Analysis Of William Attaway's Blood On The Forge

William Attaway's "Blood on the Forge" takes a dive into the steel mills of the 1920's and show that the slaves that were escaping from the south were in for a bigger mess than what they were already in when heading north. The North was gory and brutal to anyone that came to the mills. One had to be ready for the most excruciating working conditions. But to some African Americans, they thought at least they are getting paid. They didn't get paid near what they deserve so that helped the white get richer and the blacks stay poor. In "Blood on the Forge", the family starts off in a bad state and gets worse and worse as the book goes on. One really thinks how can it get any worse and Attaway keeps on answering that with more and more catastrophic

Morgan says, "In addition to this spirit of skepticism regarding the promises offered by the urban, industrial north, Blood on the Forge also attends more carefully than most historical accounts to the material conditions and psychological impact of the migration journey itself" (Morgan) which shows Attaway had a sense of realism I what happened. Attaway doesn't make the main point of his book racism but other things like the brutality that the blacks had even when they were going to the north that they weren't free that they had it rough and more dangerous than it should be. The fact that Big Mat got promoted to deputy made all the other workers sick and the white men even hated him because they wanted to be him. Big Mat didn't hide the fact that he was a deputy and the fact kids even threw rocks at him showed that no had respect for someone who would leave their own kind. One can compare this to today how some people don't like cops and talk bad about them just for doing their job. Like big Mat took an opportunity that he thought would be for him and people branded him as a selfish trustier. Even though Attaway doesn't say it there is an underlying tone of whites being superior because the book mainly talks about the African Americans being shipped in by cattle car to do the hard labor no one else wanted to do. There isn't a real sense of racism in the book stated by Klotman, he says, "Racism as an omnipotent factor does not exist in the lives of the three brothers after they leave Kentucky. At least for a time. They are accepted by the Slavs, the Irish and the Italians with whom they work in the mill; they drink, gamble and whore together. As a friend, old Zanski warns that they'll never be happy until they send for their families" (Klotman) this shows some foreshadowing that if the brothers lose sight of their original goal it will be bad for