Shadow and Act - Part 1, The Seer and the Seen, Section 2 Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 103 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Shadow and Act.

Shadow and Act - Part 1, The Seer and the Seen, Section 2 Summary & Analysis

This Study Guide consists of approximately 103 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Shadow and Act.
This section contains 1,040 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Shadow and Act Study Guide

Part 1, The Seer and the Seen, Section 2 Summary and Analysis

"Twentieth Century Fiction and the Black Mask of Humanity" (written 1946, published 1953). This essay begins with a preface printed at the time it was originally published, in which the author explains it was the product of a young man's writing, and that it might have more value presented as such "for it says perhaps as much about me as a member of a minority as it does about literature". The essay begins with an extensive commentary on the consistently shallow, ultimately negative, and small number of Negro characters in American fiction, citing the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck as examples. He then theorizes about why the Negro in life, in all his complexity and history, is almost always portrayed in fiction as less than fully human (see "Quotes", p...

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This section contains 1,040 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Shadow and Act Study Guide
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Shadow and Act from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.