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Toni MorrisonPlaying in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Africanist Presence in American Literature
While critics have long maintained that American writers have not concerned themselves with race, Morrison finds that white writers have responded to what she calls the “Africanist presence” in the country. Africans and later African Americans were important parts of every national debate and question, including debates about the economy, the frontier, the addition of new states to the country, and other issues. Writers responded to the Africanist presence in their works in ways that were often coded rather than expressed outright.
Morrison looks in the shadows—where writers often hide what is on their minds—to find evidence of the Africanist presence. For example, she analyzes Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not and examines Wesley, the black character who is nameless for the first part of the book. Although Wesley is pushed to the margins of the story, he, and other black characters, are used to define the white characters. Wesley is portrayed as weak, highlighting the virility of the white protagonist. Therefore, the Africanist presence is used as a way for white writers to reflect on themselves.
Morrison does not gloss over the complexity of white characterizations of the Africanist presence. At times, writers upend their own narratives or subvert them using the Africanist perspective. For example, Huck in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn draws close to Jim, the escaped black slave, and sees him for a time as a human before delaying Jim’s escape to freedom at the end of the novel. Huck, Morrison writes, cannot stomach Jim’s freedom, as the black man’s slavery is essential to defining Huck as free. Therefore, the dynamic between white writers and the Africanist perspective is not always straightforward but is often powerfully present.
Reading as a Writer
Morrison writes that she is not critiquing literature as a literary critic. Instead, she brings to her analysis the insights and tools of a writer. Having spent so much time on the craft of writing, she is able to peer into writers’ minds and look at their choices, including both what they include and what they leave out. Looking at literature through the lens of a writer, she sees the Africanist presence, or the black mythology whites developed.
As a writer, Morrison brings a wealth of knowledge about the rhetorical devices that writers use. In her last section, which includes a deep analysis of the Hemingway novel To Have and Have Not, she looks at the choices Hemingway makes, such as the words he uses to describe a black character, to find evidence of the Africanist presence. She notes, for example, that the narrator always uses the term “nigger” to refer to this character, while the white character sometimes uses the character’s first name, Wesley. Her reading of Hemingway’s work is particularly nuanced with regard to her analysis of the craft of writing and the way in which the words on the page subtly reflect the author’s inherent ideas about race.
Defining Americanness
Morrison writes about the burdens and emotions of early American writers. They had to define themselves as distinct from European writers. However, without the marks of nobility and class that characterized Europe, Americans were left rootless, and they also were subjected to the unnerving prospect of settling the frontier. As a result, they had fears about their own freedom, as well as the limits to that freedom.
Defining Americanness as white was a way to shore up the early American identity. The myth of America became one of power and masculinity. To heighten this sense of power, white authors defined themselves and others in contrast to slaves and blacks, who were not free. Whiteness became a monolith of power and privilege, while blacks were associated with the tension between freedom and slavery, between power and powerlessness.
The Africanist myth arose from the fears of early Americans, looking for new identities in a strange land. While texts may appear to not deal with African Americans, white texts are a response to the Africanist presence. They are a commentary on the quest of white Americans to define themselves. Therefore, the Africanist presence is an inherent part of the American Dream.
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