Amiri Baraka's play The Dutchman

Lula is an aggressive and flirtatious Eve-like character whose sole purpose seems to be to simultaneous mock and seduce her black counterpart Clay. Clay's name suggests a malleability, and Lula is more than willing to mold him to her wishes. Unlike Clay, Lula seems one-dimensional, fixated on possessing Clay sexually and psychologically, and then driven to kill him when he dares begin to stand up for himself at last.

Clay is clearly the character most important to the playwright. Clay is at a crossroads in the play, and Lula plays a part in forcing him to make a decision about himself--will he remain the moderate, middle-class black man, or will he break out of that shell and express himself as an individual and a true black rebel and bold artist.

Lula in that context is not a purely evil seductress, the white woman lusting after the black man only to destroy him in the end when he begins to express the power to which she imagined she was drawn in the first place. Baraka seems to be showing that the white liberal woman attracted to a black man is herself helpless to be anything but the destructive creature she is, but he also seems to suggest that she brings to Clay just the disruption and challen

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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1151
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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