"Marrow of Tradition" by Chestnutt

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses issues of race and oppression in the novel, "Marrow of Tradition". The author delves into the writing of Chesnutt to show that the sense of community created in this work is actually a false one. The focus of the paper is on discrimination and racism in the South, and how these topics are handled in literature.

From the Paper:

"Throughout the course of our voyage through Southern Literature this semester, we have seen a wide scope of novels which hinge upon the characters' relations with the community. The production of a sense of community is explored in several ways in each of the various novels of the time, but Chestnutt's work, Marrow of Tradition, focuses mainly on a sense of community as it relates to racial issues. While other works such as Light in August deal with community in a more vague form and dealing with the sense of either a black or white community instead of the whole, Chestnutt uses his novel to show how the sense of community can easily fall apart. The novel intends to reveal that the Southern sense of community leads to an unhealthy collective rationalization when issues of race and power are raised."

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