is concerned
with the real condition of social, economic, political and cultural aspects of
life and how life is structured especially in the mid-19th century.
This motivates the depiction in ugly manner and portrayals of life's at
unpleasant moments and the use of dark, earthy palettes that confronts high
art's ultimate ideals of beauty.
· Realism is the first
movement to be openly anti-institutional, nonconformist art movement. Realist
writings particularly aim at factual portrayal of the social mores and values
of the bourgeoisie and monarchy upon who patronized the art market.
·
Realism present things
and events truly without considering cultural or religious impositions.
Realists believe that truth does not need any embellishment; it is presented in
its raw form.
2.0 Analysis of the two Novels:
2.1 Tracing Realist Style in I Know Why Caged Bird Sings and The
Hound
Destitution,
poverty, hopelessness and sexual exploitation are realistically depicted in
both I Know Why Caged Bird Sings and The
Hound. This depiction as reflected below, is done devoid of consideration
for any local cultural restrictions or religious prohibitions. It is important
to realize that both texts are blend of fictional and non-fictional narratives:
On one hand, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (2000) is an
autobiographical fiction about Marguerite’s own life, from childhood to
adulthood. In the story, Marguerite is called Maya Angelou. Angelou and her
elder brother Bailey form the major characters. On the other hand, The
Hound (2014) is a biography of Rebecca, from childhood to adulthood.
2.1.1 Realist Depiction of Poverty
Both
texts have vividly and truly provided adequate information for every reader to
see and understand the condition of a whole family life in the face of poverty
associated with ordinary people in postcolonial Africa and African-American
community. The Hound for example depicts the true poverty
situation of Rebecca’s immediate and extended families. Both the immediate and
extended families live in what may be described as a typical African urban
slum. The name of the town is Kurnin-Gwari, Kakuri in Kaduna State. There are
at least seven (7) illustrations that portray life of destitution and poverty.
First, at railway station when members of her extended family accompany her to
join Lagos bound train. Though African culture emphasizes the need of communal
assistance among members of the family and community, none of her family
members has anything to offer to the eleven-year-old Rebecca who is travelling
to Lagos, about one thousand kilometers away from Kaduna. Rather than offering
her some material thing, they have to cry amid guilt of allowing her to embark
on the journey alone without adequate provisions. It is said that “they are too
poor to be able to afford the trip (p. 04). Secondly, the family lives in a
ramshackle and dilapidated house with dirty materials all over the place, such
as clothes scattered around the compound. Likewise, spoilt food is left outside
under the care of cockroaches and rodents to feast on. At night
discomfort follows as the clothes were pushed aside to make room for Rebecca’s
parents to lie in bed. There were all kinds of rope extensions across the
adjoining walls carrying different clothes— bras, pants, wet towels, previously
used are waiting to be reused before they were washed. On the other side of the
room was where cooked food, stews, and soups were displayed. It further
observed that:
Cooking utensils of all sizes covered with soup were also
displayed for easy access whenever they were needed. Large cockroaches
and jaba paraded the house especially at night when everywhere
was quiet and dark. They crawled around as quickly as they could and helped
themselves to a fair share of whatever was left of the evening meal, sometimes
defecating on the left-over. At other times Rebecca’s family would wake up in
the morning to find the cockroaches swimming in the pot of soup or stew or in
the raw pap that was waiting to be made. They would often pick out the
cockroaches and warn what was left either to be used for breakfast or to be
preserved for lunch or supper (p. 26).
In such a miserable condition, the children have
no option whatsoever but to sleep on thatch mats which is normally spread on
the bare floor despite the coldness. As the family financial status improves,
they sleep on plastic mats. Due to severe discomfort, they often have terrible
nightmares, and whenever it rains at night, they had to go to bed with a lot of
fun due to the zinc roof making some disturbing noises.
Third,
Rebecca walks round her neighborhood and beyond, from one street to other
hawking varieties of food stuffs: gari, maggi, and so
on. One day, Rebecca encounters a disgusting experience when she runs into a
female leper customer. The leper purchases all the gari from
Rebecca, but it is the first time she meets a leper, thus, as soon as she
notices that the customer is effectively a leper, Rebecca has to run away as
fast as she can to her Mother’s (Mama) stall in Kakuri market. Rebecca’s “eyes
were red with tears flowing down her cheeks” (p. 32—31). Fourth, while each of
the other market women buys many sacks of gari from a
supplier, and pays instantly, Mama can afford to take only two sacks on loan.
For that reason, Mama is always mocked and regarded by other market women as
the poorest of all of them. Mama cannot avoid weeping whenever they mock her
due to her poverty— a situation that always disturbs Rebecca. Rebecca has to
do asusu (a kind of saving) in order to help Mama improve her
capital.
