{"id":125,"date":"2021-02-27T19:34:08","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T00:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=125"},"modified":"2021-02-28T00:51:51","modified_gmt":"2021-02-28T05:51:51","slug":"misc-thoughts-on-realism-and-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/02\/27\/misc-thoughts-on-realism-and-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Misc. Thoughts on Realism and Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For class on Wednesday, we read two duelling essays about Native Son.<\/em> In \u201cEverybody\u2019s Protest Novel,\u201d James Baldwin decries Wright\u2019s depiction of Bigger as disconnected from the true human condition. Baldwin claims that all protest novels \u201care fantasies, connecting nowhere with reality.\u201d Wright\u2019s retort, in \u201cHow Bigger Was Born,\u201d claims just the opposite. According to Wright, there have been many true \u201cBiggers\u201d in his life, and Wright drew on these acquaintances to create the main character. In class, I felt the need to \u2018choose a side\u2019 \u2013\u2013 to choose whether or not I believe in a \u201creal\u201d Bigger. This is a pressing question, with implications for how one interprets Native Son. <\/em>But upon further reflection, I am inclined to ask a different question entirely: regardless of whether Bigger \u201cexists,\u201d did Wright have deep empathy for the character? Did Wright try to create a complex character with the same humanity as himself? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason I ask this question is because of an article I read on a tangentially related topic. In \u201cWhite Writer<\/a>,\u201d Sarah Schulman investigates the ethics of white writers who depict characters of color (typically they do so very poorly). The article focuses primarily on one author, a contemporary of Wright and Baldwin: Carson McCullers. A white writer assigned female at birth (though McCullers\u2019 gender identity is hotly contested today), McCullers wrote extensively about the South and racial politics in America. Many critics applaud McCullers thoughtful portrayal of characters of color, and I, too, consider McCullers to have been far ahead of their time. Consider the following passage, which even includes a quote from Richard Wright:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor almost twenty years, I have tried to understand how McCullers embodied what Richard Wright called \u201can attitude towards life\u201d that \u201ccannot be accounted for stylistically or politically\u201d\u2014one that enabled her to imagine and create consciousness that was not her own, and also one that was not widely available in other novels or movies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do think that Wright, like McCullers, had deep empathy for Bigger. After all, this is the true focus of \u201cHow Bigger Was Born\u201d \u2013\u2013 Wright\u2019s own relationship to Bigger; his attempt to bring to life Bigger\u2019s \u201cpeculiar type of being and consciousness.\u201d At the end of the day, Bigger is nothing more than a creation of Wright\u2019s imagination, regardless of whether Wright claims to have had realistic source material. Still, Wright attempted to imbue the character with tremendous complexity and humanity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am curious if you all agree. Does it matter whether Bigger \u201cexists\u201d? Did Wright successfully enable us, as readers, to feel the same empathy for Bigger that he did as the author?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For class on Wednesday, we read two duelling essays about Native Son. In \u201cEverybody\u2019s Protest Novel,\u201d James Baldwin decries Wright\u2019s depiction of Bigger as disconnected from the true human condition. Baldwin claims that all protest novels \u201care fantasies, connecting nowhere with reality.\u201d Wright\u2019s retort, in \u201cHow Bigger Was Born,\u201d claims just the opposite. According to … Continue reading Misc. Thoughts on Realism and Empathy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3729,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3729"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}