41 pages • 1 hour read
George SchuylerBlack No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1931A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Skin Color
The motif of skin color is integral to the novel. Schuyler offers the reader detailed physical descriptions of his characters, and the most significant physical detail is reliably the characters’ skin colors. The prominence of this literary motif parallels the significance of skin color in the regions and cities in which the action of the novel takes place; in Harlem, black skin dominates, until Dr. Crookman’s invention arrives, and in Atlanta and Richmond, white skin dominates.
Schuyler’s discussion of the new fashions around biracial skin color is an interesting commentary on the nature of popular thought in America. Though Black-No-More lightened the complexions of much of the American population, even more problems resulted; white racists soon looked askance at members of their own groups, wondering who had experienced the transformation and were blacks disguised as whites. The animosity and violence that ensued was calmed by the increasing popularity of biracial skin color, and people with pale complexions sought, ironically, to darken them with the sun and with cosmetic products. Where whiteness was once praised and sought after, darkness is now the ideal look.
Babies
Babies, in their innocence, represent a kind of truth in an abstract sense and prove the true nature of their parentage in a physical sense. In Black No More, the babies who are born with dark skin to parents who are white reveal that one or both parents possess black ancestry or that one or both parents are black themselves. The dark skin of Matthew Crookman Fisher, the infant son of Matthew and Helen Fisher, is the final image of the novel, and as he plays in the sand on the beach in Cannes, his parents and other sunbathers around him seek to emulate the natural beauty of his skin with suntans and cosmetics. This final ironic twist lends the symbol of a baby an ominous tone; as Matthew grows up, like all babies grow up, the reader may wonder what social trends will inevitably change the course of his life and that of all babies.
Babies have long been a symbol of truth and purity; at birth, humans are faultless and innocent, and the limitations of a baby’s ability to communicate render it a teller of truths and only truths. The death of the babies who were killed in an attack on one of Dr. Crookman’s Lying-In hospitals symbolizes the death of truth in American society as more and more black people deny their true selves and skin colors, exchanging black skin for white, hoping for an easier, less painful life.
Newspapers and Other Forms of Media
Though Schuyler’s newspapers are as much a necessary form of communication as dialogue, they also serve as a symbol of race relations in general. The words in newspapers are printed in black against a white background, just as the black people of Schuyler’s America exist in relief against a hostile white social backdrop. Schuyler argues that one culture cannot survive without the other, and the same premise holds true for the newspapers in a physical sense; without the black print on white paper, newspapers cannot exist.
Newspapers report on facts, not emotions, and the representation of the happenings in the novel are presented in a factual way by Schuyler’s narrator. At times, the narrator veers into short pieces of social commentary, providing the reader with essential background knowledge of characters, organizations, and current events, and these sections echo the impartial tone that characterizes news writing. The who, what, where, when, why, and how of journalism are all answered by the narrator, in simple and straightforward language.
