In The Sellout,
Paul Beatty plays with many different racial stereotypes commonly associated
with black people. One of the most important of these stereotypes, I believe, is
the stereotype of fatherhood, a stereotype that also speaks to the narrator’s
identity.
The narrator’s father is exceedingly abusive. He involves
his son in a variety of “experiments,” most of them akin to torture. He
electrocutes his son, causes him to be beat up, and constantly degrades his
lack of concern for racism as proof that he is lazy. Clearly, this causes
problems in the narrator’s childhood, and he says that “the kids sit dutifully
by the window at night waiting for Daddy to come home. Of course, my problem
was that Daddy was always home” (45). In this quote, one can see the way Beatty
plays stereotypes against each other. On one hand, the narrator’s father is an
abusive man, but on the other hand, he isn’t absent like most black fathers are
expected to be. In fact, he seems to also play the role of the single black
mother. The way the narrator’s household both plays to common stereotypes and
against them toys with the idea of how important stereotypes are in society –
real or not.
Still, it’s clear that as outlandish as his upbringing might
seem, the narrator’s father informs his identity for years afterward. After his
father’s death, the neighborhood of Dickens expects the narrator to take up the
mantle of “n***** whisperer.” The narrator goes along with his new role only
because he “had no social life. N*****-whisperering got me out of the house and
away from the crops and animals” (58). While it’s true that the narrator does
not take up his father’s job to honor his memory or continue his work, and only
does it for his own personal gain, the truth is that his father still greatly
affects how the narrator spends his time. It also affects how his community
sees him, not as his own person, but as the successor to his father.
This idea continues in the narrator’s role as a farmer in
the community. It is his father who purchases the farm, and uses it to inform
his son’s growth. Even after his death, the narrator never gives up this farm,
and indeed excels at farming. The watermelons he grows are “the best watermelon
you’ve ever had” with “a hint of anise and brown sugar” (63). Even as the
narrator was abused by and resents his father, the narrator excels at the job
his father gave him, and forms his own identity from it.
In this motif of fatherhood, a bigger idea about racism in The Sellout can be found. Even with a
background of his father’s cruelty, the narrator adopts his father as a part of
his identity, and even becomes proud of some aspects of what his father gave
him, like the farm. This mirrors the way racial stereotypes are portrayed in
the novel. They’re an unavoidable part of a person’s background, harmful, but
still informing the way they live and shaping their identity.
I agree that racial stereotypes and expectations are often dropped on the characters in the novel, and that Beatty’s message spreads throughout a variety of areas in the story. Besides the influence of his father, I believe boundaries are the primary focus and harbinger of this message. For example, after Bonbon’s informal demarcation of Dicken’s borders, he states, “Sometimes I’d chance across an elderly member of the community standing in the middle of the street, unable to cross the single white line. Puzzled looks on their faces from asking themselves why they felt so strongly about the Dickens side of the line as opposed to the other side,” (109). Despite the arbitrary nature of the line and the relatively equality on both sides of the line, people feel a sense of community from Bonbon’s border. A similar occurs when Bonbon reflects on two rival Latino gang members hanging out at their Hood Day celebration stating, ““Maybe the signs that we’d posted in Polynesian Gardens on the way home from the hospital job were working,” (236). Again, the Varrio and Barrio gang members, described earlier in the book as bloodthirsty enemies, put aside their differences because of Bonbon’s sign. This patterns also extends to the segregation of schools and buses, as people adopt feelings of community for no apparent reason other than they are told to, just as Bonbon took up his dad’s mantle in your post.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read the part about the experiments the narrator’s father did on him, I didn’t think about the stereotype of the abusive father that it was made to represent. I think that you made an interesting point about that. When I read it, I thought it was made to represent the problems with racism in America. In one part the narrator discusses how his father made him to be afraid of “objects like toy police cars, cold cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Richard Nixon campaign buttons, and a copy of The Economist” (29). This, along with many of the other examples, show how racism is so present in the country that Blacks need to learn from a young age to be aware and afraid. I think that the extent that his father goes through to teach him that can support stereotypes of the abusive Black father. The fact that he is hurting his son to teach him these things rather than teaching him in another way shows the stereotype. I agree that his fatherhood plays an important role in the development of the narrator and impacts his character and development going into adulthood, and the decisions that he makes later on.
ReplyDeleteI would like to piggyback off how you point out how Beatty plays stereotypes against each other. I thought it was extremely interesting how Beatty twists around the stereotype of black men being uneducated and absentee fathers by giving the narrator a father who is an intelligent scientist that performs experiments on his child. However, these experiments always cross the line and amount to child abuse.
ReplyDeleteOne such experiment that I thought was funny (yet very messed up) was when his father tested out the "bystander effect" in the black community by mugging his son and seeing if anyone would come to his son's aid. His father hypothesizes that the black community will be unlikely to not get involved unlike an actual incident where white people ignored a fellow white woman's cries for help as she was murdered in an alley. As his father starts mugging his son however, people actually join the father as he attacks his son. His father afterward, "Delivered an apologetic lecture about his failure to take into account the "bandwagon effect"" (30) which made me burst out in laughter.
To be honest, I am not sure what to make of this scene and the role the father plays in this novel. I wonder if this experiment was intended to point out the issue of black on black violence in the black community, but I really have no idea if that is correct or what the author intended. I'm also surprised that Beatty decides to break the stereotype of absentee black fathers in his novel but makes the narrator's father terribly abusive through these obscene experiments.
It's clear that the father has a great influence on his son as he later takes over his role as "n*****-whisperer" and continues on with his social rights experiments, but I'm not sure what if anything it says about children who grow up without fathers in the black community, a prevalent stereotype. I wonder if Beatty is attempting to point out the lack of direction such fatherless children have by not having a male authority figure in their lives and uses the father's experiments as a way of exploring issues facing the black community.
But sometimes I wonder if this book is simply insane and wonder if the author even has a clear explanation for much of what happens. Either way, the novel sure is interesting, but I wish I had a little more guidance as I read.