Fifth,
after her secondary education, Rebecca embarks on the hound for university
admission amid a serious competition. Considering the fact that her parents
lack the means to adequately sponsor her education, Rebecca decides to marry a
particular man of God, named Pastor James. Initially, it has been suspected
that Pastor James takes advantage of the poor family background to shun wedding
expenses; effectively he too has no financial capacity to finance the wedding
arrangements. Rather than confessing his true condition, James avoids important
marriage “protocols with all kinds of claims, but the actual facts were that he
could not carry out the obligations” (p. 79). He was a wreck. As a matter of
truth, James has to take loan to pay the dowry. Traditional wedding has not
taken place; and none of his family members is on attendance. Rebecca narrates
that as the marriage life started:
the reality of financial quagmire they were in
began to show up when all the wedding left-over was gone, and James had to
repay his loan. They could barely feed. They fed on tuwo and
okra soup daily. They took food items on loan from traders who sold their wares
downstairs. She had to no change clothes to show she was now a married woman.
She has a set of brown wrappers with a yellow blouse she acquired with the cash
gift her older brother’s finance’ gave to her when they visited. James made a
pair of sandals from a shoe-maker… (p. 82).
Rebecca cannot resist being pregnant despite the
terrible destitution. She suffers a lot of hunger under pregnancy for so long.
Rebecca looks very pale and weak due to inadequate blood. A doctor advises she
has to be well fed with plenty of liver and bones, but they cannot afford any.
When she finally gives birth, the baby is not in normal condition; he is born
with a hydrocephalus illness, and later dies.
Sixth,
Rebecca has to travel to James home State, Benue in search of scholarship
intervention by the State government. With no money to embark on the journey to
Benue State, Rebecca is left with no option but go with James’ friend called
Joseph who is also going same way as Rebecca with his racketing beetle car. The
journey is said to be indeed a terrible experience, as they narrowly escaped what would have been a
deadly accident but not without the Beetle in a bad shape. Accordingly, “the
body, windscreen and other components of the car needs repairs. Joseph has no
money anywhere” (p. 88). Since they are not at fault, the culprit has to fix
the car for them, but then they have to wait in the next town 10 kilometers
away from the scene of the accident until money comes for the repairs to be
done. Hence, they are stranded, and Rebecca has no money to continue the
journey alone. They have to spend the night there. Good Samaritan offers them
his with an accommodation.
Seventh
and interestingly, Rebecca is employed as a lecturer at a University, but due
to high level of poverty of her parents and relatives, she has to do some extra
work, like marking exams scripts of West African Examination and National
Examination just to augment her meager income. Also, she becomes a travelling
sales woman. More often than not, she moves about selling a variety of items.
Her intention is to help her parents and relatives in Kaduna, who earns far
less than she does.
Like
Jatau in The Hound, Angelou in chapter one of I Know Why
the Caged Bird Sings provides a true and vivid depiction of her own
poverty and disillusionment in the face of racial discrimination and social
segregation that characterized US society. First of all, Angelou narrates an
incident in her Church. While standing in the middle of the Church
congregation, all of a sudden, as child of about four years, Angelou begins to
realize that she is so poor that even the only cloth she wears for weekly
Church service is a second-hand dress from a particular unknown white woman.
Still standing in front of the congregation, Angelou imagines she may wake up
one day and find her “black ugly dream”— a dream of poverty condition,
destitution and fear is no more. Or she may wake up from the dream as a rich
white girl, not as an ugly poor African-American girl.
In the
same chapter, Angelou looks beyond her family, and now describes the real
condition of poor black farm laborers as cluster around her grandmother,
Momma’s small shop to take food for breakfast before engaging in their usual
energy consuming farm work. These laborers are cotton pickers for a white man.
They work from early morning until late evening, but seldom can they earn
enough money to settle their bills, let alone saving for the future. Angelou
returns to the family by representing destitution in her Uncle Willie’s
handicap state in order to impress on readers about every detail of the family
bondage. She moves further and this time around openly confesses her ugliness.
As a child, Angelou imagines that if people continue to judge her by physical
appearance, they may be surprised one day she becomes as beautiful as a white
girl. Angelou equates beauty with being white. She is also always worried about
poverty which perhaps is the cause of her parent’s separation— a consequence
that makes her and Bailey to leave California for Stamp in Arkansas. Angelou
describes the family financial constraint in the following extract:
In Stamps the custom was to can everything that
could possibly be preserved. All the neighbors helped each other to kill pigs.
The ladies of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church helped Momma prepare the
pork for sausage. They squeezed their fat arms elbow deep in the cut-up meat,
mixed it, and gave a small taste to all obedient children who brought wood for
the black stove. The men cut off the larger pieces of meat and laid them in the
smokehouse to begin the preservation process. Throughout the year, until the
next frost, we took our meals from the smokehouse, the little garden close to
the Store, and the shelves of canned foods. But at least twice yearly Momma
would feel that as children we should have fresh meat included in our diets…(p.
