Violence and Recent Novels

This study will provide a comparative analysis of the ways the subject of violence is portrayed and explored in Walter Mosley's novel Devil in a Blue Dress, Jess Mowry's story "Crusader Rabbit," and Zora Neale Hurston's story "Sweat." The study will argue that, within the context of the themes of each story, the subject of violence plays a major role in the struggle of the characters to make their way through a society dominated by such violence. The three works share a similar theme--the individual's effort to live a life free of violence in a culture in which violence is a major force. The study will also consider the central symbols of the three works in the context of the protagonists' struggle to liberate themselves from the oppression of violence.

In Mosley's novel, Easy Rawlins is a veteran of the violence World War II and a man with a civilian past shaped in part by criminal activity and violence. He is trying now to live a life of peace and relative prosperity, but because of racism he is forced to enter once again into the world of violence and crime in order to survive. In the context of that theme, Easy's house serves as a symbol of the straight life, the middle-class dream of peace and comfort. The need of Easy to keep the house is what first drives him back into the world of violence. Therefore, the house is a complex symbol with contradictory elements.

In Hurston's story, Delia Jones is a hard-working woman who is struggling to free herself from her violen

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ull of violence. But I was a big man too. And, like most young men, I never liked to admit that I could be dissuaded by fear (Mosley 12). Easy certainly engages in a great deal of violence in the book, but at the same time he resists it at every opportunity and rarely does it with the kind of relish exhibited by his far more violent friend Mouse. Still, Easy lives in a world which seems at every turn to tempt him into violent acts. He is surrounded by men who live according to the dictates of physical or other forms of domination and power. His boss at the plant, the cops who grill him, Albright, Mouse--all these and other characters in one way or another try to draw him into expressions of violence to save himself physically, economically, or psychologically. The fact that he maintains his resistance speaks to his continuing freedom to at least try to choose the non-violent way. This freedom is expressed clearly in the final pages of the book, in which Easy proudly declares that he has a job which gives him money, independence, and a life relatively free of violence, although, as he tells Odell, "a man could end up dead just crossin' the street" (Mosley 214). He has also managed to maintain not only his own house but another on

Category: Literature - V