Subaltern Consciousness: Awakening of Black Self in Paul Beatty’s The Sellout

Abstract

This thesis entitled“Subaltern Consciousness: Awakening of Black Self in Paul Beatty’s novel The Sellout” focuses on the strategy of the author to reinstate slavery system and segregation for revitalization of the past black history of slavery and segregation; which is bitter but an agency to resist against remaining forms of new-slavery. There is not legally slavery system but black people are marginalized and harassed by white people. Even though, they are not legally slave but in the mindset of the white people, black are racially discriminated and still remains slavery system.The conscious characters in the novel revolt against the racial discrimination. It portrays the issues of black subaltern people like racial discrimination, police violence, loss of history and their black identity. It explores the problem of black people through the eyes of protagonist, the marginalized unnamed black narrator. The major characters of the novel belong to the dominated class where the unnamed narrator has lost his father at the hands of Los Angeles police; his hometown city Dickens also deleted from the map.Hominy Jenkins is the star in the local ethnic T.V. show Little Rascals and his cultural identity is lost due to the disappearance of the city.Beatty’s novel reveals the awakening consciousness of black people towards racial discrimination, cultural identity and resistance as a strategy to re-establish cultural and historical way of black history which is lost in America. The narrator realizes about the identity of black people and wants to revolt against the system ruled by white supremacy. He uses the strategy of keeping slave and segregating the public bus and government high schools to get the identity of Dickensian hood or black hood.