Racism in Short Stories
by john
This is an essay i wrote for English Literature. My examples are from two short stories ‘The Test’, and ‘After You My Dear Alphonse’.
A Race is a population of humans distinguished from other humans. The most noticeable way to distinguish between races is by skin colour. In a white patriarchal society, like ours, race is used as a point of difference and discrimination to create power differences. ‘The Test’ and ‘After You My Dear Alphonse’ both challenge the legitimacy of this differentiation and thus the discrimination associated with it. ‘The Test’ by Angelica Gibbs, was written in the 1940s and bluntly shows how African-American people were treated at this time, and would have caused much controversy among the ignorant middle class reading the story. ‘After You My Dear Alphonse’ (‘Alphonse’), by Shirley Jackson, was written in the same era as ‘The Test’. This story shows how naturalised the stereotypes of African-Americans were then, and......
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Approximate Word Count: 1302
Approximate Pages: 6 (260 words per double-spaced page) |