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Existentialism & Life

Existentialism from an African-American Perspective

Roger Karny takes another look at liberty and alienation.

The New York Times called the 1953 novel The Outsider by African-American author Richard Wright (1908-1963) “prophetic… a book people should ponder”. The Outsider’s protagonist, Cross Damon, is an African-American intellectual who majored in philosophy at the University of Chicago. Victimized by white oppression, he is melancholy, a ‘lover of ideas’, brooding constantly over his emotions and analyzing his life circumstances. (Wright thinks his own deep, psychoanalytic thoughts through Damon, and it comes off well.) Married while still young without really knowing what he was getting into, Damon holds a low-paying job at the local post office on the south side of Chicago.

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