Genre Blog: Short story

For this post, I will be looking at Drown By Junot Diaz. The theme I will be focusing on is sexuality, more specifically suppressed sexuality. Here are the passage I will be focusing on : “ He puts his head out the window again. Eat me, then! Yeah, Danny mumbles form the back Eat me. Twice. That’s it. The first time was at the end of that summer. We had just come back from the pool and were watching a porn video at his parents’ apartment. His father was a nut for these tapes, ordering them from wholesales in California and Grand Rapids. Beto used to tell me how his pop would watch them in the middle of the day, not caring a lick about his moms, who spent the time in the kitchen, taking hours to cook a pot of rice and gandules. Bato would sit down with his pop and neither of them would say a word, except to laugh when someone caught it in the eye or the face. We were an hour into the new movie, some viana that looked like it had been filmed in the apartment next door, when he reached into my shorts. What the fuck are you doing? I asked, but he didn't stop. His hand was dry. I kept my eyes on the television, too scared to watch. I came right away,smearing the plastic sofa covers. My legs started shaking and suddenly I wanted out. He didn't say anything to me as I left, just sat there watching the screen. The next day he called and when I heard his voice I was cool but I wouldn't go to the mall or anywhere else. My mother sensed that something was wrong and pestered me about it, but I told her to leave me the fuck alone, and my pops, who was home on a visit, stirred himself from the couch to slap me down. Mostly I stayed in the basement, terrified that I would end up abnormal, a fucking pato, but he was my best friend and back then that mattered to me more than anything....Since his parents worked nights we pretty much owned the place until six the next morning. We sat in front of his television, in our towels, his hands bracing against my abdomen and thighs.' I'll stop if you want, he said and I didn't respond. After I was done, he laid his head in my lap.” (Diaz, 103-105) Unfortunately, this is how our society works. Being homosexual has been viewed negatively for the last couple hundred years. There has been a negative stigma around “being gay” for far too long and it has impacted the lives of millions. Due to this stigma, many feel that they must suppress their sexual feelings and view themselves as immoral for even thinking that way. Many youth also struggle to “come to terms” with their sexuality and feel like it isn’t something that they can discuss with anyone, not even their friends and family. So they suppress these feelings to fit into society. That is what I believe that the narrator is struggling with here. I believe that he may be in denial about being gay and in turn is viewing it like it is the worst thing in the world to be “a pota”. Within the first paragraph of the story, we see “He's [Bato] a pato now but two years ago we were friends” (Junto, 91). So right off the bat, we see the narrator’s biggest issue with his former friend is that Bato is gay. I believe this is the reason that the narrator is questioning visiting Bato. I believe that he feels uncomfortable around Bato now because of his own sexual suppression. The narrator does not think of himself as gay because of the negative stigma and if he starts to doubt himself, then he would be in the wrong. With this point of view, the story had a whole new meaning for me. After my first time reading it, I thought the narrator was mad at Bato for leaving the ghetto because he was the only person the narrator had. The narrator explains that he doesn’t have a great relationship with his father (past or present) and he doesn’t speak to his mother about his life or feelings. Bato was the only one he had, even if they didn’t discuss their issues with each other. Although this might be one of the reasons he doesn’t go to see Bato, I fell the narrator's biggest issue is that he is uncomfortable with his own sexuality and blames it on Bato. He believes that is Bato never would have touched him, he would have never had questioned his own sexuality and would have led “a normal life”. If he goes to see Bato, he may question himself past the point that he may not be able to suppress is sexuality and become “abnormal” like Bato. Stories such as these show why it is essential to see homosexuality in a more positive light. This negative stigma is destroying people’s lives and they don’t know how to “fix themselves” when in reality they shouldn’t have to feel like they are in the wrong. Díaz, Junot, and Eduardo Lago. Drown. New York: Riverhead, 1996. Print.

Works Cited: Race in the American Novel part 2

Works cited: Gries, Peter Hays. "Liberals, Conservatives, and Latin America: How Ideology Divides Americans over Immigration and Foreign Aid." Latin American Research Review 51.3 (2016): 23-46. Web. Krumholz, Linda. "The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison's Beloved."African American Review 26.3 (1992): 395. Web. Morrison, Toni. Beloved: A Novel. New York: Vintage International, 2004. Print. Rickford, Russell. "Black Lives Matter." New Labor Forum 25.1 (2016): 34-42. Web. Stowe, Harriet Beecher., and Elizabeth Ammons. Uncle Tom's Cabin: Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Contexts Criticism. New York: Norton, 2010. Print.

