The aspect of The Star Pit that is most likely to alarm readers (though perhaps not too many given the context) is the use of the word nigger in a passage near the end of the novel. It certainly seems out of place, almost irrelevant to the narrative, but it is used to illustrate one of the reasons Earth is a primitive place; it also is possible that Delany followed the lead of many other African-American writers of the post-World War II era in using racist language in a realistic manner to illustrate social status. In the case of The Star Pit, the word is meant to indicate, in part, how Vyme feels about a golden seeming to say that nongolden's have "trapped" him.
It is not an effective passage, but the instance of such.....
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