The Dialectics of Alienation: A Study of Amiri Baraka's Plays

Abstract

One of the most distinguished and versatile African-American dramatists in the present time, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), has written plays which, though unrelentingly propagandistic, draw attention to issues not merely of racist concern but of profound human significance — issues like displacement, loss of identity, alienation, and existential despair. It is not, therefore, surprising that his plays project themes which have not only socio-political implications because of their being predicated on the African-American political dynamic, but also symbolic and mythical ones traceable to their use of motifs drawn from religious and folkloric myths. His plays, indeed, seem to exemplify what Langston Hughes and W. E. B. DuBois envisioned as a responsibility and role of young Black artists during the Harlem Renaissance. Elaborating their views, Baraka (1966:251-252) says: