Abstract

Most reactionary texts in their defense of state interests and state power showcase the many ways in which society operates to the detriment of the weak and powerless, pushing them to the margin where they are permanently outside the realm of power. Historical narratives that foreground the injustices perpetrated by authorities and institutions that deconstruct the law are constantly suppressed. Roger Mais and Richard Wright challenge this conception via their fictional works by battling with the status quo to range power from the dominant power structure to the infra-structure. In the context of interdisciplinary studies, this study raises the following questions:  – what is law and does anybody have access to the law? A New historicist reading of Mais and Wright’s texts demonstrate that injustice and criminology are universal issues. In overpowering these injustices, the underprivileged class emerged as a heroic class of justice and equity.

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Background Information

The notion of the law in many societies from antiquity is believed to be an unquestionable phenomenon; an incontrovertible fact by the general public. This should not be the case. This is so because the law often times acts against its dictates by perpetrating injustice in the society. In Roger Mais’ Brother Man and Richard Wright’s A Father’s Law, the law privileges the rich and powerful and maltreats the weak and powerless. Legal rule fails woefully in its course to regulate crime and injustice in the societies of the texts as well as maintain peace and order. The law becomes an expert in twisting reality. This is seen in the legal treatment of Rastafarites in Brother Man and society’s attitude towards the sick in A Father’s Law as will be seen later in this study. The texts invite us to consider that law qua law does not secure order; on the contrary, law may induce chaos and tension as well as promote the miscarriage of justice in the society. Hence the saying that “the law is an ass” is the very foundation that this study stands on.

In the narratives under study, it is evident that a sense of what is just and fair is what the law fails to do. We must therefore ask ourselves, what Robin West wrote in 1993 as to whether . . . the laws we enact . . . serve our best understanding of our true human            needs, our true human aspirations, or our true social and individual potential, as gleaned from the stories we tell about ourselves and each other.(7)

As such, literature becomes a tool that “could save law from itself by reminding it of its lost humanity, infusing it with the human in order to grant it a new real¬ity. At the same time, speaking truth to power, literature could at last do something real” (Peters, 448).

In Roger Mais’ Brother Man and Richard Wright’s A Father’s Law, it is clear how much more law and literature have to lend to each other. The two authors rely heavily on legal themes like murder, theft, punishment, and conviction to bring out the place of law in the phase of injustice and criminality. This relationship between law and literature is enforced by Richard Weisberg and Jean-Pierre Barricelli in “Literature and Law” who posit that:

Literature has always found fertile soil on the lawyer’s home ground. Why? If we proceed from empiricism to phenomenology, we must again recognize that literature’s extraordinary fascination with the law derives from similarities between the disciplines. Artists sensitive to these similarities integrate lawyers, legal themes, and legal structures into their creations, and as a result we discern what centuries of artists have already perceived: the compatible, even congenial, identity of two seemingly distinct intellectual enterprises. (155)

It is from this end that literature and law are seen as two separate disciplines that rely on each other by constantly interrogating and informing each other.

Statement of the Problem

Roger Mais, a Caribbean writer and Richard Wright, an American novelist, through their narratives relate crime and the miscarriage of justice in Brother Man and A Father’s Law respectively as a common practice in the societies of the texts. These novels reveal that the Jamaican and the United States societies have a strong belief in the importance of upholding the law. The law is generally known for its ability to maintain order, to do justice for all, employed equally amongst all and not just a select few. Notwithstanding, in the narratives under study, only a few respect the law even though the law is supposed to be a respecter of nobody. Authorities and institutions belonging to a particular race and class, deconstruct the law but still claim that the law protects. The weak and the friendless suffer from crimes they do not commit. In actual fact, they suffer from crimes committed by the rich and the powerful that abort and violate laws in their favour. Hence, the society becomes a breeding space for injustice.

Research Questions

With the research problem stated, the study raises the following research questions:

1. What is the law and does anybody belonging to a particular race or class, have access to the law?
2. How do the two writers employ literary techniques to espouse crime and injustice in the worlds of the two novels?
3. How do the Caribbean and American societies perceive injustice and the judicial systems?
4. How do characters themselves react towards injustice and the judiciary?
5. What can victims of injustice do to bail themselves out of their predicament?