Alienation from Society

Paper Summary:

An analysis of Brown's writings and conclusions following an in-depth study on the life and emotions of children growing up in Harlem and as compared to other urban slums. This paper shows that Brown's book is a semi- autobiography but not about drugs and crime. Rather it is about the frustrations the youth of Harlem face as they grow up in an environment that makes them fend for themselves.

From the Paper:

"The infamous area of Harlem is still remembered as being one where poverty reigned supreme, the controlling powers were the drug Mafia and the people at large were uneducated. With all that in common one more thing controlled the lives of the residents---race. They were all African Americans marginalized in this ghetto of hell. Claude Brown in his autobiography "Manchild in the Promised Land," (1965) gave voice to the inner frustration and sense of despair that the youth of Harlem felt. He wrote what he went through and made the world realize that the brutality that he, as one young man, in a region of hundreds, faced, was the legacy of countless others who were born and died without being seen or heard. Their life was invisible to all others outside Harlem and the pain they felt was thus largely unrecognized."

More papers on Alienation from Society:

• Book Review # 75152 : "Hamlet's Alienation"
• Analytical Essay # 64745 : "Alienation in Literature"
• Analytical Essay # 130668 : "Karl Marx and the Theory of Alienation"

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