One of the most interesting parts of the novel for me was the narrator’s experience with his wife, even though it was a very brief section in the book. The narrator was facing a major dilemma in whether or not to tell her that he is not white. As a reader, I was feeling very torn about his decision as well. I wanted him to reveal the truth to her but at the same time I didn’t want the narrator to lose the woman that he truly loved. I wasn’t sure how this situation was going to play out when the narrator told her. After he chose to tell her, I was pleasantly surprised that his girlfriend finally decided to marry him. For one of the first times in the narrator’s life, he found someone who accepted him for the mulatto man that he was.
We talked a lot in class about whether we felt sympathetic towards the narrator. I wanted to continue this discussion in my blog because I thought that it generated a lot of ideas and opinions about the topic. Personally, I can definitely feel some sympathy for the narrator. He left Europe with the intention to uplift the south and do some good through his music. However, the violence that he witnessed in seeing a black man burned alive is a horrific, life changing event. I can’t see how anyone would not be changed forever by such an event. I can only imagine the fear that any African American would have felt in witnessing the tremendous violence that plagued the south during this time. Even though the narrator took the “lesser” road so to speak in deciding to pass as a white man, he was just doing what he had to do to make a decent life for himself and his family. I can’t blame the narrator for not wanting to live his life in constant fear. The obvious downside to his decision is that he had to make many sacrifices. He knows that he had the potential to accomplish great things for himself and his race and he let it slip through his fingers. In the final paragraph of the novel he states, “I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage” (211). This quote leaves me questioning whether the narrator’s decision to pass as a white man in society really made his life easier. It seems to me that he lived with so much regret and shame in abandoning his identity that he was burdened by his decision.
4 comments:
I liked the part about him and his wife as well. At first it made me angry once he told her and the reaction she gave him. I didn't think she was like that. Just look at when she met shiny for the first time no one got even a hint that she was racist or prejudice. But I am glad she finally came around and accepted him for the man that he is.
The part in the novel about he and his wife was interesting to me as well. I also had mixed feelings of whether the narrator should tell his wife the truth or not. In the end though, he defintely made the right decision. Putting myself in that same situation made me realize that if you plan on being with that one person for the rest of your life, there are no secrets, period.
I think he definitely had mixed feeling about “passing” as white. It certainly did complicate his life and as we can tell by the end of the novel, it seemed to conflict with his moral ideas of courage and respect. Still, as you mentioned, we can’t help but feel sympathy for a man who was facing such great obstacles that it was perhaps literally a mater of life or death. I think that’s the point. I’m sure the author this book or comments about it would certainly reach white readers, and although it might have been intended to fear or intrigue readers, I think it was also intended to raise sympathy among white audiences for the plight of African Americans.
I thought it was interesting how little the narrator talked about his wife because most would value their spouse and family the most. In a way it seemed as though he was detatched from her which obviously could not have been the case becasue she accepted his secret of passing.
Post a Comment