because she feels she is deserving of it. Like Pecola,
she is vastly insecure and has adopted society’s
limited standards for beauty. She refuses to believe
Pecola’s account of the rape and beats her. Many of
the characters in Morrison’s novel are both victims
and perpetrators of suffering, which contributes
to its realism. We learn behavior from figures of
authority, and after being affected repeatedly by the
cruelty of others or of society, it is hard not to react
by mimicking that behavior for self-preservational
reasons, thereby continuing the cycle.
Accounts of suffering as a result of human
cruelty are most powerful in stories that are based
in truth. This is the case in Elie Wiesel’s account
of the Holocaust, entitled niGht. The atrocities
described through Wiesel’s narrator are all the more
poignant because we know them to be real. The
novel, which is in part a memoir, also addresses how
suffering can lead to a crisis of (or loss of ) faith. In
Night, the main character, Eliezer, is a devout Jew
who endures the horror of the Jewish concentration
camps. As a youth, he learned about God’s goodness
and omnipotence; however, after being separated
from his mother and sister, seeing babies burned
alive and children hanged, and being forced to work
long days with little or no food, his faith in a com-
passionate God wavers, understandably. The cruelty
of the Nazis and even of the other prisoners is at
odds with his religious teachings. He doubts and
questions the existence of God but still references
biblical passages. Although his intense suffering
causes a crisis of faith, he never abandons his faith,
but he grapples with reevaluating it to better explain
his experience. Suffering, then, can act as a catalyst
for learning and for spiritual and mental renewal.
Suffering can also result from social institutions
and philosophies, rather than from direct physical
cruelty or arbitrary, superhuman forces. Lorraine
Hansberry’s play a raisin in the sun illustrates
the suffering that is caused by class stratification and
the illusions inherent in both class divisions and the
striving to ascend to a higher class. The Youngers
are trapped by their social class and unable to
move up in the world. They hungrily look forward
to a $10,000 insurance check from the deceased Mr.
Younger’s life-insurance policy. Each member of the
family has his or her own personal plan for where
the money should go, but they ultimately decide to
spend it on a new house in a white neighborhood.
They are soon approached by a man who is willing
to pay them to keep them from moving in. The
Youngers are limited not only economically but also
as a result of latent discrimination. They are unable
to attain the American dream: that with hard
work and perseverance, one can achieve anything.
Rather, they are only able to improve their situation
when they collectively decide to put the well-being
of the family as a whole before their individual
wishes. By cooperating and working together, they
can transcend those boundaries that limit them, if
not materialistically then in their outlook on life.
Portrayals of suffering also often serve as vehicles
to redemption or moral growth. This is true in
Richard Wright’s novel native son, in which
the main character, Bigger, only realizes the moti-
vation behind his violent crimes after he is caught
and doomed to execution. Bigger’s whole life has
been spent suffering under the thumb of a “supe-
rior” white society, limited in what he could achieve
from the start because he was black. The anger and
resentment against the forces oppressing him build
up and manifest themselves in violence against his
friends, his girlfriend, and the daughter of the white
man who employs him. The murders he commits
empower him and give his life meaning for the first
time, and he feels little guilt as a result. Before the
end of the novel, though, he realizes that his behav-
ior is a direct result of the racism he has experienced,
and that equality is something to be strived for.
Rather than defying the status quo, Bigger’s actions
contribute to the cycle of racism by reaffirming the
fears whites have of blacks. It is only by acting on his
frustration that Bigger comes to realize the cause for
them, and he finally feels remorse.
Suffering is a key theme in literature because
it unlocks the ethical possibilities of almost any
literary text. Literature nurtures the reader’s ethical
awareness and compassionate faculty with charac-
ters who may be quite different from the reader but
inspire affinity and sympathy nonetheless. The emo-
tional and intellectual responses to these characters’
suffering help increase a reader’s awareness of what
is possible, and inherent, in this world—that is, suf-
fering caused by others or by institutions. Literaturesuffering 111