A Pioneering Novel By An African American Poet
Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 -- 1906)is best remembered as a poet. He wrote in both dialect and formal English. His famous poems include "We wear the mask", "Sympathy", which includes the line "I know why the caged bird sings", and "Frederick Douglass". Dunbar wrote prolifically during his short life, with an output that included essays, journalism, plays, short stories as well as poetry. Dunbar was also a novelist. His final effort in this form "The Sport of the Gods" (1902) remains an impressive work, a minor classic of American literature.
Dunbar's novel describes the fate of an African American family, the Hamiltons, which is forced to move from its home in the deep South (the particular State is not named) to New York City. The Hamiltons had seemingly achieved a degree of success and stability in the post-Civil War South. The father, Berry, had worked as a butler for a prosperous plantation owner, Oakley, for many years. Berry had lived frugally, and managed to save money. His wife, Fannie, also had a good job working as a housekeeper for the Oakleys. The couple had two children, Joe, 18, a barber to white people who had become a dandy, and Kitty, 16, her mother's darling. The peaceful life of the family comes to a startling end when Oakley falsely accuses Berry Hamilton of stealing. Berry is sentenced to ten years in prison. His family is ostracized by whites and blacks alike. Fannie, Joe, and Kitty move to New York City to find a new life for themselves.
The heart of this novel lies in Dunbar's descriptions of the underside of New York City life -- the hustlers, bars, tawdry shows, raw music, and loose women -- that spell doom to the newcomers from the South. Much of the action takes place in a nightclub called "The Banner", frequented by African Americans and by a class of whites who, then as in later times, practiced what is now termed "slumming". Dunbar has no affection or sentimenality for "The Banner" or its ilk. He writes: "[O]f course, the place was a social cesspool, generating a poisonous miasma and reeking with the stench of decayed and rotten moralities. There is no defense to be made for it. But what do you expect when false idealism and fevered ambition come face to face with catering cupidity?" Some of the frequenters of the banner include a con-man and raconteur named Sadness, the best-drawn character in Dunbar's book, a chorus girl named Hattie, and William Thomas, a railway worker with designs on young Kitty.
The destruction of the Hamilton family proceeds naturally and inexorably in this environment and becomes "The Sport of the Gods". Joe quickly takes to drink and becomes involved with Hattie. When she puts him out, Joe kills her and is sentenced to prison. Kitty succumbs to Thomas's advances and ultimately finds herself working in a vulgar chorus line. Fannie is persuaded by a gambler and criminal that her husband's long imprisonment is equivalent to a divorce. She marries him and endures and abusive relationship.
For all his negativity towards it, Dunbar offers an effective portrayal of early African American life in New York City, particularly its music. For the most part, the book is written in a bleak, naturalistic tone which reminded me of Stephen Crane's "Maggie", a somewhat earlier work about the effect of a slum environment in the destruction of lives. After Joe's imprisonment, the patrons of "The Banner", including Sadness, reflect upon his fate and upon the fate of young Southern blacks moving to New York:
"This was but for an hour, for even while they exclaimed they knew that there was no way, and that the stream of young negro life would continue to flow up from the South, dashing itself against the hard necessities of the city and breaking like waves against a rock, -- that until the gods grew tired of their cruel sport, there must still be sacrifices to false ideals and unreal ambitions."
Readers looking for high-quality writing that remains somewhat off-the- beaten path should explore Dunbar and this novel. He remains an author worth remembering and reading. "The Sport of the Gods" raises themes that would be developed in American literature throughout the 20th Century, especially in works written by African Americans. It is a short, bleak and effective novel by an American poet.
Robin Friedman
