Race and Ethnicity: Country Lovers and The Welcome Table

Race and Ethnicity: Country Lovers and The Welcome Table

Introduction

Racial inequality and its cruelty, pulsates with a loud boom, shouting from the top of the world what it considers to be true. In spite of advancements in social rights with the abolition of slavery over 100 years ago and the civil rights movement, it still exists. In the short story writings, “The Welcome Table” written by Alice Walker in 1970 and “Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer, no date noted, each story brings to light the issues that face all people in the world until this day: race relations. These two writings are timeless in addressing the continued social problem of interracial relationships. This work will explore and compare the use of point of view, image and symbolism in each story and how these literary elements are used to illustrate how deep societal divisions affect one's ability to find equality and love, no matter the color.

Discussion

Interracial relationships and race relations are such that society has certain rules about what it considers normal and lawful. Whether society considers the mixing of races as normal, lawful, or even acceptable is not always relevant in the face of a pursuit of love. In both of the stories, “Country Lovers” by Nadine Gordimer and “The Welcome Table” by Alice Walker, the legality of race mixing is the driving force behind these works, yet the characters are propelled by a need to be loved, whether by the Creator in “The Welcome Table” or as the emotion to kill in “Country Lovers”. In the each stories' synopsis, love is seen to compel or drive away.

In both stories, key literary elements illustrate in the story how such an emotionally, volatile issue is still yet relevant in society. Each has a complex issue at hand of how to inter mingle the races within a society when a law does not permit, or even when it is not socially accepted to the point of being socially illegal. However, in spite of society's view, the ending of “The Welcome Table” is joyous because in this writing, the main character, the old black woman, has gone on to be with Jesus, whom she had wanted to meet for a very long time, and in whom she sought His Love. In the story, “Country Lovers”, quite the contrary is illustrated as love is not the element that brings the two together at all, though they love each other. Race relations and the laws of the land drive them apart. So, in “The Welcome Table,” race relations drive the old woman to meet her Savior, and in “Country Lovers”, race relations separate childhood friends and lovers with no resolution.

Exactly how do these stories have the same theme, but yet come to different endings?

It is the use of literary elements to get the point across that creates the theme for each story. The literary elements in both stories is used to “restore the past, stimulate the imagination, glorify ...