Richard Wright's 'The Long Dream' as racial and sexual discourse

African American Review, Summer, 1996 by Yoshinobu Hakutani

Though unwilling to compromise with principles, McWilliams nonetheless sympathizes with Tyree in his point of view that white corruption causes black corruption, and that therein lies injustice.

Just as McWilliams is portrayed as an individual who can feel sympathy for his fellow human beings, Wright in The Long Dream creates other characters, white and black, endowed not only with intelligence but with compassion. Fishbelly differs from Tyree, since Fishbelly can sympathize with a white motorist lying on the roadside seriously injured in an accident and calling for help. Even though the suffering man insults him, saying, "'G-gogdammit, q-quick, nigger!'" Fishbelly does not shirk his duty in trying to save the man's life (143). Chief of Police Cantley uses his position to oppress black people, and to the black world he is a symbol of intimidation and disrespect. But Wright does not make him a Ku Kluxer; instead Cantley is portrayed at times as a man capable of compassion and understanding. Frustrated by Fishbelly's refusal to hand him the canceled checks which would acquit him, Cantley screams:

"Goddamn you, you black sonafabitch! I wish to hell I could believe you! ... But you can't tell me the truth! ... Hell, no! You can't speak what you feel! ... I swear to God, I don't know what we can do with you niggers.... We make you scared of us, and then we ask you to tell us the truth. And you can't! Goddammit, you can't!" (366)

However despicable a person Cantley may appear to the black people, he is nevertheless capable of understanding their plight and point of view.

As Fishbelly grows in stature in the final part of the novel, called "Waking Dreams ...," he challenges Cantley and surpasses him in wisdom and action. Cantley tells Fishbelly:" 'You're one of these new kind of niggers. I don't understand you' "(365). Now that Tyree is dead, Fishbelly attempts to create a self by severing himself from his father's image of an ideal son. All his life he has been compelled to follow Tyree's footsteps in business matters, but in his heart he has despised Tyree for cringing when talking to white people, for keeping a mistress and making his mother unhappy, and for getting rich by running a brothel. As he grows older, he realizes that by bribing the police Tyree receives for burial the corpses of black men, victims of police brutality. At an earlier age, described in the first part of the book, Fishbelly receives a lesson from his father:

"I make money by gitting black dreams ready for burial.... A black man's a dream, son, a dream that can't come true. Dream, Fish. But be careful what you dream. Dream only what can happen." (80)

It is ironic that, by cooperating with corrupt officials and politicians, Tyree is destroying Fishbelly's dream of becoming a man of courage and integrity. Ironically as well, Tyree warns Fishbelly: "'Don't force your dreams, son; if you do, you'll die'" (80). By pursuing his own version of the dream of success, Tyree finds himself killed at the hands of corrupt police.