Literary analysis: Beloved and Uncle Tom's Cabin

I believe that Dehumanization is a crucial tool in UTC and Beloved to show the negative effects of slavery on slaves and that it was the foundation for slavery as a system. First, Let’s look at Stowe’s central argument as we discussed it in class. Stowe, a middle class, white, abolitionist wanted to show other middle class whites why slavery was wrong from a Christian moral standpoint. Her message can be summed up as such: Slaves are humans and slavery is morally cruel by the rules of the christian religion. So, if we are to save ourselves from damnation, we need to stop the cruel system of slavery. Stowe shows this argument by the presence of white, christian men and women thought the novel. Characters such as Mrs. Bird, Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, among others, who are all devout christians feel that slavery is morally wrong. Mr. and Mrs. Shelby, although they own slaves, treat them with respect and let them, for the most part, make their own decisions. None of the character who are depicted as “righteous” individuals, believe that slavery should exist and feel appalled by the thought of slaves being sold and seen as property. Any character who thinks that it is okay is depicted as “evil” However, you can see how deeply engraved dehumanization is in the minds of those affected by slavery. Even those who believe that slavery is wrong, see slaves as poor and unfortunate creatures. Thoses who do believe in slavery refuse to see slaves as human and only weigh their lives in gold. When looking into Beloved we see first hand how the dehumanizing effects of slavery mentally repress former slaves and even their children. Event such as “the milking” and slaves being whipped and treated like cattle create lasting scars, mental and physical in minds and bodies of former slaves. They are mentally anguished when they look into their past and it forces them to do things that many would see as “crazy” and unjustifiable. Nobody in their right minds would think that killing their child would be better than letting the child live. However, because of the inherent brutality of slavery, Sethe chooses to keep her child “safe” from slavery by killing the child. It is not in human nature to see death as better than life but the appalling effects of repression can twist the minds of those affected into believing otherwise. In conclusion, dehumanization was used in both novels to show the audience the effects of slavery on slaves, and how wrong it is to treat other human beings as less than what they are. Also, with the moral structure of american society, slavery couldn’t of existed unless the populus saw blacks as subhuman. Finally, we need to use these novel to show the effects on social and legal oppression and use that to make decisions on contemporary racial issues.

