The Outsider (3 page)

Cross's articulation of issues of domination, violence, and victimization makes him a uniquely crafted individual and contributes to Wright's importance in changing the direction of literature which sought to interpret social and psychological phenomena.

In the early sections of the book, Cross is aware that victimization can stimulate violent aspects of one's character, and he engages in violent actions as an effective means for releasing himself from the control of others. Thus, Cross is growing increasingly aware of the way violence can be used against him as well as the way he can employ it for his own ends. He traps Gladys by
pretending insanity and abusing her, hoping she will want to divorce him; in turn, he is trapped by his girlfriend Dot, a minor, who falsely accuses him of the violent act of rape, hoping to coerce him into child support. These examples further problematize the meaning of violence. For once violence—ideological, symbolic, or physical—is understood to be an acceptable tool of domination, then the categories of “resistance” and “accommodation” are not what they appear to be.

In the latter portion of the book, and especially in the restored sections, Cross's resistance to the power and authority of others becomes stronger as does his desire to become the agent for the liberation of others. He refers to his acts as “ethical murder” but decides he cannot confess, and is obliged to “lie, to dodge, to blend with the changing hues of the foliage…” (311). He queries Menti, a Communist functionary who has been discharged to spy on him, “But…don't you feel that you've got some value that's yours and yours alone?” (372) Such instances are telling, for we realize that Cross's actions are inspired by his desire to empower himself and others.

Because of the death-rebirth symbolism and the moral tone which Cross adopts, many critics have chosen to read this story as Wright's attempt to reinscribe a politically corrupt world with a moral message. Just as Cross Damon, himself demonic, is born again, so too must the ideas of humankind be grounded in morality. I would prefer to read Wright's presentation of the complex social world in which Cross Damon lives and the psychological state that breeds his criminality as a cautionary tale about the excesses of individuality and the dangers of human alienation. In the end, Cross has no appropriate context in which to give meaning to his actions, other than one he himself has created.

By demonstrating the consequences of human alienation—irrational, irresponsible murder and death—in a racist society, Wright highlights the inadequacy of interpretations which privilege individualism, even at the risk of being self-critical. Cross's fatal flaw is ultimately his individualism. When carried to its logical conclusion, he has nothing left.

If for no other reason, therefore, reading a book like
The Outsider
is a challenge to our understanding of the past. And it demands that we reassimilate into the critical present a writer whose fiction articulates moments of discovery and change which have profoundly affected the way we construct the political discourses of our own day and time.

If the dominant theme in twentieth-century literature is the search for identity, then Wright reinterprets this theme for his own work by electing to have his characters search for their freedom in ways as complex and ironic as the history of racism itself. It is this that forms the crux of Wright's stories from the beginning of his career to the very end. Moving inside and outside of the realities of people's lives becomes an abundant source for writers of fiction. When these realities are complicated by a carefully woven blend of historical fact and knowledge about domination—social, cultural, ideological, or otherwise—the results can be explosive, as they were for Wright.

This then is the context for revisiting
The Outsider—
a novel in which we see inscribed Wright's increasing desire to explore human reactions to oppression and domination and to find a way perhaps to mirror his own feelings of marginality, the spiritual exile of Paris, and the alienation from the land and the people of his birth.

M
ARYEMMA
G
RAHAM

N
ORTHEASTERN
U
NIVERSITY

F
ROM AN INVISIBLE
February sky a shimmering curtain of snowflakes fluttered down upon Chicago. It was five o'clock in the morning and still dark. On a South Side street four masculine figures moved slowly forward shoulder to shoulder and the sound of their feet tramping and sloshing in the melting snow echoed loudly. The men were warmly dressed and wore mufflers about their throats. The brims of their hats, encrusted with snow, were pulled down at rakish tilts over their eyes. Behind turned-up overcoat collars their gruff voices exploded in jokes, laughter, and shouts. They jostled one another with rude affection and their hot breaths projected gusts of vapor on to the chilled morning air. One of the men threw out an arm and grabbed a companion about the neck and crooned:

“Booker, let me rest this tired old body on you, hunh?”

