T 1290.pdf - Pondicherry University DSpace Portal

wealth and status. All that prevents the two from immediatelydestroying each other is the recognition that they also needeach other. Apublished author wlth a little money, Lesser canoffer advice, guidance and shelter to the untutored andlmpoverised black. In turn Spearmint introduces the Jew to sexand then to love, allowing him temporarily to blossom as a manand revitalize his writing. Both represent extremepersonalities and can benefit by adopting some of the other'stralts. Unfortunately the friendship is never reallzed.The Cultural differences between blacks and Jews are muchgreater than those between the Italian and the Jew in aAssistant, for example. Also Spearmint is not Alpine or AngelLevine, who willingly embrace Judaic tradition. Dependencybreeds self-hatred, exasperation and ultlrnately violence. LikeRichard Wright, Harold Cruse and Imamu Baraka, Willie rejectsJewlsh benevolence and tries to assert hls ldentlty. He evenchanges his name to Bill Spear in a pathetic attempt to assumea new, more militant and dignified self. In the end bydestroying that which threatens them, they also destroythemselves and the possibility of harmony between disparatePeoples and cultures.Richard Wright's Native son shook the literary firmamentOf the United States on its appearence in 1940. It highlightsthe differences between Afro-Amerlcans and ~ewish-~rnericans