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SOURCE: "In Need of Folk: The Alienated Protagonists of Ralph Ellison's Short Fiction," in CLA Journal, Vol. XIX, No. 2, December, 1975, pp. 165-72.
In the essay below, Doyle examines several of Ellison 's short stories, demonstrating that his alienated protagonists usually reconnect with their racial heritage by embracing a folk person or some type of folk practice.
In an interview, Ralph Ellison stated that a man must both find and create his identity, starting with those given elements he did not pick: "His problem is to recognize himself through recognizing where he comes from, recognizing his parents and his inherited values. . . . The way to create a false identity is to think that you can ignore what went before," [John O'Brien, Interviews with Black Writers, 1973]. Though these words refer to Ellison's Invisible Man, they could easily be applied to most of the protagonists of his short stories. Excluding from consideration...
This section contains 2,682 words (approx. 9 pages at 300 words per page) |
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