How Do You Like Them Apples? A critical Analysis of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman
A Critical Analysis of Amiri Baraka's DutchmanComposed during the writer's so-called Transitional Period, Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka's Dutchman is a work that has confounded audiences with its political allusion to the biblical story of Adam and Eve, since its conception and presentation some 37 years ago. The writer's own evolution is reflected in his protagonist's movement away from the whipped and bound, assimilated Black male toward the postures of a radical poet screaming his madness into the face of the white world. The play opens with Clay, a young black poet, on his way to a friend's party. Glancing through the window of the subway car he rides, he sees Lula, an attractive white woman. Seemingly intrigued by his glance, Lula boards the train and introduces herself. Over the course of the slow train ride, Lula and Clay alternately seduce and repel each other until Lula drives Clay to his feet and towards his destiny. Clay's questions and desires, fears and triumphs all ring from the sound of deep reflection. Dutchman emulated the ideas of the avant-garde theater at the same time that it reflected the questions posed by African Americans to whites in the 1960's, particularly the question
When Lula uses racist colloquialisms, she challenges the possibilities of whites and blacks ever becoming equals, of ever being "friends. of the possibility of a black-white alliance. She allows him to try many, each time giving him comfort by joining in. Clay is at the mercy of the boundless freedom of whites. " He continues, if Charlie Parker and Bessie Smith could have followed their urges to murder white people, they would not have had the need to pour their psychosis into brilliantly tragic music and lifestyles. " He tells Lula, "the only thing that would cure the neurosis would be your murder. By seeking the companionship of the white woman and all that has been denied him, Clay is being untrue to his Blackness; untrue to himself. He must work toward the destruction of the white man's world and kill that Self within that craves to possess all that the white man possess, including the white woman. He must also let go of the white ideals that have shaped his de-evolution. He is lured to his death through his white self because of his Blackness. In addition to this truth, Jones makes it clear that the white woman is not the only burden the Black man must shed for his own survival sake. Clay was not strong enough to resist the siren song of the white woman or to react in time to be saved by the Black Nationalist warrior within. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**. The question is then posed in Dutchman: is this revolutionary Black male character ready to die for the love and possession of the white woman as trophy? The work confronts the contradictions that are hallmark of the colonized Black mind, in particular, the Black man's obsession with the white woman, even though historically, to desire her was to forfeit life.
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