Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel, Chopin’s The Awakening, and Coates’s Between the World and Me are novels which collectively focus on the re-invention of aspects of spiritual and psychological renewal. Moreover, the main characters in each of these stories are depicted as “aliens” or individuals who are isolated and struggle to explore their sense of self in repressive societies. Daniel (the psychic alien), Edna (the gender alien), and Coates (the racial alien) indeed each confront unique overt and internal societal hostilities that interfere with successful explorations of their selves. In The Book of Daniel, the protagonist Daniel’s spiritual and psychological renewal is the result of his endeavor to compose a doctoral thesis that seeks to
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As an individual woman, she indeed experiences overt and internal hostility from a society that represses her attempts to explore self- independence and freedom. Towards the beginning of the story, the narrator notes the beginning of this momentous transformation that forever shapes Edna’s future actions: “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (14). Living in a male-dominated society that does not particularly …show more content…
Focusing on his childhood and events later in his life, Coates continually suggests that his search for his black identity in such a complex, hostile society was his renewal. Towards the beginning of his letter, Coates communicates the growing division between himself and some other force in the universe that he felt when he was younger: “I felt, but did not yet understand, the relation between that other world and me. And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape” (21). This portrays the the growing barrier between him– the “racial alien”– and the “other world”, which restricts his ability to find his black identity and satisfy his burning desire to live with freedom. In broad terms, Coates exemplifies the isolation between black and whites in American society. Later in his novel, Coates delves further into his psychological and spiritual renewal as he explored his identity at the library in Howard University: “The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare you own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books... The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself” (48). Coates’s experience at the university was indeed
As an individual woman, she indeed experiences overt and internal hostility from a society that represses her attempts to explore self- independence and freedom. Towards the beginning of the story, the narrator notes the beginning of this momentous transformation that forever shapes Edna’s future actions: “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (14). Living in a male-dominated society that does not particularly …show more content…
Focusing on his childhood and events later in his life, Coates continually suggests that his search for his black identity in such a complex, hostile society was his renewal. Towards the beginning of his letter, Coates communicates the growing division between himself and some other force in the universe that he felt when he was younger: “I felt, but did not yet understand, the relation between that other world and me. And I felt in this a cosmic injustice, a profound cruelty, which infused an abiding, irrepressible desire to unshackle my body and achieve the velocity of escape” (21). This portrays the the growing barrier between him– the “racial alien”– and the “other world”, which restricts his ability to find his black identity and satisfy his burning desire to live with freedom. In broad terms, Coates exemplifies the isolation between black and whites in American society. Later in his novel, Coates delves further into his psychological and spiritual renewal as he explored his identity at the library in Howard University: “The pursuit of knowing was freedom to me, the right to declare you own curiosities and follow them through all manner of books... The library was open, unending, free. Slowly, I was discovering myself” (48). Coates’s experience at the university was indeed