Select one of the poems and explain why the poet is effective in presenting his message. Consider such elements: rhythm, rhyme, diction, imagery, and purpose. In this Petrarchan sonnet, Dunbar makes clear his message and expression of the pain of racial injustices after the Civil War. Douglass, as depicted as a great leader, is called upon for comfort through this problem that America faces. The purpose of this poem I feel is to represent the struggles the African Americans had to endure during their time being slaves while offering hope for the black community, letting the reader knows that one day someone will lead them out of this struggle and into their promise land.
In his book Cry The Beloved Country Alan Paton displays how Absalom, the black man, is not only too harshly punished and given unfair trial due to his skin color, but also he is receiving this treatment because he is in a South African apartheid in the 1920’s. There are many different people in this world and some are murderers, but Absalom Kumalo is not one of those people. At the beginning of the trial the jury and the judge are flummoxed that he pleads guilty. The fact that he does plead guilty just shows that he knows that he has done wrong and wants to make up for it. While Absalom pleads guilty he also says,” but I did not mean to kill” (Paton 192).
He also makes loose references throughout the text that go unexplained. The plight he tells about is intended to leave readers pondering the magnitude of loss in identity, culture, and number of people when being brought over from Africa in stream-of-consciousness. These and other elements help to make this work a modernistic piece. The narrator describes the Middle Passage as a “voyage through death to life upon these shores.” He also says “sharks follow[ed] the moans, the fever, and the dying.” This gives readers the first indication of modernism. The voyage, in his personal view, was a journey of turmoil and hardships to get to American “shores,” and the ships that carried the slaves were a “festering hold” that harbored an entire people who were dying, ill, and “blacks [who were] rebellious.” “Some try to starve themselves… [some] leaped with crazy laughter to the waiting sharks.” The narrator’s depictions of the events taking place, like much of this story, are written in stream-of-consciousness, a major characteristic of modernism.
In “ Notes of Native Son “ essay by James Baldwin, the writer describes about the complexities of both the race, white and black and familial relationships. There was a racial discrimination against Negro people at that time. It was really harsh and Baldwin’s father experienced it. Later on, Baldwin’s father’s hatred passed down to Baldwin himself. Throughout this essay, James Baldwin continued make references to life and death, blacks and whites, and love and hate.
Compare, contrast and asses the ideas of Booker T, du bois, Randall and Marcus Garvey to overcome the challenges faced by African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centauries, African Americans were suffering greatly, due to the apparent effects of segregation. In this notion legal segregation was developing in the south while natural segregation seemed clear in the north. This was down to the realisation of the indifference of wealth between the ‘Blacks’ and the ‘whites’. Inevitably this discrimination also involved much more than just indifference of colour, blacks experienced poor working conditions violent retaliation and even lynching if the status quo of white supremacy was to be challenged.
This journey takes Rutherford into an enterprising passage of horror and self-discovery. The Middle Passage and The Book of Negroes are two novels written by African-American scholars, as they both clearly depict the social and psychological conflicts that result from the invasion of a self-contained African society by the white man and his culture. Thus, in this paper, I argue that post-colonial theory is a useful tool to analyze the dynamics of colonization, both in Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes and Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage. In particular, I investigate the novels depiction of truth and its betrayal according to the process of colonization from the perspective of the colonizer, the perspective of the colonized and the process of decolonization. The first step to utilize post-colonial criticism is to understand the impact of colonization through the perspectives of the colonizers.
The Hold Guilt is one of the most powerful emotions within a man’s consciousness, it can change the course of a man’s outlook and behaviour for life. In the two following short stories we the cause and effects of guilt.“The Black Cat” and “The Tell Tale Heart” are two short stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. Although they are two separate stories, they share a likeness between the theme and plot. The shared theme in both stories is: Guilt will always make itself evident in time. In both stories, the two narrator experience guilt for their previous actions.
Slavery is the smudge that cannot be forgotten in the American history. The slaves were brought from their native Africa and forced to work in the plantations in the South. They stripped out from their human rights because they were considered as properties to their owners. In this paper, I'll try to name some female writers who contributed in the abolitionist movement and how their works raised an awareness around people about the savagery of slavery. The writers are Lydia Maria Child, Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Cry, the Beloved Country Book III Essay In the novel Cry, the Beloved Country, James Jarvis had never concerned himself with the native people of South Africa his entire life. That life style changed, however, when his son Arthur was killed by native Absalom Kumalo. James made an attempt to comprehend his son's efforts to bring justice to South Africa and end apartheid. He began to understand the problems between blacks and whites, which led him to be sympathetic towards Reverend Stephen Kumalo, Absalom's father, and help the Kumalo’s village of Ndotsheni. When Reverend Kumalo told James Jarvis that Absalom killed his son, James was unexpectedly understanding.
As the story develops into the second paragraph, Hunter makes the conflict more obvious by telling us more information about the boys: “The jacket told Dave that Tigo was his enemy.” By saying about the jackets, this represents that there is definitely rivalry between the two gangs and they are being used as uniforms for each gang. The word “enemy” also reappears in this part of the sentence which relates back to what age the boys really are. To maintain the tension through out the next few paragraphs, the writer shows the reader the uneasy conversation between Tigo and Dave: “…So this ain’t nothing personal with me. Whichever way it turns out, like…” Tigo tries to be friendly and relaxed with Dave but Dave remains hostile throughout the beginning of their conversation.