Analysis of the Novel Introduction
The Sellout, a novel by Paul Beatty, recounts the unpleasant experience of a man that tries but fails to achieve the purpose of living according to his countries, his community’s, and his father’s ideas of the meaning of being a black person in America. The protagonist does not just fail but threatens to set back the race for a period of 500 years. He plans to land himself in enchanted territories by appearing before the US Supreme Court for the crime of owning a slave who refuses to work and his attempts of reinstating racial segregation in his homeland. The novel employs the use of sur prising and galvanic sentiments in the realist sense that brings out the element of satire in American society. The most section of the novel is set up in a small town of Dickens in the greater Los Angeles although the novel's action begins in Washington DC. Dickens town as introduced in the novel becomes one aspect of love by a novel reader because of the explosive characters in the town that is mythically extinct. The novel pointed out that the Dickens town was struggling with poor health, poor education, poorly paying jobs, and poor nutrition among other problems. This essay acknowledges that the most object of satire is in the wording of the novel. This essay will therefore explore some of the wording from the novel to expound on the use of satire and the less obvious use of satire by the author.
The Most Obvious and the Least Obvious Object of Satire
The protagonist, who is also the narrator in the novel, narrates an experience in the first paragraph of the novel. He says that it may be hard for people to believe that a black man has never stolen or done anything to offend the society and the community. 1 The first line provides a captivating introduction to the direction the novel would take relating to the American experience of racial discrimination and injustices in society. It sets up the pace for satirical nuances in the novel. Black people were considered to be the black sheep of the American society. They were not considered as proper human beings with good values and morals. Therefore, it was satirical for the protagonist who was a good member of society to be considered as someone not fit to be in society.
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Paul Beatty makes peculiar associations of black men in a hilarious and sober manner. The protagonist says that his father had a theory where poor people were considered the best drivers. 2 The given reason is that poor people had to drive defensively like they lived and also could not afford to carry car insurance. 3 The author uses a sarcastic tone in another passage. He says that the process of stuffing and filing envelopes appealed to the protagonist in a life-affirming way because of the repetitive nature of the job. He concludes that the protagonist could have made a good Hollywood scriptwriter, supply-room clerk or a factory worker. 4 Satire is employed because the black people were considered good for only jobs that did not pay well or considered of low class. The novel explores a lot of difficult themes where the author lays bare through humor the different ways the black people continue to be racially discriminated and segregated. 5 The author therefore does not make satire all too obvious in the novel.
The author does well to hide satirical aspects in the novel. One less obvious object of satire is revealed in the court scene whereby the protagonist aims to cement his place in history. The protagonist fantasizes about his possible future of being remembered as one of the catalysts in the historical line of race-related cases which had landmark rulings as he tackled the United States of America. 6 His alleged crimes resembled the facts in other racial segregation cases such as Plessy versus Ferguson and the case of Dred Scott. Satire is achieved because the protagonist wants to attain this attention by segregating a fellow black man. It is confusing that the protagonist is hoping to rescue Dickens town from gentrification and give its essential identity back. 7 Also, it is humorous that the defendant is expecting that constitutional scholars in the future would focus on this trial as a case study for the precedent hip-hop generation.
The protagonist in the novel is satirical in his thinking during the court session. He says the charges against him are heinous and compares it to charges against Hitler for loitering or to the British Petroleum multinational company for littering. 8 The author tries to imply that a crime of possessing marijuana on federal property can be compared to some of the world's biggest atrocities. As the criminal sits in the court contemplating the actions that brought him there, he thinks of how he would smoke marijuana. It is thus satirical that a person fighting for his freedom in court would perform a defiant action that would certainly land him a criminal sentence. This novel tells the story in reverse as it is grounded by its fictional ghetto setting of Dickens town. The town is located in the outskirts of Los Angeles and happens to have been removed and vanished from the map of California to make it appear it was never there. The author thus plots the protagonist vices through crimes as a way of reasserting authority and putting the forgotten town including its inhabitants back to the map.
Beatty uses direct, sharp and unsparing humor to bring out themes after reflecting the novel. This satirical masterpiece success comes from the ability of Beatty to foster the themes through ridicule. The novel reflects that there is a price to pay for removing people's sense of identity. This is by placing the racial segregation story that is satirical in a place recently omitted from the California map. Through this satirical novel, Beatty may be voicing the concerns of estranged Dickens society who feel left out in American society. The author points at racism and bias that reduces the sense of belonging of the people to their own country. The novel is also grounded in Los Angeles which is a multi-class and a multiethnic and area that represents the whole of American society.
Satire is offensive by its very nature meant to provoke a reaction or a response. The goal of satire is to bring out people’s essence through exaggeration, ridicule, and humor. This is shown by an excerpt from the novel where the merits of segregating a school are discussed by the narrator. The narrator says that integration can be a cover-up in America. The narrator exposes that most of the people he has encountered and interacted with society are black. He says that if a new career did not work out, he would always go back to being black. 9 This excerpt shows that satire provides and passes judgment on the often interpretation of reality. Beatty, through the novel, opens the door for the readers to juggle into challenging problems, topics, and ideas of racism.
