Ashley Attiliis’s post hits on a key point that we brought up in class Tuesday – what can science fiction do that other genres can’t? Ashley mentions that her perceptions of science fiction since taking this class have expanded to include “writing about what is unknown and different.” In response, Ashley Parker points out that, “If [Du Bois] had set it in a more modern or realistic setting, it would have been frowned upon.” My initial reaction to Ashley Parker’s comment was that there must be other literary works that presents a relationship between a black male and white female and deals with fears of miscegenation. The first story that came to mind was Richard Wright’s Native Son. Native Son presents a relationship, albeit a brief one, between a young black man and an affluent white girl, but with a very different and somewhat horrific outcome. Those of you who’ve read the story know that, Bigger, the black man on whom the novel focuses, brings a drunken Mary Dalton home after a night out with her and her boyfriend, and when he hears her mother approach, panics and accidentally suffocates her to avoid being discovered in her room. Wright’s story deals with its black male character in a very different way, and the outcome is very different. We follow a figure who is the product of his environment (not unlike Frankenstein’s monster) who is driven to kill because of fear of what would happen to him – as a black man – if he was discovered with a white woman. Bigger is the product of an inescapable system of racial ignorance and fear, and we follow the negative consequences of what it is like to be in such a position. In Jim Davis’s character and his relationship with Julia, however, we see what could happen if the constraints of a racist society are lifted. Wright’s story presents the gritty reality of what would happen if this relationship were “set it in a more modern or realistic setting” as Ashley suggests, while Du Bois’ use of science fiction allows him and his readers to escape the reality of race relations in the first half of the 20th century.
I think other forms of fiction can tackle the “unknown and different” just as science fiction does. When Wright wrote Native Son, he wrote about a figure that was quite alien to much of America at the time. The novel teaches us what happens when society perceives and treats a group of individuals a certain way based on race. Du Bois’s story allows us to imagine a world where characters can transcend the roles imposed on them by society – a world where two people of different races can see “how foolish [their] human distinctions seem” (268).
