Other essays and articles in the Literature Archives related to this topic include : The Role of African-American Traditions in Walker’s “Everyday Use”
The Copeland family in he Third Life of Grange Copeland” by Alice Walker, of course, only a microcosm of their larger community and American society. As a community that has long been marginalized, devalued, and demeaned, African Americans have struggled to achieve individual and group recognition, and to assert the fact that their lives have meaning and significance, both on a personal and a shared level. One of the existential problems posed by Alice Walker in the construction of the narrative in he Third Life of Grange Copeland” by Alice Walker is that communities divided by certain aspects of identity cannot establish a sense of collective purpose and meaning. Although their shared racial identity could have served as a point of connection that would have allowed the characters to determine and assert their place in American society, they permitted the devastating pressures of oppression to divide them. They are connected in their oppression, as the following, one of the important quotes from “The Third Life of Grange Copeland” by Alice Walker makes clear, “On Monday, suffering from a hangover and the after effects of a violent quarrel with his wife…, Grange was remorseful, sullen, reserved, deeply in pain…. Margaret was tense and hard, exceedingly nervous. Brownfield moved about the house like a mouse” (Walker 29). What happens to Grange effects his family members, but it does not serve as a unifying factor that can propel them to act against oppression and refuse to perpetuate its abuses against one another.
They are not connected in a shared optimism and hopeful plan for the assertion of identity. As a result, their personal potential and that of their community is diminished significantly. The Copelands and their community are entities in existential crisis. Grange Copeland, for his part, is able to eventually achieve personal growth and catharsis and the transcendence of the psychologically limiting conditions caused by social oppression. The fact that this occurs late, in his “third life,” however, hints at exactly how difficult a process it is to make meaning out of extraordinarily challenging life circumstances and oppressive conditions. The stage is set for this cathartic breakthrough after Grange breaks from his physical environment, leaves behind everyone and everything known to him, and immerses himself in a new setting, where he is exposed to new information, ideas, and possibilities for making meaning out of his life and his identity as a man and as an African-American. These conditions of Grange’s transformation suggest that the existential process of change involves disconnecting, literally and psychologically, from all that one has known about living in order to forge new meaning.
Grange’s breakthrough is by no means conventional within the existential narrative, however. While he is in New York, Grange begins to save a white woman who is drowning in a pool, but he then allows her to go under. Although this act mirrors the aggressive patterns that have characterized his entire life, the symbolism of killing the white woman shows that Grange is no longer afraid of oppression, and has turned the tools of the oppressors against them in order to wrest meaning from their hands. He accepts responsibility for his actions, but he observes, in one of the important quotes from he Third Life of Grange Copeland” by Alice Walker, “The death of the woman…in a bizarre way…liberated him. It was the taking of the white woman’s life … that forced him to want to try to live again” (Walker 97). It is only after he has achieved this curious kind of liberation that Grange Copeland is able to return to the south and begin his efforts at reclaiming his life, the little bit that is left to him. Grange directs the rest of his life efforts to creating possibilities for his granddaughter, Ruth, and to fostering the conditions that will make it possible for her to dream of defining the meaning of her own life, free from the influence of institutionalized oppression. The goal of existential philosophy in he Third Life of Grange Copeland” by Alice Walker is achieved in the final chapter of Grange’s life, though he has left so much destruction in his wake. He remains uninterested in helping his son, who he seems to feel is beyond rescue and who must determine his own path through his own experience of transformation.
According to existentialist philosophy, all people want to make meaning out of their own lives. Often, however, this existentialist goal is thwarted by oppressive social conditions, where free will is robbed of individuals, thereby creating an environment that is conducive to extreme violence. In The “Third Life of Grange Copeland”, Walker effectively explains how individuals and the communities with which they identify attempt to make meaning out of their lives, and how this project is made impossible in circumstances characterized by institutionalized oppression. The possibility of reclaiming one’s agency, autonomy, and decision-making power is possible, suggests Walker, but the process is not an easy one.
Works Cited
Sartre, Jean-Paul. “Portrait of an Anti-Semite.” In Social Justice in a Diverse Society. Eds. Rita C. Manning and Rene Trujillo, pp.90-97. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing, 1996.
Walker, Alice. The Third Life of Grange Copeland. New York: Phoenix, 2004