Contemporary connections: Beloved

For this section, I will be focusing on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the immigration issues in America 2017. To begin, let’s look at the BLM movement. According to Russell Rickford, an assistant professor of History at Cornell University, BLM is a new take on racial prejudices against African-Americans. It started in 2015, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman and became the main slogan of the riots in Ferguson, MO. Their main mission is to make everyone see that a “black life” is worth just as much as anyone else's. That means they are equal socially and legally. The immigration issues of 2017 are a form of racial prejudice against a minority group, but instead of it being African-Americans, it’s against anyone from Mexico, Central or Latin America, or anyone from the Middle East. The difference between these two groups is basically just where they come from: the problem with our immigration system is that America does not want to let anyone in who is not white, and as a result, we are denying access to our country. Refugees, not immigrants, were fleeing from Middle Eastern countries like Syria because their government was killing massive amounts of people, and America did not wish to let them in because the “Middle East is just full of terrorists.” The same type of treatment is given to those trying to come up from Mexico to find a better life in America; We shut them out and say that they are all “rapists and murderers”. In both instances, children are dying due to nerve gas attacks and having their families murdered in front of them, and are just wishing to flee to a better life where the are safe, but Americans “feel threatened by immigrants”. The correlation between these two events is cultural inequality for different people of color, and because of this, there being blatant aggression and violence toward these other groups. The problem isn’t even based on real issues like terrorism or statistics of crime, but rather just a fear stemming from generations of validated racism from white americans. Along with that, our government has made it abundantly easy to view anyone of color as a threat to white society. This prejudice and hate has become imbedded in our culture, and has affected the lives of a majority of our population. In Liberals, Conservatives and Latin America: How the Ideology Divides Americans over Immigration and Foreign Aid, Peter Hays Gries of the University of oklahoma looks into this issue focusing on latin american immigration. His main discussion looks at the ravine that separates liberals and conservatives on the issue of immigration and foreign aid. His research shows that liberals are much warmer to the idea of open, or rather, much more inclusive immigration system, where conservatives want to focuses on the issues in our country and don’t really want anyone else here. He believes that the racial issue for conservatives has to do with white domination and christian domination. Gries states “First, when it comes to general warmth toward Latin American countries, among whites it is differing attitudes toward proper race relations that matter most. Of our four ideological dimensions, only social dominance orientation is associated with feelings toward three Latin American countries, and differing liberal and conservative moralities of compassion and authority undergird this ideological cleavage. Second, white conservative preferences for tougher Mexico border policies are partially explained by white conservatives' greater average social dominance, but also by their greater average cultural traditionalism. The survey data reveal that cultural conservatives fear the impact of Mexican immigration on Christian values and a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) American national identity more than cultural liberals do.” (pg. 24) However, when explaining why liberals feel differently, he states “Our 2011 survey data thus suggest that on average liberals feel greater compassion for the suffering of Hispanic immigrants, contributing to their greater opposition to social dominance and desire for a more relaxed border policy.” (pg 35) So, how does this connect to our readings? I would argue that both of these issues, especially the BLM movement, exist because some of the “american” ideologies rely on repression of other cultures to exert “american” dominance. This was central to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Even though Stowe wanted to show the issue of slavery as morally wrong for white christians, she had to show us the effects of repression on slaves to get her point across. We can also see the effects of this repression in Beloved, as Morrison shows us the deep psychological effects social repression had on the minds of former slaves. Although the issues of 2017 are not as “in your face” as slavery was, we still see how these racial prejudices are still deeply embedded in not only our social attitudes, but in our legal system and government itself. They exist in the mass incarceration of African american citizens and deportation due to the inability to feasibly obtain legality for immigrants. We need to use these novels and other similar stories to see how systematic repression can destroy the lives of the oppressed

Reader response: Beloved

Reader Response: On Goodreads.com, There was basically two responses, one, they loved it and it was fantastic or, two, the story was good but the style that it was written in gives you a headache and makes it a waste of time. EX: “It's heavy handed with its message, which ultimately ruins some pretty spectacular imagery. It’s also just a giant pastiche of people who can actually write, which makes it just feel disjointed and annoying since it switches between standard narration and stream of consciousness and surrealism in intensely awkward ways. It's not even like that switching between different narrative structures is inherently bad, but this book definitely does it in the most ridiculously annoying way of any book I have ever read.” by user Harpal On Barnesandnoble.com, the novel has an overwhelmingly good review. Almost all the reviews can be summed up by an anonymous user,” I didn't find it confusing - but it was deep and required you to sit with it sometimes to absorb it - which also seemed to me, intentional by the writer. I loved that about it.” On Amazon.com, the reviews were almost identical to those on Goodreads. The novel was very well received and can be summed up by user MM when he states “If you can allow yourself to put yourself in the place of a slave, as is described in this book, you can feel the humiliation, grief, indignity, disgrace, fear, degradation and submissiveness that was a slave. Through Toni Morrison's words, I felt these feelings. I don't know how they survived. This is a hard book to read, but I'm glad I did. I believe we all need to understand what was done.” Personally, I would give this novel a 4/5. I agree that the story is fantastic and that it succeeds in it’s mission to show the audience how slavery has more than a physical effect on slaves, but is a very hard story to read. However, I do not believe that there was any better way of formating the story then how Morrison has already done.

Critical Commentary: Beloved

Critical commentary In her essay, The Ghosts of Slavery: Historical Recovery in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Linda Krumholtz shows how the story of Beloved is Sethe's healing ritual to overcome years of mental slavery, even years after she has been physically free. In simple terms, it is about the way that Sethe overcomes the guilt of killing her child and the painful memories of slavery. Krumholtz describes the style in which the novel is written, that being that the most traumatizing event (the killing of her child) is the deed that is not spoken of until the end and that it is repressed from the novel similarly to how Sethe’s own mind represses it. Sethe’s struggle to cope with this memory is silent throughout the novel until she is directly faced with it and it almost destroys her. She tries to give everything she can to Beloved, even her life. She does this to justify what she did, not only to herself, but to Beloved as well. Krumholtz adds quite a bit to my understanding of the novel. When I was finished reading, I felt like the novel was told almost in the style as from someone with PTSD ( Post- traumatic stress disorder). I say this because of all of the flashbacks and the way those flashbacks are portrayed. They almost never tell you when something happened or how long ago, making it seem like those events are still happening in the minds of the characters. Both this analysis and Krumholtz work very well together bring another light into the strange novel that Beloved is.

