In The Negro Novel in America (1958), Robert Bone once assessed Uncle Jack in Sutton E. Griggs"s fifth novel, Pointing the Way (1908), as a minor character. Later Wilson J. Moses, a noticeable Griggs scholar, was unpleased with Bone"s assessment, predicating that "Bone has done a lazy job on Griggs." Uncle Jack could seem insignificant especially to the readers, like Bone, who are not familiar with African American trickster figures in their literature. For African American trickster figures are different from those in early Euro-Caucasian British and American literature: while the latter are predominantly related to social, economical, and political class struggles, the former are to racial conflicts in a slavery society. Especially during slavery, black slaves often virtually become tricksters to circumvent slave-masters" dehumanizing maltreatment and psychological oppression and to subsist chronic material shortages. Therefore, in slave narratives and slave fictions reflecting those people"s lives and those social circumstances, trickster figures frequently become major characters. Griggs"s character Uncle Jack is not exceptional of such cases on the one hand: playing a pivotal role in the novel, Uncle Jack is a trickster illuminating African American humor, wit, and wisdom in a racist social system. On the other hand, however, the Uncle Jack character is not restrained in the conventional periphery of a literary trickster figure but moves beyond that: Uncle Jack ultimately becomes a Christ who sacrifices himself for social and cultural benefits of his race. Such a character development is a product of ideological and cultural interaction of two cultures-African American folklore tradition and Christianity, a Euro-Caucasian religion and culture-and ultimately expands the peripheries of African American literary practice.
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