Dutchman

Kelli Orr
October 31, 2016
English 333
Short paper Assignment 2
Identity Confusion and Stereotyping in Baraka’s Dutchman During this semester, we have taken a look at a number of African American literature in which a variety of themes have appeared. One reading we dove into was Amiri Baraka’s play called Dutchman. This play displays an interaction between two main characters by the names of Clay and Lula. The readers are introduced to this story with Lula accusing Clay of watching her from the train window. From there, Lula manipulates almost everything that Clay says and does until she finally kills him in the end. A variety of things happen throughout this play that help to highlight the relationship that was shared between the races of
Baraka refers to the children’s story Snow White. He states, “Hey, what was in those apples? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all? Snow White Baby, and don’t you forget it” (94). Readers can interpret this reference as a criticism for the stereotype of black meaning bad and white meaning good. Maybe white women are not always the fairest. In this play work, it is the white woman who turns out to be the bad person as she passes out the “poisonous apple” and kills someone. Before I thought of the allusion of Snow White, I thought of the Biblical reference towards Adam and Eve, in terms of gender roles. Lula can be read as an evil (racist) Eve working towards causing Adam, or any black man, as much pain as possible through the intake of her
Clay handles this oppression by becoming violent and threatening Lula. This Clay is so thoroughly different from his calm and collected composure at the beginning of the play makes it hard not to think that Lula’s behavior is what pushed Clay to his prideful asserting of his African American culture. This on and off again inconsistency displays how distorted cultures have become even for an African American male or female tries to defend their culture while still following another culture. This type of multiculturalism is grasped through the continuous contacts of different cultures. Clay does admit that sometimes African Americans can present this cover up to the world, so it would not be improbable to state that Clay actually did not support the movement of Blacks underneath is normal exterior. This play work shows how assumed and stereotypical mindsets spread widely and can successfully misinterpret cultures. The identity confusion that Clay is forced to face is a result of the pressures of the world. He confounds to these social pressures by fleeing his own culture and stepping into the life of his oppressor’s culture and that culture eventually kills him. The piece of art depicts a little bit of reality through the eyes of the