Black Damnation Cont.
SO, yesterday I left the class pretty pissed off, but rightfully so. I couldn’t clearly articulate what I wanted to say without having everyone interrupt so I just thought I would do it here. Enjoy.
Trueblood:
A man that obviously committed a crime. Incest. BUT like I was TRYING to say. Let’s look deeper into his character. Obviously he’s uneducated because of the way he speaks: ” She’s droolin’ green stuff and gits to pukin agin, and when I goes to touch her it gets worse” (Ellison 65). Clearly Ellison made the deliberate decision to make him speak this way. Ok. Now that we’ve established he’s uneducated, let’s now look at the circumstances in which he lives. True blood says, “You see suh it was cold and us didn’t have much fire. Nothin’ but wood, no coal: I tried to git help but wouldn’t nobody help us and I couldn’t find no work or nothin’. It was so cold al of us had to sleep together; ” (Ellison 53). Cool, now we see the extent of his poverty. NOW THIS IS THE PART WHERE I LOST EVERYONE… YES! He did screw his daughter and knocked her up committing the horrible act of incest. BUT let’s remove Trueblood from the equation shall we? What if we were to Substitute Trueblood with a middle class white citizen? Where he had heat and separate rooms and a job…Would our feelings about the incest be different if the white man then deliberately went into his daughters room and raped her? Maybe, Maybe not. I think the social factors around Trueblood influence our perception of him and his actions, A LOT. Poverty effects people in ways that privileged people like us aren’t aware of. A lack of education? Well, obviously having no education is something foreign to all of us but those things, I would imagine take a really big toll on a person and their thought process. Ok, I have more to say, but that will cover my bases for now.
Take Care