Genre Blog Post: Poetry

For my poetry genre post, I will be looking at racial prejudice in The Lynching by Claude McKay. Due to it being a fairly short poem, I will include the whole of it in my post. It can also be found in The Norton Anthology: American Literature shorter 8th edition V.2 1865 to present on page 927:

The Lynching by Claude Mckay

1 His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven.

2 His father, by the cruelest way of pain,

3 Had bidden him to his bosom once again;

4The awful sin remained still unforgiven.

5 All night a bright and solitary star

6 Yet gave him up at last to Fate's wild whim)

7 Hung pitifully o'er the swinging char.

8 Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view

9 The ghastly body swaying in the sun:

10 The women thronged to look, but never a one

11 Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue;

12 And little lads, lynchers that were to be,

13 Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

According to Eji.com, a website focused on relieving social injustices and covering many different social movements, past and present, states that, between 1877 and 1950, at least 4,875 reported lynchings happened in the southern United States to cause racial terror. So this piece would be hitting on a very real and contemporary issue at the time of its publication in 1922.

What is interesting about this piece is that not only can you see the vivid hate African-Americans had for White Americans at the time, but the audience also begins to feel this way by the amazing descriptions portrait in the poem.  To begin, we can see how much pain this caused. For example, the first two lines of the poem “His spirit is smoke ascended to high heaven. His father, by the cruelest way of pain”. The reader can easily visualise a man burning in agony and his soul ascending after strenuous torture. Then we are shown how white men and women, in lines 10-13, come to see the corpse, to dance and feel no sorrow towards it. The work is extremely effective in completing its task of making the audience feel repulsed at the actions within and to let them know that this is what African-Americans (at the time) were facing on a daily basis. It create the sympathy need to bring about change.

This poem shows just how far we have come with correcting social injustices but there are still many other issues related to race that need to be tackled such as wrongful imprisonment, discrimination, among others.  

Works Cited

"Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." Equal Justice Initiative. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2017.

McKay, Claude. "The Lynching." 1922. The Norton Anthology: American Literature. Shorter 8th Edition ed. Vol. 2. New York City: Norton, 2013. 927. Print. 1865 to the Present.

Genre blog post: Drama

For my drama blog posts, I will be looking at gender as my theme, due to it’s interesting relationship with A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Throughout the novel, gender plays an important role in developing the characters. I would like to focus on scene three of the play, more specifically, the following passage from pages 1131 - 1133:

STEVE: Anything wild this deal?

PABLO: One-eyed jacks are wild.

STEVE: Give me two cards.

PABLO: You, Mitch?

MITCH: I'm out

PABLO: One.

MITCH: Anyone want a shot?

STANLEY: Yeah. Me.

PABLO: Why don't somebody go to the Chinaman's and bring back a load of chop suey? STANLEY: When I'm losing you want to eat! Ante up! Openers? Openers! Get y'r ass off the table, Mitch. Nothing belongs on a poker table but cards, chips and whiskey. [He lurches up and tosses some watermelon rinds to the floor.]

MITCH: Kind of on your high horse, ain't you?

STANLEY: How many?

STEVE: Give me three.

STANLEY: One.

MITCH: I'm out again. I oughta go home pretty soon.

STANLEY: Shut up.

MITCH: I gotta sick mother. She don't go to sleep until I come in at night.

STANLEY: Then why don't you stay home with her?

MITCH: She says to go out, so I go, but I don't enjoy it. All the while I keep wondering how

she is.

STANLEY: Aw, for the sake of Jesus, go home, then!

PABLO: What've you got?

STANLEY: Spade flush.

MITCH: You all are married. But I'll be alone when she goes.--I'm going to the bathroom. STANLEY: Hurry back and we’ll fix you a sugar-tit.

MITCH: Aw, go rut. [He crosses through the bedroom into the bathroom.]

