IDENTITY ISSUES AND RACIAL INTERACTION IN ALEX LA GUMA’S A WALK IN THE NIGHT (1962) AND RICHARD WRIGHT’S NATIVE SON (1940)

Abstract

Focusing on two major works, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night (1962), this dissertation aims to discuss the black/white interaction and identity issues of the non-whites, in the USA and South Africa. Following the concepts of Post-Colonial theories, and relying on Hegel’s master slave dialectic and the Fanonian theories, this study examines how otherness is enacted in the inferiority complex that the dominant power exerts on the “subaltern”, and how psychological and physical oppression and segregation of the “Other” are the factors of their identity crisis. The most interesting finding was that the frustration of subject races, in Jim Crowed America and Apartheid in South Africa, has led to their downfall. It has revealed that the consequential accumulation of stress and the need for individuality lead the subject races to act with violence.