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"When the Lessons Hurt": The Third Life of Grange Copeland as Joban Allegory

"When the Lessons Hurt": The Third Life of Grange Copeland as Joban Allegory "When the Lessons Hurt": The Third Life of Grange Copeland as Joban Allegory by Kate Cochran Alice Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, recounts three different experiences of racial and economic oppression in the South. In detailing the stories of Brownfield, Grange, and Ruth, Walker not only illustrates her own theories of the importance of maintaining the individual soul in the context of community, as documented in her non-fiction work, but also elucidates methods of surviving suffering. Walker presents three variations on the Job quest in the journeys of Brownfield, Grange, and Ruth; these characters begin their stories as uniquely oppressed in the sharecropping system and in the corresponding environment of domestic violence and consequent self-hatred of mid-twentiethcentury Georgia. Each is faced with making meaning of his suffering and thereby transcending that suffering and its vicious cycle of brutality. Just as Job meets his anguish with a tripartite reaction of fear and misery, rage and rebellion, and serenity and compassion, so too do these characters evolve. However, none is a complete Job figure. Brownfield stagnates in the rage juncture of the cycle; Grange stops short of developing a cosmic sense of compassion; and, though the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Southern Literary Journal University of North Carolina Press

"When the Lessons Hurt": The Third Life of Grange Copeland as Joban Allegory

The Southern Literary Journal , Volume 34 (1) – Dec 1, 2001

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 Department of English of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
ISSN
1534-1461
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

"When the Lessons Hurt": The Third Life of Grange Copeland as Joban Allegory by Kate Cochran Alice Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, recounts three different experiences of racial and economic oppression in the South. In detailing the stories of Brownfield, Grange, and Ruth, Walker not only illustrates her own theories of the importance of maintaining the individual soul in the context of community, as documented in her non-fiction work, but also elucidates methods of surviving suffering. Walker presents three variations on the Job quest in the journeys of Brownfield, Grange, and Ruth; these characters begin their stories as uniquely oppressed in the sharecropping system and in the corresponding environment of domestic violence and consequent self-hatred of mid-twentiethcentury Georgia. Each is faced with making meaning of his suffering and thereby transcending that suffering and its vicious cycle of brutality. Just as Job meets his anguish with a tripartite reaction of fear and misery, rage and rebellion, and serenity and compassion, so too do these characters evolve. However, none is a complete Job figure. Brownfield stagnates in the rage juncture of the cycle; Grange stops short of developing a cosmic sense of compassion; and, though the

Journal

The Southern Literary JournalUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Dec 1, 2001

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