Irony as a Key to Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

Abstract

AMES WELDON JOHNSON S ONLY NOVEL, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man (I9I2), has frequently been lauded for its objective presentation of Negro manners in various parts of country, from rural Georgia to New York City. While this recognition of novel's sociological importance is merited, it has tended to draw attention from artistic elements of work; those critics who admire novel often do so for wrong reasons. For example, highly respected black critic Sterling A. Brown states that novel is important because it is the first to deal with Negro life on several levels, from folk to sophisticated, but goes on to say that it is rather more a chart of Negro life than a novel.' While Hugh M. Gloster praises Johnson's restrained handling of racial questions, he treats novel as if it were little more than a frank commentary on racial relations offered by a Negro who has dropped mask usually worn before whites.2 Only Robert A. Bone has pointed out one of most notable features of work, its ironic tone.3 The Autobiography is not so much a panoramic novel presenting race relations throughout America as it is a deeply ironic character study of a marginal man who narrates story of his own life without fully realizing significance of what he tells his readers. It is irony of The Autobiography which sets it apart from a number of novels which deal with a similar theme, for it belongs to a class of novels which was by no means new in I9I2. The general theme of tragic mulatto who fits into neither culture had been employed by such authors as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin (I852), William Wells Brown in Clotel; or, Pres-