SOURCE: Othow, Helen Chavis. “Roots and the Heroic Search for Identity.” CLA Journal 26, no. 3 (March 1983): 311-24.

In the following essay, Othow discusses Roots as a modern epic that has wide cultural appeal because it embodies the ongoing human search for meaning.

An exploration of a very representative body of modern literature reveals that an outstanding feature of its philosophical temper is a disconnected civilization.¹ The works of Ernest Hemingway, Arthur Miller, Albert Camus (to some degree), Samuel Beckett, John Barth, and Thomas Pynchon, all reflect the malaise of our times. Alex Haley's Roots² also embodies the feverish search for meaning in an alien universe. Modern intellectual man decries dictatorships, whether they be the state of organized religion. According to Carl Jung, “Great art till now has always derived its fruitfulness from the myth, from the unconscious process of symbolism which continues through the ages and which as the...