There
is phrase that appears on the dust jackets of select novels, a writer’s writer.
The phrase seldom appears on literary novels mostly commercial works and in the
biographies of popular writers, but to be a writer that writers admire one has
to use literary devices on a master’s level in an effortless fashion, and yet .
. . weave a plot with a captivating storyline. Ann Petry is a writer’s writer.
In her novel, The Narrows, Petry’s use of literary devices moves a complicated plot twisted with deception, lust, and love easily forward. She does this while switching from third person narrative to first person with stealth like accuracy. The story has two protagonists: an orphaned boy and a class conscious widow. Each of their lives could have been a novel within itself, but Petry combines them with skillfully placed flashbacks that do not interrupt or pause the story. While meshing her protagonists’ lives, she includes themes of classism, racism, sexism, and colorism.
The
novel was written in 1953 during a time when America’s race relations were
being redefined and challenged. However, during this period of racial unrest
Petry writes about a Black community that comes together to raise a child.
Lines of class and social etiquette are crossed for the benefit of a parentless
child. Petry creates and unlikely band of heroes that come together in the
growth and development of Lincoln Williams: a schizophrenic cook, a nearly
homeless photographer, a madam, a gangster, a female undertaker, and a tree
named The Hangman.
The
widow protagonist, Abigail Crunch takes in the child when her husband is alive,
but his unforeseen death consumes her, and the boy is again orphaned. Petry
writes the widow’s loss so deftly that a reader is left in grief after her
husband dies. Link Williams, the orphan, finds refuge with the town’s
underworld boss, Bill Hods.
The
two, Hods and Crunch have been at odds since Abigail moved to The Narrows. Crunch
looks down on Hods and all that make the livelihoods through elicit means. The
two are oil and water, but Petry writes their acceptance of each other for the
benefit Link with such craft that their cohesiveness seems like an everyday
event. They come together with the others in The Narrow to make a man out of
Lincoln Williams.
Link
graduates from college, develops a love of history, respects and love his
elders, and has genuine concern for his fellow man; this concern for his
fellows is what leads him into an interracial relationship that knocks him and The
Narrows off of their paths. Petry personifies The Narrows complete with flaws,
strengths, and emotions. When Link goes into a whirlwind so does the community
that raised him.
The
themes of racism and sexism are the two most poignant themes in the work.
Blacks and women strive throughout the work for more; success is obtained, but
failure looms attacking the successful and the striving. Petry’s women are not
all week and neither are her Blacks all subservient. The reader leaves the work
with a whole view of Link Williams and The Narrows; a view created by a
writer’s writer, Ann Petry.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment