Hapke and Beinstein

(Sorry this post is late, I did find this reading quite hard to get into and understand fully. Nevertheless I got there in the end and have tried to make a good blog to make up for it.)

The problems mentioned within Hapke’s article outline Gold’s difficulty with was that he “could not yet render urban ghetto life artistically”. This was due to the lack of models around. There were only a few ‘leftist’ articles that had been translated from Russian to English, for Gold to get influence from during this time. Furthermore proletarian magazines hardly ever published American authors and were non existent. In addition, Alfred Krymbourg and Elmer Williams his colleagues from the Liberator held the “old Progressive Era trope of the bestial, wordless worker” which was prevalent amongst its time.
Gold became the only writer producing ‘proletcult’ literature whilst his other colleagues wrote fiction that was irrelevant to their workers revolution views. Therefore he struggled to make a convincing narration and characterization of his fiction whilst the success of the movement was also doubted by Lenin and Trotsky and the writers of this movement therefore felt alienated.

The resolution that Hapke suggests represented within ‘on a section gang’ which is a well adapted piece of leftist writing. Hapke states it “blurs the boundary between short story and reportage” and the Marxism references made are witty. The story is full of humour, which makes it enjoyable for a wider range of readers, such as Gold’s correlation between comparing the workers being paid, to it having an effect as an addictive narcotic.

Bernstein highlighted Gold’s intention of displaying “racial oppression [as] merely a subset of class oppression”. With the influential character of Nigger who is portrayed and seen by the boys as a heroic figure. He is also loathed against by the adults of the tenements on Christie St. Where Beinstein suggests that Gold has portrayed that the reason behind Nigger’s adopted name that the boys call him, is because of his fearless and plucky characteristics he holds. “This pejorative nickname is assigned because …. The boys feel he resembles a stereotypical African American man”. This nickname however was common to be used against “darker skinned Jewish criminals during the Depression”.

The adults of the tenement however would be torn between crossing racial boundaries as there would be pressurised to become Americanized and assimilate to the white supreme ideals of the time, as Beinstein expresses: “Facing nativist pressure that would assign them to the dark side of the racial divide, immigrants Americanized themselves by crossing and recrossing the racial line”. Such an example of the adults dislike towards the Nigger character is represented when Mikey is scorned for upsetting the prostitute. Her mother demonises his influence from the Nigger character, as addressed by Beinstein “His mother uses the word as an epithet (that Nigger) rather than as a name”. However Gold’s prime belief was that !in the working-class movement there is not race problem; that is a problem made by capitalism” and therefore by advocating the working class towards socialism it would alleviate such discrimination.