“Hell, naw! Stand on your own two big flat feet, Cross!” Booker, a short, black man protested with a laugh.

The man called Cross turned and flung his arm about
the shoulders of a big, fat, black man and said, “Then how about you, Joe?”

“Look, Crossy, I'm tired too,” Joe defended himself, shying off. “Why pick on me?”

“'Cause you're soft as a mattress and can stand it,” Cross explained.

“If you're cold, it's your own damn hard luck,” Joe said. “You don't take care of yourself. Me, I ain't never cold. I know how come you're always so cold, Cross. You drink too much. Don't eat enough. Don't sleep. But,
me…
Ha-ha! I eat and sleep as much as I can. And my good old fat helps to keep me warm. Ain't that right, Pink?”

The man called Pink did not reply at once; he was reddish in color and older than the other three.

“Cross,” Pink said seriously, “you ought to take some vitamins or something. Man, you
couldn't
be cold now. Hell, we just left that steamy Post Office
twenty
minutes ago.”

Cross swiftly pulled the glove off his right hand and, grabbing Pink's shoulder, rammed his bare fingers down the collar of Pink's neck.

“How do they feel, Pink?” Cross demanded.

“Jeeesus! Your fingers're cold as
snakes
!” Pink gasped, his eyes lit with concern. “They ought to call you
Mr. Death
!”

“I just need some alcohol,” Cross confessed grimly. “My old engine won't run without it.”

“You better quit that bottle, Cross,” Joe, the big, fat, black man warned. “When you start
living
on alcohol, you're traveling a road that ain't got no turning. You been hitting that bottle heavy for a month now. Better let up, boy.”

“Man, whiskey ain't never hurt nobody,” Pink said; he broke into song:

A rich, rolling laughter erupted and died away over the snow-blanketed sidewalks.

“Crossy, how come you're drinking so much these days?” Booker asked in a tone free of moral objections.

“My soul needs it,” Cross mumbled.

“Makes you feel better, hunh?” Booker asked.

“No. Makes me feel
less
,” Cross corrected him.

“But how about your liver?” Joe demanded.

“My liver's in the death house,” Cross admitted.

“Say, Pinkie, remember when Crossy used to be the life of the gang?” Joe asked. “Now he just swills and every word he says is a gripe.”

“We all have blue days,” Pink said.

“
Pink
has
blue
days,” Cross's tongue played softly with the words.

They tossed wild laughter amidst the milling flakes of snow. All of them laughed except Cross whose lips shaped themselves into an ambiguous smile whose meaning might have been a jeering at or a participation in the merriment. He was tall but slightly built with a smooth, brown and yellow skin, and his body moved as though it had more nervous energy than it could contain.

“Aw, leave Cross alone,” Pink said.

“Thanks, pal,” Cross muttered.

Joe suddenly paused amid the flakes of dancing snow, laughing hysterically, slapping his thighs, sending blasts of steam on to the frigid air. The sheen of a street lamp sharply etched his ebony face.

“What's the matter, Joe?” Booker asked.

“Oh, God,” Joe gasped, his fat cheeks trembling and tears gleaming at the corners of his eyes.

“All right; share the damn joke,” Pink said.

The three men confronted Joe and waited for his mirth to subside.

“Today I heard somebody say the damndest thing about Cross—” Joe went off into another spasm of mirth, bending over, coughing, spluttering, sending tiny flecks of spittle into the run-away snowflakes. Joe finally straightened and placed a brotherly hand upon Cross's shoulder. “Now, listen, if I tell what I heard, you won't be mad, will you?”

“I don't give a damn what you heard,” Cross muttered.

Tiny crystals trembled whitely between their dark faces. The shoulders of their overcoats were laced with icy filigrees; dapples of moisture glowed diamondlike on their eyebrows where the heat of their blood was melting the snow.

“Well, spill it, man,” Pink urged impatiently.

