Existentialism from an African-American Perspective

Roger Karny takes another look at liberty and alienation.

- Roger Karny

The New York Times called the 1953 novel The Outsider by African-American author Richard Wright (1908-1963) “prophetic… a book people should ponder”. The Outsider’s protagonist, Cross Damon, is an African-American intellectual who majored in philosophy at the University of Chicago. Victimized by white oppression, he is melancholy, a ‘lover of ideas’, brooding constantly over his emotions and analyzing his life circumstances. (Wright thinks his own deep, psychoanalytic thoughts through Damon, and it comes off well.) Married while still young without really knowing what he was getting into, Damon holds a low-paying job at the local post office on the south side of Chicago. He is now estranged from his wife, who refuses to divorce him, and has unknowingly taken up with an under-aged girl. The girl threatens to take him to court for statutory rape if he doesn’t divorce his wife and marry her. To finance his out-of-control life, he has to continually take out loans, thus putting himself in unending debt. What to do?

Well, fortuitously (or not) Damon climbs aboard a Chicago train that crashes horribly, killing many passengers but leaving him unharmed. He comes up with the idea of making it look as if he himself has perished so as to escape his problems. Everyone, including his family and the authorities, believe the ruse, and he slips away from it all to New York City and seemingly a brand new life and identity.

He’s free! Free to start a new life and re-create his identity. How much more existential than that can you get?