The Ladder of Tyranny: Unveiling the Structural Violence in Everett's Novel James

This thesis investigates the impact of Structural Violence over James’ life in Percival Everett’s novel James (2024). It includes the underlying systems that trap James in slavery. The theory of Structural Violence presented by Johan Galtung is applied to the present study to shed light on how religion, social rules, forced slave dialect and unjust laws all contribute to restrict the real capabilities of James. There have been many studies of this novel in terms of psychology, naming, and language, but no study has employed Galtung’s framework in an attempt to map the entire structure of oppression in the novel. This is a close reading and qualitative analysis. It uses Galtung’s theory to analyse certain dialogues in the novel. The study will be divided into two parts. The first part deals with the ideological control via religion, social rules and language. The second examines legal and material obstacles which impede literacy and selfhood. The primary contention is that James’ persecution isn’t a one-man job. Finally, the study concludes that Home Fire reveals the hypocrisy of diasporic identity by presenting selfhood as a contested performance constructed through gendered visibility, cultural displacement, and the enduring legacies of Orientalism.