Man or Symbol?

The action of Brainard Cheney’s This Is Adam (McDowell, Obolensky, $3.95) and Richard Wright’s The Long Dream (Doubleday, $3.95) both depend upon the inequality of status between the white and Negro races. How does a Negro get justice in a world where the laws and manners are white: how particularly can a member of a servile race, unable as he is to assume full responsibility for his deeds, retain his humanity or, even at times, his life? In both novels a Negro is the hero. The conflict in Mr. Cheney’s book involves a close but formal relationship with a white woman; in The Long Dream by Mr. Wright there is no particular woman but the idea of White Woman. Money plays a crucial part, and reliance upon it fails both heroes.

It seems to me that of the two books Mr. Cheney’s is sound fiction, while Mr. Wright’s is a form of allegory approaching propaganda. It is homiletic, designed not for Active truth but to arouse certain feelings beyond the book. The difference lies in the way the authors approach their material. Mr. Cheney sees his hero, who becomes surrogate husband and father to his dead patron’s family, not in racial but in human terms. He allows to Adam the same temptations, virtues and vices which afflict all men regardless of race or previous condition of servitude. The racial disadvantage and peril makes more dramatic his action and final triumph, triumph as a man among men, but especially over himself. This is to say that Mr. Cheney uses the fact of racial discrimination to intensify the conflict, allowing it to grow out of recognized conventions of behavior.

AL

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Andrew Lytle

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The action of Brainard Cheney’s This Is Adam (McDowell, Obolensky, $3.95) and Richard Wright’s The Long Dream (Doubleday, $3.95) both depend upon the inequality of status between the white and Negro races. How does a Negro get justice in a world where the laws and manners are white: how particularly can a member of a servile race, unable as he is to assume full responsibility for his deeds, retain his humanity or, even at times, his life? In both novels a Negro is the hero. The conflict in Mr. Cheney’s book involves a close but formal relationship with a white woman; in The Long Dream by Mr. Wright there is no particular woman but the idea of White Woman. Money plays a crucial part, and reliance upon it fails both heroes.

It seems to me that of the two books Mr. Cheney’s is sound fiction, while Mr. Wright’s is a form of allegory approaching propaganda. It is homiletic, designed not for Active truth but to arouse certain feelings beyond the book. The difference lies in the way the authors approach their material. Mr. Cheney sees his hero, who becomes surrogate husband and father to his dead patron’s family, not in racial but in human terms. He allows to Adam the same temptations, virtues and vices which afflict all men regardless of race or previous condition of servitude. The racial disadvantage and peril makes more dramatic his action and final triumph, triumph as a man among men, but especially over himself. This is to say that Mr. Cheney uses the fact of racial discrimination to intensify the conflict, allowing it to grow out of recognized conventions of behavior.