STEVE [dealing a hand): Seven-card stud. [Telling his joke as he deals] This ole farmer is out in back of his house sittin' down th'owing corn to the chickens when all at once he hears a loud cackle and this young hen comes lickety split around the side of the house with the rooster right behind her and gaining on her fast.

STANLEY [impatient with the story]: Deal!

STEVE: But when the rooster catches sight of the farmer th'owing the corn he puts on the brakes and lets the hen get away and starts pecking corn. And the old farmer says, "Lord God, I hopes I never gits that hongry!" [Steve and Pablo laugh. The sisters appear around the corner of the building]

STELLA: The game is still going on.

BLANCHE: How do I look?

STELLA: Lovely, Blanche.

BLANCHE: I feel so hot and frazzled. Wait till I powder before you open the door. Do I look done in?

STELLA: Why no. You are as fresh as a daisy.

BLANCHE: One that's been picked a few days. [Stella opens the door and they enter.]

STELLA: Well, well, well. I see you boys are still at it!

STANLEY: Where you been?

STELLA: Blanche and I took in a show. Blanche, this is Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Hubbell. BLANCHE: Please don't get up.

STANLEY: Nobody's going to get up, so don't be worried.

STELLA: How much longer is this game going to continue?

STANLEY: Till we get ready to quit.

BLANCHE: Poker is so fascinating. Could I kibitz?

STANLEY: You could not. Why don't you women go up and sit with Eunice?

STELLA: Because it is nearly two-thirty. [Blanche crosses into the bedroom and partially closes the portieres] Couldn't you call it quits after one more hand? [A chair scrapes. Stanley gives a loud whack of his hand on her thigh.]

STELLA [sharply]: That's not fun, Stanley. [The men laugh. Stella goes into the bedroom.]

STELLA: It makes me so mad when he does that in front of people.

BLANCHE: I think I will bathe.

STELLA: Again?

BLANCHE: My nerves are in knots. Is the bathroom occupied?

STELLA: I don't know.

[Blanche knocks. Mitch opens the door and comes out, still wiping his hands on a towel.]

Now, I understand that gender and gender roles are a huge topic with many implications, but I

would like to focus on traditional gender roles. In other words, I would like to look at how the play shows what men and women are supposed to do and how they are supposed to act. I believe this passage shows the clearest picture. What is interesting about this play in particular, is that it uses traditional gender roles in what would be seen in a lower-class neighborhood and the fact that this play was written in the years following WWII. During WWII, many women took up jobs to support the household and to help the war effort. While this did decline in middle to upper class families in the years following the war, lower class families kept with this trend out of necessity. This, however, doesn’t seem to be the case with Stella and Stanley. Stanley is portrayed as some sort of tradesman, and Stella doesn’t seem to be employed. I believe that this misrepresentation was done on purpose to appeal to the higher socioeconomic classes at the time.

Now, employment isn’t the only area that gender roles cover, household life is a very prominent fixture of traditional gender roles. Here is where the play is fairly accurately representing these roles. Let’s look at the passage that was cited earlier. First, the scene begins with all of the men sitting around the table playing poker. Right away we can see degrees of masculinity around the table. We have Stanley, who is shown to be the alpha of the group from what we previously have read and how he makes fun at the other two at the table, Mitch and Pablo. Pablo seems to be a neutral figure in terms of his masculinity because don’t know much about him. Mitch, on the other hand we learn quite a bit about during the rest of the story beginning with this scene. Throughout this scene, he is constantly berated by Stanley for having to go home and take care of his mother ( we can infer that this is because that job was that of women using traditional gender roles) and for spending time with the women in the other room. Then you get to the women. Stanley stresses that Blanche is not allowed to play poker with the guys and insisting that they go upstairs and spend their time with Eunice. Stanley obviously sees poker as a manly game that women should have no part in. Traditional gender role show that the men and women should keep to themselves and not cross into each others territory, meaning that if it is viewed as manly, women should have no part in it and visa-versa.

