From Dream to Despair: The Ironies of the Great Migration in William Attaway’s Blood on the Forge
Abstract
Often assimilated to «urban realism» of the 1940s, William Attaway’s Blood on the Forge resists such a classification. Unlike the violent modes of protest literature wherein the individual confronts headlong the white racist system, Attaway uses irony to subvert the racist determination of African American subjectivity. The novel dramatizes the trauma of racism and segregation with which the Moss brothers are confronted. In their attempt to escape from the sharecropping system and its economic and racial oppression, Attaway’s protagonists leave rural Kentucky (South) for the steel mill town in the North. Instead of the better future such a move might imply, Attaway’s characters suffer and they are either crippled or killed at the end of the novel. This article argues that the condition of the characters is ironic in that they lose in the North the human qualities they brought with them from the South. The purpose of this study is not so much to break new ground but rather to promote a productive reading of Attaway and give him the place he deserves in African American literature.
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References
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