Shadow and Act | The Mellow Bugler: Ellison’s Non- fiction
In the following essay excerpt, Busby focuses on the themes of autobiography and ‘‘the fullness and value of African American culture’’ in Shadow and Act.
When Ellison decided to collect his essays, interviews, and speeches written from 1942 to 1964, he turned to one of his favorite ancestors for the title, Shadow and Act. T. S. Eliot’s ‘‘The Hollow Men,’’ perhaps because of the emphasis on a complex dialectical process, provides the allusion:
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow.
Ellison’s title suggests several meanings. In the introduction Ellison refers to the title and emphasizes the significance of a writer’s need to understand...
[The entire page is 3010 words long]
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