Finally, I believe that these stereotypical roles presented in the play might be satirical. This is partially due to the background information on Tennessee Williams that was presented by Cat, in-class. More specifically, the fact that he was raised solely by his mother and his father was a drunken salesman who was never present. Take Stanley for instance. He is presented as a manly man and slowly, throughout the play, none of his actions make him into a better or successful person and he is seen in a very harsh light (putting it lightly) towards the end of the play. Then, on the other hand, Blanche who also follows traditional women gender roles, is taken for granted and in in much worse shape at the end of the play then when she first came to New Orleans. This not to say that this was her fault but she also never took any actions towards improving herself and focused solely on what society wanted her to be.

Literary analysis

My theme, dehumanization, is fairly strong within UTC and has many implications on the final meaning of the novel. For starters, many of times, slaves are referred to as “critters” instead of people. I believe this allows the white population in the book, as well as in real life, to put distance between themselves and what they see as a different species. However, this is contrasted well in situations where the novel is pushing the audience to see blacks as people as well as, families, households, and communities. For example, on page 100-101, while George is talking to Mr. Wilson, he states: "See here, now, Mr. Wilson....look at me, now. Don't I sit before you, every way, just as much a man as you are? Look at my face, -- look at my hands, -- look at my body," and the young man drew himself up proudly; "why am I not a man, as much as anybody? Well, Mr. Wilson, hear what I can tell you. I had a father -- one of your Kentucky gentlemen -- who didn't think enough of me to keep me from being sold with his dogs and horses, to satisfy the estate, when he died. I saw my mother put up at sheriff's sale, with her seven children. They were sold before her eyes, one by one, all to different masters; and I was the youngest. She came and kneeled down before old Mas'r, and begged him to buy her with me, that she might have at least one child with her; and he kicked her away with his heavy boot. I saw him do it; and the last that I heard was her moans and screams, when I was tied to his horse's neck, to be carried off to his place.". This is a clear and cut scene where George is not so much trying to appeal to Mr. Wilson, but to the audience, with a fairly simple message, “I am a man, just like you, why am I not seen as such” and takes two routes in doing so. One being that, physically, George is a man as much as the next, but also has just as much heart and emotion as the next man. This allows the audience not only to see into George's life, but allows them to substitute their life into his and ask “what would I do if that was my family and I were treated as such?”. This statement also allows for a larger audience (that being both whites and blacks) because it asks the read to see past such things. Such an argument can also be seen in in chapter 30 when the slave sale is taking place. For a quick recap, there are a mother and daughter hoping to be bought as a pair, but when it the mother is sold: “Down goes the hammer again, -- Susan is sold! She goes down from the block, stops, looks wistfully back, -- her daughter stretches her hands towards her. She looks with agony in the face of the man who has bought her, -- a respectable middle-aged man, of benevolent countenance. "O, Mas'r, please do buy my daughter!" "I'd like to, but I'm afraid I can't afford it!" said the gentleman, looking, with painful interest, as the young girl mounted the block, and looked around her with a frightened and timid glance.” This is obviously trying to show the reader that the whole system of slavery goes beyond physical torture, but goes farther with emotional torture while families are constantly being ripped apart for the convenience of the buyer. This once again allows the reader to step into the soles of the slave and see how destructive it would be to them it it were their families. It also shows how the slaves are viewed as nothing but objects with a price tag. Price is also a fairly common theme in UTC, constantly asking how much a slave is worth by their skills and physical form. This just further dehumanizes the slave into an object that can be do with however the master pleases. Overall, dehumanization is an essential theme to not only Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but to slavery in general and the novel gives many situations to show how dehumanization is essential to the system of slavery. Without it, the system would fail and that, in my opinion is one of the strongest arguments that Uncle Tom’s Cabin makes.