Joe sobered only to give way to so much laughter that Pink and Booker joined in and laughed so infectiously that even Cross surrendered to the contagion and chuckled.

“Somebody said,” Joe began, “that Cross was trying to imitate the United States' Government. They said the trouble with Cross was his four A's.
Alcohol. Abortions. Automobiles
. And
alimony
.” Joe laughed so violently that his eyes were buried in fat and the pearly gleam of his white teeth vied with the translucence of the snow. Jerking out his words, he continued: “They called C-cross the Q-q-quadruple-A Program! Said that the best thing for Cross w-was to plow h-himself under…”

Cross stood aloof as the others bent double with their giggles. Cross did not resent what had been said; it was
as though they were laughing at the foibles of an absent man who was well-known to him. He smiled, admitting to himself that the analogy was not badly put, that it fitted the snarled facts of his life pretty aptly, and that he could not have summed up his situation any better himself. The more Pink, Joe, and Booker guffawed, the longer Cross retained his nervous, ambiguous smile. Finally the laughter died and Joe, putting his arm about Cross's shoulder, promised consolingly: “Goddammit, Crossy, I'm gonna buy you a drink. Hell, I'm gonna buy you
two
damn drinks. You need 'em.”

Still chuckling, they trudged on through the snow to a corner tavern whose neon sign dimly identified it as: THE SALTY DOG. They pushed through the door and went in. Cross followed solemnly, his hands dug into his overcoat pockets, a cigarette stub glowing in his lips. He sat with the others in a booth and looked at them with quiet eyes and an enigmatic smile. A short, fat, brown proprietor with a bald head and a grey goatee called to them from behind the bar: “Same old thing, boys?”

“Same old thing, Doc,” Joe and Pink chorused.

“Crossy, what's the trouble?” Booker asked softly.

“You
know
what's wrong with 'im,” Joe insisted. “His Quadruple-A Program's got 'im down.”

They laughed again. Doc sat four whiskies before them and, at the sight of the little glasses of pale brown fluid, they grew sober, almost dignified; each took up his glass daintily and threw back his head and tossed the liquor down his throat.

“One of these days, Doc,” Cross said, sighing and smacking his lips, “we're going to fool you. We're going to swallow the glasses too.”

“Atta boy!” Joe approved.

“The spirit moved 'im at last,” Booker commented.

“Crossy,” Joe said, “you're losing your touch. Remember the time you used to pull them crazy stunts?” Joe turned to the others for confirmation. “When Cross first came to work in the Post Office, he was a nonstop riot, a real killer-diller. Early in the evening, when the rush hour was on, he used to—we were working on the 11th floor then—lift up the window, run his hand in his pocket and toss out every cent of silver he had. Just throw it all out of the window to the street. And then he'd lean out and watch the commotion of all them little antlike folks down there going wild, scrambling and scratching and clawing after them few pieces of money and then, when the money was all gone, they'd stand looking up to the window of the 11th floor with their mouths hanging open like fishes out of water. And Cross'd be laughing to beat all hell. And Cross'd say that them folks was praying when their faces were turned up like that, waiting for more money to fall. Ha-ha!

“Remember when two men jumped at the same time for the same quarter that Cross had tossed out? They dived toward each other and they butted head on and knocked each other out, cold? They just lay there, like a truck had hit 'em, and all the other folks crowded round, looking and wondering what had happened. They had to send the riot cars full of cops to break up the mob and take the two dopes who had been diving for the quarter to jail. Ha-ha! Honest to God, I thought I'd die laughing. Cross said that that was the only time he ever felt like God. Ha-ha!”

They laughed musingly, their eyes resting on Cross's face which carried a detached smile.