Satire is not made obvious through the thoughts of the protagonist in the novel. The protagonist says that if he was the Chief Justice, he would deliver a dissenting opinion in one landmark obscenity case. 10 He says that rappers do not deserve respect because their sentiments are always provoking along racial lines. T he book has a certain momentum which demonstrates the wit of the author. Beatty avoids the plot-less modernism traps which in the Supreme Court does not take precedence. Beatty used the trial resolution as a matter of consequence by design because the matter does not figure much in the end. The author wanted to address more issues and subjects than what is allowed in the legal forms. This is satirical because of the matter of racial discrimination and segregation should be fought over in the justice system.
The narrator uses satire to describe the actions, successes, and situation in his hometown of Dickens. 11 He says that his neighborhood has several areas populated by gangs and a hardworking public school administrator who struggles and tries to keep an elementary school out of financial trouble. He further describes that it is in his neighborhood that he found a volunteer for his schemes. Also, he says that the black intellectuals in the neighborhood were established originally by his father. These characters expose the neighborhood as an unforgiving place where black people have to struggle to survive. It is in this same breadth that Beatty’s characters do not come under so much criticism. Various attempts by some black people to copy and enter the white’s culture fell short. This showed satire because while some black people were busy fighting racial segregation, others were in the process of endearing the white culture. 12 The novel describes how it is through love and commitment that black people in society managed the challenges in their jobs. This is shown by the critical nature bus driving was approached by Marpessa and the view of filmmaking by Godard. Godard appears frequently in the novel and is included alongside Sun Ra and Richard Pryor in the list of heroes. These people represented the novels unmitigated blackness regardless of each person’s race. These characters ability to show injustice in society through satire shows the intention of the author to speak out about discrimination in society.
The use of Beatty's references has a more desired effect. This has been praised by peers who have reviewed the novels use of satire. 13 Most of the reviews say that a person has the capability of being smart the more a reader stares at Beatty’s pages. The story emancipates a reader because the more credit these characters are given, the more the readers dismiss the black stereotypes. The novel challenges the notion that blacks are not plausible in the society through the first line in the novel. The first line says that it may be hard for people to believe that a black man has never stolen or done anything to offend the society and the community. This line provides a captivating introduction to the direction the novel would take relating to the American experience of racial discrimination and injustices in society.
Some of the peer reviews have said that Beatty was preoccupied with contemporary society by linking artistic traditions to modern society. 14 This deliberate exposure of the harmful cultural assumptions by the author makes the abrasive and daring novel every person favorite. The Sellout begins the racial ideas at a ferocious pace and keeps that pace. The readers are left to marvel and thrill on the authors' ambition of bravely exposing contemporary issues using satire. However, the novel despite being a masterpiece strains to keep the plot along the humor lines. Beatty did not find new angles to satirize the story but reverted to use the familiar scripts in his explanations and theme foundations. For example, the joke by O.J. Simpson in the novel is more inevitable than fortuitous. However, the flaw by the author to the way the racist ideas and habits have deeply embedded in the American culture. The novels, therefore, showed the American contemporary society in a different light and thus mature than other racial-themed novels. The novel, in its last pages, tries to sum up its emancipating satirical indictments in the racially charged society. 15 The readers discover that the novel was more than a loving portrait and reconciliation of a father and son. It was also more than Supreme Court justices and issues of territorial boundaries. This novel was about racial discrimination and injustice in the society that was racially diverse. The only way that the author could achieve his objective was through the use of satire, which he delivered to great effect. However, satire use was not all too obvious.
Conclusion
This essay has acknowledged that the most object of satire is in the wording of the novel. This essay has explored some of the wording from the novel to expound on the use of satire and the less obvious use of satire by the author. The Sellout, a novel by Paul Beatty, recounts the unpleasant experience of a man that tries but fails to achieve the purpose of living according to his countries, his community’s, and his father’s ideas of the meaning of being a black person in America. The protagonist does not just fail but threatens to set back the race for a period of 500 years. He plans to land himself in enchanted territories by appearing before the US Supreme Court for the crime of owning a slave who refuses to work and his attempts of reinstating racial segregation in his homeland. The novel employs the use of sur prising and galvanic sentiments in the realist sense that brings out the element of satire in American society. However, the novel does not make satire too obvious because some sentiments have a deeper meaning in relation to satirical components as depicted by the author.
Bibliography
Beatty, Paul. The sellout . Oneworld Publications, 2016.
Davies, John E. "The Sellout by Paul Beatty:" Unmitigated Blackness" in Obama's America." (2018).
Ptuabhof, Lambodara, and Phool Rani Da. "Goodreads Ratings and Reviews Analysis of Booker Prize Titles."
1 Beatty, Paul. The sellout . Oneworld Publications, 2016.
2 Beatty, 64.
3 Beatty, 64.
4 Beatty, 80.
5 Davies, John E. "The Sellout by Paul Beatty:" Unmitigated Blackness" in Obama's America." (2018).
6 Beatty, 78.
7 Davies, 1.
8 Beatty, 110.
9 Davies, 2.
10 Beatty, 9.
11 Ptuabhof, Lambodara, and Phool Rani Da. "Goodreads Ratings and Reviews Analysis of Booker Prize Titles."
12 Davies, 3.
13 Ptuabhof, 3.
14 Ptuabhof, 3.
15 Ptuabhof, 4.
