Defining Different Forms of Oppression as Reflected in Literature

Posted: March 26th, 2020

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Defining Different Forms of Oppression as Reflected in Literature

The narratives asserted by Toni Morrison go through a broad array of subjects related with one another such as race, love, abuse, and oppression. The novels, Sula, The Bluest Eye, and Love provide a rather expressive inquiry concerning the approaches that people, especially women and children, apply in respect to the implications arising from sexist and patriarchal attitudes that permeate the African American community. However, the most apparent rationale surrounding this discourse invovles the utilization of sexuality as a means of suppression or oppression rather than freedom and liberty especially for women. Accordingly, it is evident that Morrison depicts the aspect of sexuality as a way of authority and power within relations and associations among human beings, especially in the context of oppression, gender, and love (Holm 45). Evidence of the application of the aforementioned factor as a form of oppression is evidenced by the manner in which the author portrays sadistic and violent behavior particularly among characters that intertwine on a sexual basis.  

Alternatively, the notion of oppression via contextual means and circumstances is also evidenced in Richard Wright’s Black Boy. Focusing on the element of race, the notion of oppression is exhibited by the manner in which race, as a social construct, is utilized in order to segregate people, especially African Americans on basis of race as well as color (Umulkhulsum 29). In fact, the shocking aspect surrounding the oppression that African Americans encounter in respect to Wright’s narrative involves the setting of the Jim Crow Laws. Despite the establishment of legal platforms that allowed African Americans to attain similar citizenship status with their white counterparts, states that particularly belonged to the South depended on the aforementioned regulations in an effort to segregate and consistently oppress African Americans from enjoying the rights and privileges accorded to them under structured law and natural law.

Works Cited

Holm, Birgit Aas. “Sexuality in Toni Morrison’s Works.’ Dissertation, University of Tromso, 2010.

Umulkhulsum, Arije Yetunde.” Racism and Oppression in Black American Literature: An Example of Richard Wright’s Black Boy.” Dissertation, University of Ilorin, 2011.