Historical Metamorphoses in Suzan Parks-Lori Parks’ In the Blood

Abstract

The work of art is a sharp medium of enacting immediate human experiences that are lived in a specific historical period. However, authors usually pour a great deal of personal and cultural embodiments behind the lines of their literary work. The purposes, moreover, may vary to produce a literary text and is subject to different interpretations. On the other hand, history shapes the work of art with irresistible details that are imposed to create a special impact in the readers’ minds and establish prior judgments that are linked to their actual implication.

Parks, as a contemporary playwright, handled Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and reconstructed most of the narrative’s main incidents. This metamorphosis of Hawthorne’s plot and hero was intended by Parks to explore the ways in which history can lead to “possession” through and by the artist’s work itself. As Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter was possessed by the surroundings in her world, Parks’ Hester La Negrita is possessed entirely by everyone surrounding her except by herself. This paper examines the ways in which Parks metamorphosized Hawthorne’s classical text into her postmodern world to serve manifesting the catastrophic realities of her race. It also traces the contribution that Parks had made through this inevitable metamorphosis and necessary modifications of the narrative and its protagonist that best articulates the critical issue of her time.