第23章主要小说家：1945年至60年代Questions for Discussion and Writing Assignments1. Name the major African American fiction writers in this period.Key: The major African American writers include Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.2. Who are some of the major writers (in this time period) in the Southern tradition? Key: Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty were two major w riters in the Southern tradition.3. Who are some of the major writers in the Jewish tradition?Key: Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud and Joseph Heller were the major writers in the Jewish tradition.4. Name some writers who responded to the “age of anxiety.”Key: J. D. Salinger responded to the “age of anxiety”5. What is “black humor?” Name some writers in this tradition.Key: “Black humor” as a literary concept came into being, associated with novels such as Catch-22.Catch-22 is an anti-war novel. Because it is built on the alternating play of humor and horror, it has come to exemplify “black humor.” Ifthere was a tradition of novels that studied the waste of war and madness of war mentality, Norman Mailer appeared to be a leader, with his The Naked and the Dead(1948) and Armies of the Night(1967) being the representative works. Some other novelists, such as Saul Bellow, put on a passive but nonetheless pertinent resistance. Bellow created heroes who, in anxiety, hoard their own spiritual valuables.6. Name two literary precursors to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Write an essay to explore their connections.Key: Dostoevsky and Richard Wright are, among others, precursors to Ellison. (Essay writing is omitted.)7. Historically, what was the debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois regarding the path to freedom for African Americans? How is this debate implied or manifested in Invisible Man?Key: The historical context of this story is a debate in the earlier 20th century between two schools of thoughts represented by African American leaders, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. Washington advocated that African Americans in the racially segregated South should seek vocational skills and economic freedom so that they would gain the equality. Dubois, on the other hand, believed that without the basic political rights, African Americans would remain disfranchised and economically unfree. Ellison’s novel, in the finalanalysis, makes a mockery of Booker T. Washington’s view.8. How do the Prologue and Epilogue work together as the framework for the novel? What kinds of images and metaphors are found in the Prologue and Epilogue? Identify them and discuss their allegorical or symbolic significance.Key: Ellison’s novel is framed by means of th e Prologue and the Epilogue which, together, show us an invisible man who has already gained a mature understanding of the American society and of the right path towards freedom and is now in a stage of “hibernation,” reflecting on how he lost his innocenc e and how he should act in the future. The rest of the novel, between the Prologue and the Epilogue, are flashbacks, showing the several stages of his journey.The “Prologue” introduces several themes symbolically. Consider the meaning of just one symbolic moment: the invisible man is living in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off, and he lights it with 1,369 light bulbs, taking power, free of charge, from the “Monopolated Light & Power.”9. What is the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama? What does the Institute stand for? Explore, in detail, some episodes in this part of novel, such as: driving Mr. Norton, the Golden Day, Bledsoe’s “recommendation” for the invisible man. Why is this phase of the invisible man’s journey an “ indispensable part of his education?Key: Tuskegee was the black vocational school the invisible man attended. Ellison thinly disguises the Institute as the embodiment of the philosophy of Booker T. Washington. The key players here are Mr. Norton, the white trustee from the North and Bledsoe, the school Principal who is African American.10. Write an essay to explain the episode at the Liberty Paint Factory and its clinic asan allegorical commentary on the situation of race in American culture.Key: (Essay writing is omitted.)11. Why was James Baldwin the artist welcomed by the American public as acelebrity in his time? Answer this question by discussing Baldwin’s passion and compassion, his themes and his style.Key: Healing is a crucial theme in Baldwin because as a black homosexual man, he experienced doubly the prejudices and oppression against the socially marginalized. From the experience of oppression comes forth a voice of compassion and fortitude, a voice that was so welcomed by the American public that Baldwin the artist became, in his day, a public figure or celebrity.He depicted the blacks’ experience, often focusing on anti-separatism asa political principle, on the black man’s need for self- realization, and onChristian love as the means with which African Americans can begin healing from the wounds of racial oppression. Healing is a crucial theme in Baldwin because as a black homosexual man, he experienced doubly the prejudices andoppression against the socially marginalized.12. In what sense does Go Tell It on the Mountain, Baldwin’s first novel, take onthe rhythm and resonance of the Bible? Or, how does Baldwin’s novel turn the struggles of African Americans into an allegory? Discuss with details from the three parts.Key: The main plotline follows the religious conversion of John Grimes at the age of 14. The novel begins on the morning of his 14th birthday and, by night, he is reborn in Christ. There are three parts. The first part, “The Seventh Day,”introduces the boy and his family in the Temple of Fire Baptized in Harlem in the spring of 1935. The second part, “The Prayers of the Saints,” consists of flashbacks of the private lives and deep thoughts of his Aunt Florence, his mother Elizabeth and his “legal” (or foster) father Gabriel. John was born an illegitimate child whose real father, Elizabeth’s lover, was arrested wrongly, beaten by the police, and committed suicide. It is Gabriel who, having lost his own wife, mistress and his son, marries Elizabeth and takes John as his own son.The third part, “The Threshing-Floor,” completes the conversion in the present.As John lies before the altar, dream fragments in Freudian sequence pass before his mind’s eye. The novel ends on a suggestive note that traditional Christianity may be inadequate for John who is black. The traditional color symbolism is all wrong in that it considers black the color of evil. It is thus troubling to hear John say “wash me ... whiter than snow.”13. If you have read Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and understand the theory ofaesthetic as it is presented in the strife and marriage of the Dionysian and the Apollonian, write an essay exploring the differences between the brothers in “Sonny’s Blues” and how they learn to make music by complementing each other.Key: (Essay writing is omitted.)14. What are the two letters that make up Fire Next Time? How does Baldwin makea political argument in religious terms?Key: This lengthy essay takes the form of two extended letters: “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” and “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind.”Baldwin argues from his personal experiences that neither the Christian church nor the Islamic religion is adequate enough for pe ople’s needs to confront the harsh realities, which include political rights of the black.15. Flannery O’Connor continued the tradition of the grotesque but heremployment of the grotesque differs from Anderson’s grotesque. What is that important difference?Key: O’Connor continues Sherwood Anderson’s tradition of literary grotesqueness. But her depicted grotesqueness resembles Anderson’s only to。