Teaching Philosophy and Materials
Paul Laurence Dunbar The Sport of the Gods
Of our major themes -- race, region, border, class, gender, and language -- which jumps out at you most powerfully in the first half of The Sport of the Gods as the major cause for the Hamilton's crisis? We meet the Hamiltons and the Oakleys at the outset of the novel. The Hamiltons are what we would now call a traditional, nuclear family: mother, father, two children. The Oakleys, on the other hand, are childless but have taken Maurice's half-brother into their hearts and home-life as a son-like figure, even though he is grown and spends most of his time abroad pursuing his art. The events that unfold in the first few chapters of the novel establish the characters and moral structures of nearly all of the central players in the story. We learn Maurice's attitudes regarding his former slaves; we learn Fannie and Berry's attitudes regarding their children. We learn the tendencies of law enforcement and the chorus-like circumstantial conviction that the community members assign to the Hamiltons, to Berry in particular but not only. We learn about the rural South, through Dunbar's lens, and we learn of the mysterious promise of the North. We also see the frustrating but charged stasis of social roles in the South and the energy and freedom that a move North seems to promise. After Berry's imprisonment, we see the Hamilton family launch themselves into space, as it were: to New York City.
How does Dunbar portray the city? Is his assessment one that he means to apply to all newcomers to New York City? If this is a story not only about social relations and race but about "education" and movement (geography), what is his message for those who are not "educated," or fluent in certain discourses, and move to a bewildering and exciting new place? Think about the Hamiltons' education. Also, think about Dunbar's use of dialect. What is the relationship between these two? Are they related? Is he trying to render the family "realistically," and his use of dialect is meant to support this? Does their regional dialect, one that seemingly also bears the imprint of race, mark them uniquely as "greenhorns" in New York City, or are they simply three people among a sea of other newcomers, all with different ethnic, "racial," or regional accents? Do these accents fall off? And if accents are a thing of "language," and to know a language well is to be fluent in it, how can we then relate language to one's cultural situation, and then move on to question the Hamilton's fluency or ignorance of New York City's cultural codes and practices? Do some of the problems that befall them early in their New York Life occur because they are not "fluent" or even proficient in the city "language" (which means words and behaviors and expectations, as we saw in The Awakening with Creole culture)?
We've spoken about borders on numerous occasions in the past. What kinds of borders appear in this novel? Think about physical ones and conceptual ones. What is the "border" of one's house? Think back to our discussions of regionalism. how is the "border" of a region constructed, be it fuzzy or clear? Who draws such borders? And, in this novel, what kinds of problems occur with the crossing of borders?
After having read the whole novel, look back at the first half carefully for information about the people in the text who are portrayed in the role of "children." That would be Kit, Joe, and Frank. How do they bear the imprint of the race relations of the older generation? Or, are the crises in which they find themselves more the result of their own individual morality problems, problems that exist independent of any racial identity or the empowerment or disempowerment that "race" may cause for them in the present or might have caused for their family in the past?
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