11— 12).
She confesses that though Bailey and herself so
much love eating chocolate which they are always lying on shelves in Momma’s
shop, but they are only allowed to have its taste only during Christmas. This
depicts how basic necessities are far above the reach of poor black families in
the America. The institutionalized racism seems to drive disadvantaged groups
down the ladder of poverty. For this reason, Angelou always misses her mother’s
house in California where they used to eat better dishes, and sleep in a more
conducive room.
2.1.2 Realist Depiction of Sexuality
Without
any kind of consideration for the norms of her culture, Jatau describes sexual
advances by Mr. Bona as deceitful attempts to seduce Rebecca. Jatau also
transparently depicts intercourse between Rebecca and her husband. Rebecca gets
married to Pastor James at the time when she is facing an overwhelming sexual
urges. Alas! She has to wait for marriage consummation for four days. According
to the man of God, Rebecca is possessed by demons, and therefore some rituals
have to be conducted. Rebecca expects some kind of prayers but the rituals are
about a process of virginal cleansing:
A white
piece of napkin had been put under the pillow for the routine cleansing up as
intercourse progressed. That routine was maintained afterwards. He penetrated
her. She screamed in pain. He continued to go in and out making ejaculations a
several times as he could. He thoroughly enjoyed himself. But she did not.
There were blood stains all over. Not a word of appreciation followed for
keeping her virginity. She could not sit up for many days afterwards He came to
her very night. She feared the night season (p. 81).
Like Jatau, Angelou without even an inkling of
shame or fear of stigmatization, she gives an honest and vivid is her
step-father; he marries their Mom after getting divorced from their father.
Now, Mr. Foreman and Mom live in St. Louis. Bailey and Angelou have been taken
to St. Louis for holidays. Once Mom has gone to work, and Bailey is out with
his friends, Mr. Foreman plays with her. Angelou confesses that she likes the
way Mr. Foreman torches her hands and other parts of her body. She said, “I
didn’t want to admit that I had in fact liked him holding me or that I had
liked his smell or the hard heart-beating, so I said nothing. And his face
became mean” (p. 32). Unknown to her what Mr. Foreman is doing:
His legs were squeezing my waist. Pull down your
underpants. I hesitated for two reasons: he was holding me too tight to move,
and I was sure that any minute my mother or Bailey would run in the door and
save me. We were just playing before. He released me enough to pull down my
underpants, and then dragged me closer to him (p. 32).
The pain of penetration is severe. Angelou
discloses that “breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The
act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the child’s body break
open, because the body can, and the mind of the rapist cannot stop” (p. 33).
Mr. Foreman warns that if she tells anybody, he will kill her, and if she tells
Bailey, he will again kill him. It is worth noting that rape of a minor is a
recurring decimal in poverty stricken societies where protection is weak.
Angelou
discloses the careless behavior of her mother for not noticing what Mr. Foreman
has been doing with her in her absence. Furthermore, Angelou relates truly how
her Mom allows them to go to night club despite their relatively small ages.
Bailey is 16 years old while she is 13 years of age. There in night club they
dance at will, and watch men and women gambling and drinking alcohol. They also
see prostitutes a variety of nasty looks. As puberty develops, sexual desire
increases. Bailey develops a kind of Oedipus complex; he is secretly in love
with his Mom. He desires share bed with her. He is competing with rich gamblers
in loving Mom. He always tries to attract Mom by wearing a diamond ring on
finger and an expensive jacket. Meanwhile he has acquired a prostitute with he
now interacts. Like Bailey, Angelou too battles with sexual desire. While
interacting with her girl classmates in the school, enjoys seeing their
breasts. Thus, she begins to consider herself a potential lesbian. He
confesses, “I was fascinated by lesbians and I feared that I was one” (p. 93). The
racial segregation that exists in the United States may have loosened the
family fabric of responsibilities on black children. Meanwhile, parents go out
to search for jobs, while children are left at the mercy of already morally
bankrupt society.
One night a classmate of mine called to ask if
she could sleep at my house. My mother gave permission. In my room we shared
mean gossip about our friends, giggled about boys, and complained about school
and life. Since my friend had nothing to sleep in, I gave her one of my
nightdresses, and without curiosity or interest I watched her pull off her
clothes. I wasn’t conscious of her body. Then suddenly, for a brief moment, I
saw her breasts. I was shocked. They were small, but they were real. They were
beautiful. A universe divided what she had from what I had. She was a woman. If
I’d been older I might have thought that I was excited by both a sense of
beauty and the emotion of envy. But those possibilities did not occur to me
then. All I knew was that I had been excited by looking at a woman’s breasts.
Something about me wasn’t normal. I was miserable. I must be a lesbian (p.
