The Outsider (Richard Wright)
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| Author | Richard Wright |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | African American literature, Novel |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Released | 1953 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA & ISBN 0-06-053925-9 (1993 re-print) |
The Outsider is a novel by Richard Wright, first published in 1953. The Outsider is Richard Wright's second installment in a story of epic proportions, a complex master narrative to show American racism in raw and ugly terms. The kind of racism that Wright knew and experienced, a racism from which most black people of his own time could not escape, remained the central element in his fiction. The Outsider appeared during the height of McCarthyism in the United States and the advent of the Cold War in Europe, two events which had a significant bearing on its initial reception.
[edit] Plot summary
This novel presents ideas which examines life in the light of modern philosophies. The hero of The Outsider, named with rather fuzzy symbolism, Cross Damon, represents the 20th century man in frenzied pursuit of freedom. Cross is an intellectual Negro, the product of a culture which rejects him. He is further alienated by his "habit of incessant reflection", his feeling that the experiences and actions of his life have so far taken place without his free assent, and a profound conviction that there must be more to life, some meaning and justification which have hitherto eluded him.
When Cross is introduced in the first book of this novel (Book One: Dread) he is drinking too much, partly in an effort to forget his problems (of which he has many) but mostly to deaden the pain caused by his urgent and frustrated sense of life. There is an accident in which he is reported dead and so he sets out to create his own identity, and thus, he hopes, to discover truth.
This search for the absolute compels him to four murders and ends in his despair and violent death. En route, he encounters totalitarianism in its most-likely-to-succeed form, Communism. Though he agrees with these other "outsiders" that power is the central reality of society and that "man is nothing in particular", he is outraged by their acceptance and cynical exploitation of these "facts". "That’s enough", he screams before he kills a Communist who has just told him that there is no more to life. And in the same conversation he asks, "What’s suffering?
Having rejected religion, the past and present organization of society, the proposed totalitarianism alternative and the kindred uncontrollable violence of his own behavior as a "free" man, Cross abandons ideas and pins his last hope on love. But his mistress commits suicide when she sees him as he is.
There follows a fascinating chapter in which the law, personified by a hunchbacked district attorney who understands Cross Damon, convicts him of crime and condemns him. But is powerless to give his life significance by punishment. After this Cross is murdered. The district attorney comes to his death bed and asks how was life and Cross dies murmuring, "It was horrible."
[edit] See also
- African American literature
- Black Boy - 1945 novel by Richard Wright
- Native Son - 1940 novel by Richard Wright
- The Stranger - 1942 novel by Albert Camus
- Existentialism
