Patrice Lumumba Character Analysis

“it achieves presence in opposition of whiteness” (Thompson 19). The character’s wild kinky hair reflects Sarah’s confused state of mind. Both the black hair and black skin are signifiers of race. Through the play all the characters lose their hairs as a sign of “anxiety, guilt, shame and madness” (Kolin 29). It also refers to Sarah’s loss of her black heritage. Sarah also projects her life instinct in the image of two male selves, Patrice Lumumba and Jesus Christ. In fact, “Sarah’s masculine selves are mimetic doubles of her father.” (Diamond, Mimesis 119). Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the Congo after its independence from Belgium, who is assassinated in 1961. Lumumba represents the African hero and Sarah’s father. He “combines her visions of both martyr and oppressor” (Barnett 378). She describes him as “a large dark faceless …show more content…
Sarah’s identification with Lumumba as an ideal self, reveals her desire to play a heroic and important role in the history of the African race. In fact, Lumumba represents the ideal image any African American aims to identify with. He represents salvation and independence, he offered to his follow Africans and by identifying with him, Sarah aims to follow him as resemble the power that she lings for to end her struggle as a black woman. However, Sarah fails in her projection of Patrice Lumumba as an ideal object as she projects him as the evil face of the father who rapes the mother and damns her life. The fourth idealized self that Sarah projects is Jesus Christ “The savior”. Sarah identifies with Jesus in the image of the savior who saves people’s lives. Yet, Sarah’s Jesus us a deformed one. He is a “hunch back yellow-skinned dwarf, dressed in white rags and sandals” (18). Jesus appears as the son of a black man and he hates his blackness and worships