A Black Man Destroyed in The Third Life of Grange Copeland “[H]e was a human being completely destroyed” (313) In Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Walker uses the novel to portray her complex vision of the South through the development of characters: Ruth, Grange, and Brownfield Copeland. Brownfield’s story focuses on all that is destructive about the South and the sharecropping system. The ways in which the South and the sharecropping system oppress Brownfield include his father’s abandoning him and his mother, and Brownfield’s inability to leave the South or build a family. Towards the end of the novel, Brownfield embodies “a human being completely destroyed,” (313) because of his detrimental times in the South dealing with life, family, and violence. In the beginning of the novel, Brownfield is described as having “tetter sores covering his head, eating out his hair in patches the size of tomatoes” (Walker, …show more content…
Josie uses Brownfield for sex as a gateway to freedom from her past in which she is victimized by her dad at the age of sixteen. Through the depleting relationship between Brownfield and Josie, Brownfield falls back into the self-destructive patterns of his father which is to drink and whore around. Brownfield soon learns of Josie and Grange’s relationship after his father comes back from the North: “Grange, graying, bushy-haired, and lean came through the bedroom door. Curses erupted from Brownfield. His first impulse was to knock his father down. But he realized immediately, and it made him so, that he was still afraid of him” (Walker, 84). Brownfield’s masculinity falls short once he realizes that Grange still powers over him, causing him to convert back to being a child in fear of his father. Grange’s act of coldness, unlovingness, and detachment leave Brownfield broken all over again with self-hatred within his