Paternalism and Identity in the Works of Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison (2013)

Undergraduate: Alexander Howerton

Faculty Advisor: William Andrews
Department: English & Comparative Literature

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My honors thesis evaluates the extent to which an individual can emerge from systems of paternalism and assert for themselves a new identity. Both Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison, in their respective literary works, portray a figure who becomes involved with paternalistic organizations, and who eventually leave the groups because of emerging tensions between the organization and the individual. My research finds that, in both Douglass and Ellison's case, these figures are able to remove themselves from paternalists, though the impact of their relationships with those paternalists still lingers. Nevertheless, those figures do have the capability of asserting their own independence.