“Remember that wild gag he pulled at Christmas time in 19—?” Joe frowned thoughtfully and the others waited. “When the hell was that now? Oh, yes! It was
in 1945. I'll never forget it. Cross bought a batch of magazines,
Harper's, Atlantic Monthly, Collier's, Ladies' Home Journal
, and clipped out those ads that say you can send your friends a year's subscription as a Christmas gift. Well, Cross signed 'em and sent 'em to his friends. But he didn't sign 'em with
his
name, see? He signed 'em with the names of friends of people he was sending the subscriptions to. He sent me one and it was signed by my wife. Ha-ha! Was she mad? But in the end, she really paid for it. Crossy sent one to James Harden and signed it with my name. Ha-ha! Christmas morning Harden calls me up and starts thanking me for the gift-subscription I'd sent 'im to
Harper's
. I didn't know what the hell Harden was talking about, and I was so 'shamed I sat right down and sent
Harper's
a check! Man, the whole South Side was in a dither that Christmas morning. Folks was thanking other folks for presents the others didn't know nothing about. And Crossy was listening and watching and saying nothing. Lord, it was a mess! Cross, how in God's name did you dream up such stuff? Any man who can do things like that is a man standing
outside
of the world! Know what I mean? Like somebody outside of your window was looking into your house and poking out his tongue at you.” Joe went into a gale of laughter; then he pointed to Cross's smiling face. “Look at 'im, will you? He sits there, smiling, not saying a word, not letting on he used to pull stunts like that.”

They laughed, looking at Cross with tenderness in their eyes.

“Say, remember all them big, deep books he used to read and tell us about?” Joe asked looking from Cross to the others. “He used to use so many big words I thought he'd choke! Every time I saw 'im, he had a batch of books under his arm.”

“But what I couldn't understand,” Pink recalled, “was why Cross wouldn't believe anything in the books he read. One time he was all hepped-up over one writer and the next time he was through with 'im and was gone on to another.”

“And the books in Cross's room!” Booker exclaimed. “I went to see 'im one day when he was sick, and I could hardly get into the door! Big books, little books, books piled everywhere! He even had books in bed with 'im.”

Their heads tilted back with laughter; Cross smiled without rancor.

“I told 'im,” Booker continued, “‘Crossy, you better find a gal to sleep with you, 'cause them books can't keep you warm!' Man, in the clothes closet: books. In the bathroom: books. Under the bed: books. I said, ‘Crossy, you ain't got no 'flu germs; you got bookworms!'”

They clapped their hands with laughter; Cross smiled and looked off.

“Cross, you ain't never said how come you was reading all them books,” Joe pointed out.

“I was looking for something,” Cross said quietly.

“What?” Pink asked.

“I don't know,” Cross confessed gloomily.

“Did you find it?” Joe asked.

“No.”

Joe, Pink, and Booker howled with delight.

“In those days Cross's mind was like a little mouse, running every which way—Say, Cross, how many books you got in your room?”

“I don't know,” Cross mumbled.

“I wished I had a dollar for every book you got,” Joe sighed. “Now, honest, Crossy, how come you don't read no more?”

“I've put away childish things,” Cross said.

“Aw, be yourself, man,” Booker said.

“I am what I am,” Cross said. “I'm sparing you guys a lot. I'm not going to bother you with my troubles.”

“Can't we help you any, Cross?” Joe asked seriously.

“Lay off, guys,” Cross said, frowning for the first time. “I'm all right.” He turned and beckoned to Doc. “Bring me a bottle, Doc!”

“Don't drink any more, Cross,” Pink begged.

“Ain't you gonna eat some breakfast?” Booker asked.

“Whiskey ain't no good on an empty stomach,” Joe reminded him.

“It's my stomach,” Cross said.

“Aw, leave 'im alone,” Booker said.

“But a man who drinks ought to eat,” Joe insisted.

“Eating's all you think about, Joe,” Cross growled.

“Hell, you got to eat to live!” Joe shouted with authoritative rudeness. “And you better stop drinking and eat and sleep some.” Joe suddenly laughed and began a game of make-believe, imitating a baby's crying: “Aww-www—Awwww—Awwww—!” He altered his tone. “Now, what the little baby wants?” He bawled out the answer: “The bottle, the bottle, the
whiskey
bottle, Mama!”