Comparative Analysis: The Hypocritical Role of Clergy in African-American Slave Narratives and South Asian Literature

Abstract

This research paper examines the depiction of clergies' hypocrisy in African-American slave narratives and South Asian Literature. The study focuses primarily on Frederick Douglass's seminal work, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, an autobiographical literary work that mirrors clergies' hypocrisy. For comparative analysis, this research analyzes South Asian Literary works: The God of Small Things, Untouchable, and Latoon with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. This study explores how literature critiques the moral duplicity of clergies within oppressive societal structures. Douglass's narrative provides a scornful charge of the American clergies, which, despite professing Christian principles, actively supports and propagates the system of slavery, where the authors reveal the contradictions and ethical failings of religious figures who endorse or turn a blind eye to social injustices in their contemporary societies.  By juxtaposing these two literary traditions and figures, this paper finds that clergies play a hypocritical role in their societies; they never practice their religious teachings and speak against the social injustices in their contemporary societies.