Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Morrison notes the prevalence of white forms in American literature, including at the conclusion of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and in other stories. She writes that these white forms occur after the characters have gone through some form of blackness, and the forms are all-encompassing and impenetrable in nature. They also involve the death or impotence of black characters.

Morrison believes that these white forms represent a kind of commentary on the shadowy dark presence that is also present in many of these American stories. The whiteness of the forms is enhanced by the contrast of the shadows that surround it. The shadows or dark presences are often dispelled before the white forms can emerge in greater power and potency.

Morrison states the shadowy presence, the Africanist presence in literature, is used to shore up and strengthen the white forms. Similarly, whites in literature are represented as more powerful, free, and virile in contrast with black characters. American literature often involves a symbolic strengthening of this whiteness after it dispels the shadows that surround it, just as whites in early America were surrounded by blacks in slavery.