Devil In A Blue Dress Short Story

James Baldwin “Sonny’s Blues” and “Battle Royal” Ralph Ellison are two stories by young african american men in the 50’s. Racial abuse was in abundance during this era. In both stories race has an important role however, in “Battle Royal” Ellison used race as the driving force of the story. In “Sonny’s Blues” Baldwin uses race as an important theme but is subtle as opposed to Ellison who directly addresses race as the issue. “Sonny’s Blues” and “Battle Royal” depicted the suffering of young black men in harlem, and illustrated the struggle of generation past and present; and the vicious cycle of the stereotype of african americans. African americans during this time endured in environment of hatred, but not only by whites but also by themselves, they hated who they were because they weren't white, in order for a person to be accepted in society or seen as valuable african americans believed they had to be white.

The setting and time period is significant to “Sonny’s Blue’s” as it informs the reader on the past and social upbringing of the Harlem culture. Baldwin reveals after the Great Depression and World War II the atmosphere of Harlem changed. The people who lived there were no longer aspiring to do great. People were struggling to find work and pay for their bills. Harlem and the individuals who resided there struggled financially and lived their lives in poverty. The background in regards to Harlem informs the reader that growing up in this area is not easy; temptation exists everywhere you go. Wherever lightness is present, a sort of darkness accompanies it. The author uses lightness and darkness to portray the achievements and disappointments of living in Harlem, discrimination against African Americans and the relationship

In Erik Larson’s essay, The Devil in the White City, (2003), he investigates the way that Holmes used the World fair to lure in his victims. Erik larson establishes his ideas by developing the main characters in separate plots. Larson explains how the World Fair ended up in Chicago and how it was constructed and designed, in order to connect the fair to Holmes and show how he used it to lure in his victims. This novel was intended for anybody interested in a historic crime depicted in a narrative based mystery, and its intense, optimistic tone helps the audience picture the suspense before and during the fair. This essay is going to analyze how Erik Larson used a description of blue eyes to create a theme, and develop the two main characters.

Racism is an issue that blacks face, and have faced throughout history directly and indirectly. Ralph Ellison has done a great job in demonstrating the effects of racism on individual identity through a black narrator. Throughout the story, Ellison provides several examples of what the narrator faced in trying to make his-self visible and acceptable in the white culture. Ellison engages the reader so deeply in the occurrences through the narrator’s agony, confusion, and ambiguity. In order to understand the narrators plight, and to see things through his eyes, it is important to understand that main characters of the story which contributes to his plight as well as the era in which the story takes place.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

The time period of the novel created an uncomfortable setting for the prominent black characters in the story.  During the 1960’s, there was a prodigious divide between blacks and whites.  Being set during the time

In Devil in the White City, Erik Larson details the favorable and heinous aspects of Chicago during the progressive era. The characters in the novel contradicted each other because of the nickname given for the World Fair “White City” and the nickname for Chicago, “Black City”. Erik Larson effectively conveys in Devil in the White City through diction, characterization and juxtaposition that although the there are two contrasting plots, they both left a mark on society and impacted individual’s lives.

In the story of "The wife of his youth" by Charles W. Chesnutt goes into detail about how the blacks were having problems with the society of the whites. This story was written after civil war. Where were a group of blacks who started this society called "The blue vein society". The group of people would get to together talk about how the whites could except them and for the blacks to except them would be a step back for them. The main character of the story is Mr. Ryder. He was in charge of the blue vein society, and everybody in the society look up the him. In this paper I will show how the people of the blue vein society had problems with their identities.

Over the years there is no question that African Americans were treated as stepchildren in American society. They struggled to integrate with whites, while at the same time trying to gain their independence from them. Set in the 1950s in New Orleans, the short story “Miss Yellow Eyes” Shirley Ann Grau illustrates the struggles African Americans faced during this era. In the 1950s the south faced segregation, the civil rights movement and a draft to enlist men to fight in the Korean War. This story is a first person narrative that describes the lives of two young African American men faced with segregation and injustices in America that promised liberty for all. Grau reveals by the use of foil how a young black man chooses to survive segregation and the social prejudices of this era.

Walter Mosley’s novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, explores the racial prejudices in Los Angeles during the 1940’s. The novel takes place in 1948, when the United States was still legally segregated into black and white communities and when people divided themselves into lower and upper classes. Easy Rawlins, the main character in the book, is an ordinary lower class African American worker, who faces limited opportunities and little money to live on. Throughout the novel, Easy Rawlins experiences firsthand the blatant racism prevailing in 1948. Walter Mosley’s novel reveals how life was in Los Angeles after WWII, before the civil rights movement. By viewing an American city from the perspective of a black lead character, Devil in A Blue Dress helps one become more conscious of how racial barriers have appeared in the eyes of African-Americans.

Sonny’s Blues digs deeply into the “Negro American” during Civil Rights and Jim Crow Era’s. Set in Harlem, New York in the 1950’s. James Baldwin’s stories give insight based on events of his culture and this becomes apparent through the analysis of the characters in Sonny’s Blues. James Baldwin uses his talents to paint a vivid picture of African American life through a fictional story of two brothers who chose very different path’s in life in order to achieve the pinnacle of self-expression and acceptance.

One of the intresting things about the book is that the author is almost like a combat or field journalist in the way he approaches the subject matter going to the extremes of changing his skin color with pills and tanning lamps, and trying to live the actual experiences of a black man in the south at that time that the author really wants to get it right in telling the story that he has to get in the mix and really live it instead of observing from the sidelines that the author is in a way is almost willing to lose life and limb to live the experience and get

I read a historical fiction novel about racism called A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines. Gaines was a was an African American man who was born in 1933 and grew up on a plantation in Louisiana. He earned 50 cents a day picking potatoes at the age of nine. By the age of 15, he moved to California with his aunt and that’s when his passion for reading grew stronger. Disappointed to find that none of the books he read had nothing to do with the world he knew, he decided to write some stories himself (Magnier). Therefore, the main themes of his works come from his childhood. His first few famous novels were published around the 1970’s: Of Love and Dust (1967) and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971); Gaines received the U.S. National Book Award for A Lesson before Dying in 1994. The purpose of this book is to show people how it felt to be put in the shoes of a black man in the southern states of America in the 1940’s.

Millions of years ago, humans evolved from primitive animals and transformed into complex, intellectually gifted homo sapiens. Humans today are a lot different than the creatures we originated from, however, homo sapiens still bear animalistic qualities of our earliest ancestors. These animal attributes are commonly expressed in literature. One famous literary example of animal stereotypes is the symbolic brilliance of Aesop’s Fables. The ancient Grecian story teller used animals with human properties to teach lessons about human character and behavior. Similarly, author Walter Mosley uses animals to describe the physical, mental, and emotional qualities of his characters. In the novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley uses animal symbolism to portray characters Easy Rawlins, Mouse, and Daphne Monet.

The middle class black society and the lower class black society, for example, are quite different from each other and are constantly conflicting. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison distinguishes these divisions and their tensions through characters like Geraldine, Junior, and Maureen Peal, who represent the privileged division of black culture. On the contrary, the less privileged division is represented by the MacTeer family and the “relentlessly and aggressively ugly” Breedlove family (The Bluest Eye 38). Tension between the divided African American society is clearly represented by such characterizations throughout Morrison’s novel.