Critical Commentary

For the reader response section of this project, I found it difficult to connect my particular theme with any of the three essays in the Critics section of UTC. Nevertheless, I have selected to work with the essay Who Gets to Create Lasting Images? The Problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Sophia Cantave. In this essay, Cantave focuses on if Stowe’s novel should be the one used in teaching the issues of slavery, or just as a note to it’s historical significance and use novel written by African Americans that have a more realistic view of slavery. Cantave acknowledges the historical significance of the novel, being the novel that sparked the debate on slavery or, to use her words “the proverbial ‘shot heard around the world’”, but questions whether we should not be using something more fitting as a teaching material. One her main points comes from page 585 where she explains that, though UTC “made slavery readable” and “gives white people and black people a way to read slavery together.” that more realistic novels exist that might not be as pretty persay, but a better first-hand account in a modern sense. One suggestion Cantave gives is to have UTC read side-by-side with Our Nig, by Harriet Wilson. She believes that Our Nig gives many ways to look at the issue of slavery and appealed more to blacks than whites. This would then give the audience a better sense of what the black community were feeling at this time. She also offers that, because Stowe did not write on the worst issues in slavery, the fact that she used a slave interactions a comic relief in parts of UTC, and that many slaves were not able to write on these monstrosities, that their is a lack of appropriate black voices in literature to properly frame slavery in an educational way. This essay strengthened my assumptions about UTC. I assumed that Stowe didn’t write on the extremes of slavery to appeal more to the white population at the time. However this makes sense, being that the white population were the ones who needed a novel such as this to change their long held views on slavery. I also have to agree with Cantave, in that, while the book was what was at the time, we should look to other novels along side UTC to further frame slavery in an educational standpoint.

Reader responce

After looking over many of the reviews of UTC on Goodreads and Amazon books, there were two categories that most reviews fell under. Those being It was a great book, both as a novel and as an important historical book, and that the novel itself was not all that great but it still had historical importance. Many who disliked the novel said that it was slow and demanded sympathy from characters that needed more reasoning. Others, especially on Barnes and Noble saw the novel as well written and puts the past in a very realistic light. Those who thought it was bad were summarized well by Goodreads user, Anirudh, Who stated “The pace of the novel is quite slow... melodramatic with characters which demand your sympathy” and “The book was difficult read. It took much longer than I expected to finish.” On the other hand, those who thought the novel was good can be summarized by an anonymous guest user on Barnes and Noble, stating “This book is a very nice read....Harriet Beecher Stowe does a wonderful job of showing the cruelties of slavery and the diversity of slave owners...” and this statement from Amazon user, Regina W, “ is a well-written book with a lot of societal impact tied to it.....Stowe’s strong literary tactics in Uncle Tom’s Cabin really helped her drive home her message of anti-slavery...I would definitely recommend reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Overall, I have to say that my opinion lies directly in the middle of these two opinions. I believe that the novel can be very slow at times and that some of the characters tend to be melodramatic while requiring ample amounts of sympathy from the reader fairly often. However, the story is structured well, with having much of the plot being two-forked, meaning that there is always an opposite to each character and that helps the reader see thing from most points of view. I also believe that this puts the past in an extremely real light and allows the reader to feel the struggles of those times first hand. So in overview, my opinion is that the book is fairly decent, gets the point across, but can drag from time to time, allowing the reader to get distracted.

Theme

I will be focusing my Race and the American Novel Project on the issue of dehumanization. Specifically, how slaves were dehumanized by society.

Textual Background

For my for my textual background and context section of the Race and American Novel project, I will be focusing on the third image in the historical context section of our edition of Uncle tom’s’ Cabin by Harriet beecher Stowe (that being the Norton critical edition 2nd ed.) and edited by Elizabeth Ammons. The Title of this poster is Announcement of slave sale, out of Lexington, Kentucky 1885. The first real sight of dehumanization is iminate of the fact that there is a sale of humans as property, however, that is a given. What is really eye-catching however, is how the slaves are described, particularly, the males. They are described as “bucks” for sale, insinuating that they are cattle and nothing more. This is strengthened by the sub text underneath the title stating “All raised on the Carter plantation”. It is also interesting to see how the women are portrayed. They are stated as “wench’s” and have listed their age and various skill. While this in and of itself isn’t dehumanising (other than humans being sold as property), wench is automatically derivative of “servant”. This sheds a great amount of light to my understanding of UTC and the situation that it presents. This is most true in chapter 30 “The slave Warehouse” in which Uncle Tom, along with many other slaves from the St. Clare estate were to be sold to the highest bidder. On page 297, Stowe writes “Then you shall be courteous entreated to call and examine, and shall find an abundance of husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, and young children, to be ‘sold separately, or in lots to suit the convenience of the purchaser’”, which only strengthens the argument that slavery has to dehumanize the slave. If an advertisement was put up stating that they were selling members of families separate or together at buyers convenience, it might grow on the conscience of the buyer or simple the passer by that happens to see the advertisement, and the whole system might start to collapse. Instead they advertise such as in the poster seen in on page 413 in order make them seem less human and more cattle-like.