Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Robert L. Tener

Critical Essay by Robert L. Tener

SOURCE: "The Corrupted Warrior Heroes: Amiri Baraka's 'The Toilet,'" in Modern Drama, Vol. XVII, No. 2, June, 1974, pp. 207-15.

Below, Tener claims that "The Toilet" explores the negative affects of white society on the maturing process of black boys.

At the time mat Baraka was composing "The Toilet," most blacks did not have black heroes to emulate in shaping

their psyches. They had primarily white mythic or historical or athletic or artistic models. But the feeling was abroad that the white culture was dying and that the dependency on white models could only destroy the black identity. James Baldwin had pointed out in The Fire Next Time that "white people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man...
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