Dicplacement in the form of a book review

Brandon Spevacek
Fairy tale displacement

Alice Walker’s award-winning novel, Meridian is a sobering and powerful story of the American South during the 1960’s and one female’s cursed life she lived for the people she loved. Meridian’s father in the story is her people, the African American race. Because of who her father is, she is forced to live with the savagery and animal like characteristics the racial tension from the 1960’s brought to the lives of many. She is a rose that will stand the test of time and always remind America of the curse that racism has brought on our country.
One of the most ambivalent relationships in the story that correlates to racism is the complicated relationship between Meridian and Truman. The inhuman traits of racism rubbed off on Truman in the story. He loved Meridian, but chose to “rape” white women of the virginity, their racial identity and their life. It is hard to see the man in Truman’s character, but never the less, Meridian loves him. Not for the beast he is, but for the man he can be.
It is this love for her father, “the African American race” that she chose to live the life she did. She would do anything for him even though her father at times, was ungrateful and tried to pick the rose (that reminded her of who she was) from the flower bed of her soul. How does her race do this, they protested in a ways that she saw as wrong. They rape her of the body, mind and kindness she freely offered throughout the book. Every violent act that left an African American child dead killed her a piece at a time. Throughout the book you see her health diminish as her reality-based conscious increased.
The beast of racism was to much for her to handle; she decided the only course of action for her to take was to change the individual from an animal to a human. At the end of the book we saw this happen with Truman, one of the men who hurt her the most. “Whatever you have done, my brother…know I wish to forgive you…lover you. It is not the crystal stone of our innocence that circles us not the tooth of our purity that bites bloody our hearts.” When Truman read this after Meridian left, we see the change from animal to man. We see the reality-based conscious increase and his health decrease. He now has the curse that Meridian had, to live the life in which he has to turn the beast of racism into the humanity of love. The rose now has been planted in the flower bed of his soul.