94—95).
However, Angelou later realizes that she lacks
the feature of being a lesbian. She says, “I didn’t wear pants (trousers in
American English), or have big shoulders, or walk like a man, or even want to
touch a woman. I wanted to be a woman, but that seemed to be a world which I
was not going to be allowed to enter” (p. 95). Angelou reasons that, since she
is not a lesbian, and she wishes to live like every other woman; all she needs
is a boyfriend who may desire to sleep with her. But then because she is not
that pretty, she needs not to choose but to accept any boy. She decides to meet
some boys who live up hill not far away from her residence. “If I was going to
try to have sex, I saw no reason why I shouldn’t experiment with the best
candidates. I didn’t expect to interest either brother permanently, but I
thought I could interest one temporarily. I made a plan that started with
surprise” (p. 95). In a particular evening, Angelou goes to one of the boys and
without any hesitation and asked, “would you like to have sex with me? Take me
somewhere.” The boy seems to be surprised by her confidence “You mean you’re
going to let me have sex with you?” is the boy’s question. Angelou assures him
that is exactly what she intends to do with him. The two move to the boy’s
friend room, and the boy:
who understood the situation immediately, got
his coat, and left us alone. He immediately turned off the lights. I was
excited rather than nervous, and hopeful instead of frightened. I had not
considered how physical the act would be. I had anticipated long kisses and
gentle touches. But there was nothing romantic about the knee which forced my
legs open, nor in the rub of hairy skin on my chest. Not one word was spoken.
My partner showed that our experience had ended by getting up suddenly, and my
main concern was how to get home quickly. He may have sensed that he had been
used, or his lack of interest may have been an indication that I was less than
satisfying. Neither possibility bothered me (p. 95).
Angelou remembers Mr. Foreman as the first
person to have sex with her “Thanks to Mr. Foreman nine years before, I had had
no pain of entry” (p. 95). After some months, Angelou writes a letter to her
Mom thereby apologizing for the embarrassment she causes the family for being
pregnant. Angelou happens to be naïve about sex because no reasonable adult
could guide her about it. Angelou youthful exorbitant pushes her to explore
what it means to have sex, which comes with a prize.
2.1.3 Realist Depiction of Human
Proclivities
Human
characters in the two texts are represented in a way that one begins to imagine
if they actually exist in real life— not as the way an author or reader may
like to see them regardless of the existing social conventions of African
people. This is the power of realist style of writing that mirrors social
realty as factually as it is. For instance, Jatau depicts her Rebecca’s own
parents as poor and drunkards. Baba is fond of evening outing, “mostly at
weekends when Baba returned from evening outing where he would have his two
bottles of stout. He never went past two bottles. If he was in a good mood and
had extra cash, he would buy small stout or a malt drink for Mama. He would
never take her with him to beer parlor bit he would bring portion to her home”
(p. 23). Jatau also portrays Rebecca’s husband as dandy but wicked, sadist,
stingy and controversial pastor who uses religion as a tool of subjugating
people. The author portrays some of her male characters as irresponsible
adults. But then, this is a common fact that happens in most poverty stricken
societies, where some men avoid their responsibilities to their families and
take to alcohol.
Similarly,
Angelou provides an honest but negative signification of her people, including
Momma, Mom, brother and members of her neighborhood. It is indeed realistic
–the way she confesses her being jealous of her own mother’s beauty. Since
Angelou is not pretty, she sees her mother as a kind of rival. She is also
envious of Momma’s light skin and sizeable body structure. Elsewhere, Angelou
portrays Mr. Elroy as an inappropriately huge, irresponsible, idle and hopeless
atheist. Mr. Elroy has nothing to do with church. While other people walk to
church, Elroy merely seats and watch. For this reason, Angelou and Bailey often
wonder as to how can a grown up person like Elroy ignore religion which they
consider the basis of life in the black community.
3.0 Conclusion
It was
explained from the beginning that realist texts were those that present people,
places, events and human thought as transparently as they appeared to the
authors. As examined above, it became obvious that The Hound and I
Know Why Caged Bird Sings were good examples of African and African-
American realist novels respectively. Both the novels did a kind of critique of
the socio-cultural norms, values and conventions prevailing in their societies.
The authors were able to truly expose the social realities of their societies.
On one hand, The Hound echoed religious influences by showing
they did not always make people better. Thus, sometimes people had to resist
the religious influences. On the other hand, however, I Know Why Caged
Bird Sings related facts with absolute disrespect for African-American
family orientation. It was true that African-American parents, particular
mothers worked hard to making sure that their daughters grow up decently. Both
Jatau Angelou told their true experiences with outright disregard for Christian
tradition which frowned against vulgar utterances and narratives. “Let your
speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you
ought to represent each person” (Colossians 4:6).
References
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