The World and the Jug (1963, 1964). Summary and Description

In this essay, which was originally composed as two separate exchanges with the noted critic Irving Howe, Ellison resists what he views as Howe’s pressure to conform to certain narrow stereotypes of what a black writer is and/or should be. He argues that although (or because) Howe is a Leftist, his views of black authors and of black literature are highly constricted; Howe expects such authors (Ellison alleges) to pattern themselves too closely after the example of Richard Wright, whereas Ellison contends that each writer is an individual and that the complexity of black American life cannot (and should not) be reduced to simplistic formulas. When Howe replied to Ellison’s response, Ellison replied in turn, this time in a more vigorous and sarcastic style.

In this lengthy and important piece, Ellison elaborates on points he had already made in his 1953 address “Brave Words for a Startling Occasion.” In both works (and indeed throughout the decades following publication of Invisible Man) he insisted on the need for good writers and good writing to be complex, independent, and responsive to the real complications of modern life. He resisted any and all efforts to force him to march to tunes chosen by others, and he particularly resisted efforts to make his writing serve some prefashioned political or sociological agenda.

He rejected any idea that a black author must write only about racial suffering or must write mainly as a form of protest or propaganda, and he argued that the life of blacks in the United States was much more complex—and much more dignified— than critics such as Howe tended to assume. The effects of racism on American blacks were (Ellison believed) extremely complicated and multifaceted, and while many of those effects were obviously enormously negative, in some cases racist oppression had provoked toughness, irony, resilience, and strength of character that Howe’s view (which emphasized blacks as victims) failed to take into account.

Ellison argues that Howe tends to view blacks as abstractions rather than as complex individuals, and he contends that “their resistance to provocation, their coolness under pressure, their sense of timing and their tenacious hold on the ideal of their ultimate freedom are indispensable values in the struggle” for civil rights “and are at least as characteristic of American Negroes as the hatred, fear, and vindictiveness” described by Wright and held up as a model for other black writers by Howe (Collected 161).

Ellison argues that Wright himself—an extremely talented and complex man—is a perfect illustration of the fact that blacks cannot be pigeonholed but must be viewed (and treated) as individuals, and he contends that the cultural influences that help shape the best black writers are far more diverse and multicultural than Howe seems to assume. Ellison recounts his own intellectual growth and the valuable impact of authors (including many Europeans) on his own development, and in one of the most stinging sentences in the essay he asserts that “in his effort to resuscitate Wright, Irving Howe would designate the role which Negro writers are to play more rigidly than any Southern politician—and for the best of reasons” (Collected 167).

Ellison, in short, rejects Howe’s ideas as condescending and demeaning, and when Howe replied indignantly to Ellison’s critique, Ellison became even more sarcastic: “It would seem . . . that [Howe] approves of angry Negro writers only until one questions his ideas” (Collected 168). The second half of Ellison’s essay is more witty, biting, colloquial, and humorous than the first, and it is hard not to sympathize with him when he says that he resents being instructed about how to be a “‘good Negro’” (Collected 172), whether the instruction is from a prejudiced white southerner or a well-intentioned white northern liberal such as Irving Howe.

For Discussion or Writing
1. Track down the two essays by Howe to which Ellison is here responding. (The essays are available in Howe’s book A World More Attractive) Does Howe make any effective points? Is Ellison fair in his summation of and response to Howe’s arguments? Having read both Ellison and Howe, which man (in your opinion) makes the more effective logical case? Explain your response. Which essayist is the more effective writer? Explain your response.

2. Choose a work by Ellison other than Invisible Man and discuss the ways in which it exemplifies the ideals he outlines in this essay. How does it transcend narrow stereotypes of black writers and black writing in subject matter, style, tone, point of view, and “meaning”? Compare and contrast the chosen work by Ellison with a work by Richard Wright (perhaps one of his short stories). Relate the two works to the debate between Ellison and Howe.