Development And Deconstruction: Self-Identity Of Characters In Richard Wright's The Outsider (1953)

Abstract

Modern concerns for personality support mental self-view as an interchange between the longing for independence and the certainty of arrangement. Self-character looms not just as a philosophical as well as political case to self-acknowledgment, yet in addition as the freedom of Descartes' cogito. The ramifications are various: abolishment of the Nietzchean resolution, post-structuralist legitimation of the decentred subject, borderland personalities, systematization of social relations, and self-contestation. The point of this paper is to investigate the manners by which Richard Wright builds and dismantles way of life as a socio-political and social explanation. The focal person of The Outsider, Cross Damon, endeavors to destroy the self from the trap of self-recognizable proof and social acknowledgment to accomplish a recently manufactured character. Originating from a natural yearning to sidestep over a wide span of time Afro-American subject-jobs, Damon's idealistic endeavor to a future character closes in a legendary like loss against the colossal powers of social limitation and observation, as encapsulated in the hunchbacked Lead prosecutor, Ely Houston. The twofold connection, exemplified in Cross Damon and Ely Houston's conflict, presents Richard Wright's existential journey for importance and a scrutinize of society. Richard Wright's predominant inquiry to broaden the socio-political union and additionally guarantee to self-personality rules over the unique capability of self-development/adequacy.