beth’s path to a deep-rooted happiness rather than
the mere fairy-tale assurance of “happily ever after.”
See also Browning, Robert: “My Last Duch-
ess”; Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan: hound oF the
baskerviLLes, the; Gaskell, Elizabeth: north
and south; Hawthorne, Nathaniel: “Rappac-
cini’s Daughter”; Miller, Arthur: death oF
a saLesMan; Poe, Edgar Allan: “Murders in
the Rue Morgue, The”; Roy, Arundhati: God
oF sMaLL thinGs, the; Shakespeare, William:
henry iv, part i; JuLius caesar; Much ado about
nothinG; Swift, Jonathan: GuLLiver’s traveLs;
Williams, Tennessee: cat on a hot tin rooF.
FURTHER READING
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David
Ross. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Bantam,
1989.
Lattimore, Richmond Alexander. Story Patterns in
Greek Tragedy. London: Athione Press, 1964.
Unhae Langis
race
The theme of race has been and continues to be
hotly debated in the modern world. Questions of
whether race is a biologically determined grouping
of characteristics or whether it is merely a socially
constructed means of classifying and dividing people
are still asked in every field imaginable, including
science, legal studies, politics, and literature. Even
defining the term race is a complicated and sensitive
task, particularly since race has been a justifica-
tion for suppressing and oppressing large groups of
people across the globe and throughout history.
Two main schools of thought exist regarding
the definition of race, and importantly, both devel-
oped in the modern era. One belief asserts that race
is a genetically determined factor that influences
external and internal characteristics, such as skin
color, features, and predispositions to illnesses. The
other philosophy contends that race is a socially
constructed characteristic, arbitrary and hurtful in
its exclusionary application. Whichever school one
believes, and many scholars and critics acknowledge
some truth in both, the use of race as a characteristic
to divide groups of people and to control or elimi-
nate them is the central problem bound up in the
theme of race. The concept is instantly polarizing—
whether or not one believes race is a significant
biological issue, it is clear that as humans we tend to
separate according to race. In some cases it is self-
separation, while in others it is forced separation.
In their introduction to Theories of Race and
Racism, John Solomos and Les Back suggest that
while race is still a primary theme in our daily lives,
it has shifted somewhat in focus all over the world.
Throughout the years leading up to and including
the 20th century, institutionalized racism—slavery,
disenfranchisement, lynchings—was the primary
way in which racism was expressed, but according
to Solomos and Back, “in recent times questions
about race and racism have been refashioned in
ways that emphasize cultural difference” (4). This
move toward seeing a larger, more globalized pic-
ture of race and racism coincided with the end of
colonialism and the creation of postcolonial literary
criticism. Scholars who focus on the theme of race
and related issues in postcolonial studies analyze lit-
erature from the perspective of the underprivileged,
the suppressed, and minority characters and people.
Thus, race becomes an underlying—or, in many
cases, overarching—theme in works that may not
include minority characters or “colonial” locales. For
example, race becomes an unsettling theme in Bram
Stoker’s dracuLa, as the Eastern European “other”
makes his way to England and engages in a process
some have called “reverse colonization,” by taking
victims and making them into vampires like himself.
In countries that were former colonies of imperial
powers, literature addressed the issues of race that
surrounded independence movements and the win-
ning of autonomy by nations such as India, Pakistan,
and the Philippines, to name just a few.
In literature, race often takes on characteristics
of being divisive or oppositional. Frequently, stories
involving themes of race involve “clashes” or strug-
gles between white groups and minority, or “native”
groups. Rudyard Kipling coined the phrase “the
white man’s burden” in his poem of the same name,
in 1899. The phrase, at the time a description of the
stated motivations of colonial behavior, has come to
also refer to white support for minority individuals84 race