+1 862 207 3288 Essay #2: In an essay of 4 to 6 pages, respond to one of the following:
1. A bale of cotton filled with $87,000 in stolen money is the central metaphor of Cotton Comes to Harlem. Discuss this central metaphor, as it winds its way through Harlem.
2. Discuss the juxtapostion of the schemes of Reverend Deke O’Malley and Col. Robert Calhoun. What comment is Himes making here.
3. Grave Digger notes, “We got the highest crime rate on earth among the colored people in Harlem. And there ain’t but three things to do about it: Make the criminals pay for it – you don’t want to do that; pay people enough to live decently – you ain’t going to do that; so all that’s left is let ‘em eat one another up.” Discuss this statement, using evidence from the text. For example, what do you make of Coffin Ed’s response to the news accounts of violence in Harlem, e.g., “Man kills his wife with an axe for burning his breakfast pork chop … man shoots another man demonstrating a recent shooting he had witnessed … woman stabs man in stomach fourteen times …” (14)
4. Greg Tate, 1992, writing about Walter Mosley, states, “His black literary forebears are everywhere in evidence. Baldwin broke the Foucaldian ground Mosley likes to work, interrogating white supremacy everywhere, from the corridors of power to the souls of black folk …” In the same vein, Helen Lock, 2001 posits that “As an African American, Rawlins has available to him a pre-existent mask, the social stereotype that fosters invisibility, and in this respect his other major literary ancestor is obviously Ralph Ellison’s invisible man.” And, of course, other scholars trace a link between Mosley and Himes. Discuss Mosley’s literary “roots”/ lineage.
5. There are obvious shared features between Cotton Comes to Harlem and A Red Death, e.g., Back-to-Africa, church shenanigans, etc. Compare and contrast the two novels, vis-à-vis their shared features. And, discuss the portrayal of women in Cotton Comes to Harlem and in A Red Death.
6. Discuss the symbolic/thematic significance of Quinten Naylor, Reginald Lawrence and Richard Towne in A Red Death.
7. Discuss the relationships seen by the novel’s bureaucrats between communists, African Americans and Jews. What does Jackson Blue think about these relationships?
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