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Sacrifices of Submission
Josiah Baldassini
Balram and Bunt both sacrifice values and relations when they are forced to submit to society.
Book 1- The White Tiger
In the novel The White Tiger, the protagonist Balram is a victim of the oppression of society. The oppression Balram suffers from leads him to sacrifice his values and relations. He is forced to follow the way of the society to survive. He is forced to obey his master’s command, even when unjust things happen to him, such as being scapegoated for a crime. The society also forces Balram to sacrifice his morality by stealing from his master and ultimately leading him to take his master’s life. He sacrifices his family by leaving them and living with his new master in order to make money.
Initially, the story seems to be about one black boy’s struggle to get ahead in a predominately white society. He tries to accomplish this goal by adhering to his grandfather’s dying words. His grandfather told him to “live with your head in the lion’s mouth. I want you to overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine ‘em with grins, agree ‘em to death and destruction, let ‘em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open”. In other words, his grandfather was telling him to conform to the white peoples way of life in order to get ahead. I believe that the story had a deeper meaning than the aforementioned one.
According to Douglass, the treatment of a slave was worse than that of an animal. Not only were they valued as an animal, fed like an animal, and beaten like an animal, but also a slave was reduced to an animal when he was just as much of a man as his master. The open mentality a slave had was ...
His related action towards his grandfather’s words, “Live with your head in the lion 's mouth. I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let 'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open" as a action of distrust since he believes that the best way to winning the fight was to provide them with genuine commitment. The narrator chooses to surrender himself to the Whites and devoting himself to gaining the respect and trust of the Whites. It is to my believe that the narrator is projecting himself as civilized and hospitable in order to change the views of himself to one that is less barbaric in the eyes of the Whites. He is lead to believe that his compliance has leaded him to a rewarding future and is thought to believe that he has acquired some sort of
In Blackmon 's book "Slavery by Another Name," he argues the existence of slavery after it was outlawed in 1865. This continued presence of slavery contributes to the existing racial problems faced in this day and age. On April 8, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was passed, by Congress and The House, outlawing slavery. Although this amendment was passed as Blackmon points out there were ways around this amendment. Blackmon addresses four of the many ways that people would enslave blacks after the amendment was passed, those being convict leasing, sharecropping, chain gangs and peonage. This essay will go into depth on these four points and will tell a personal critic on Blackmon 's work.
Deviating from his typically autobiographical and abolitionist literatures, Frederick Douglass pens his first work of fiction, “The Heroic Slave,” the imagined backstory of famed ex-slave Madison Washington, best known for his leadership in a slave rebellion aboard about the slave ship Creole. An interesting plot and Douglass’ word choice provide a powerful portrait of slavery and the people affected by it.
The white negro attempts to escape the conformity of the time through not a pursuit of instant gratification can lead to the ultimate clash with society—violence.
... majority of the Black people to the atrocities, injustices and inequalities of their white masters, against which they make no organized protest at all, so she agrees with the reality that the next generations follow almost the same ways observed and adopted by the majority of their ancestors. It is therefore she is of the opinion that the Black people have accepted the slavery and atrocities as their fate. However, Butler’s comments, made through the mouth of her protagonist, serve as half truth in contemporary era, as the modern times witness the movements of liberty and freedom from the exploitations of the Blacks at the hands of the Whites. Somehow, it is also a reality that an overwhelming majority of the Blacks still look under the control and submission of the White population.
In Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, one of the major themes is how the institution of slavery has an effect on the moral health of the slaveholder. The power slaveholders have over their slaves is great, as well as corrupting. Douglass uses this theme to point out that the institution of slavery is bad for everyone involved, not just the slaves. Throughout the narrative, Douglass uses several of his former slaveholders as examples. Sophia Auld, once such a kind and caring woman, is transformed into a cruel and oppressive slave owner over the course of the narrative. Thomas Auld, also. Douglass ties this theme back to the main concern of authorial control. Although this is a personal account, it is also a tool of propaganda, and is used as such. Douglass’s intent is to convince readers that the system of slavery is horrible and damaging to all included, and thus should be abolished completely. Douglass makes it very clear in his examples how exactly the transformation occurs and how kind and moral people can become those who beat their slaves and pervert Christianity in an attempt to justify it.
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
Later the narrator is an educated young man in his teens. He's followed his grandfathers' words and it results in him being obedient to the views of the white men. The narrator is invited to recite a speech at a local town gathering which included politicians and town leaders. The narrator is forced to compete in a battle royal. He had to box blindfolded, get electrified by a rug filled with fake brass coins, and humiliated when it was time for him to give his speech. The problem with the boys understanding of the grandfather's ideology is that he doesn't know where his limit is. It almost seems as if he would go through anything the white men put in his way but even after that, the men tell him to correct himself when he even mentions social equality. The narrator is rewarded for his obedience with a scholarship, but the true value of the scholarship is questioned in a dream where the scholarship paper read, "To Whom It May Concern Keep This Nigger-Boy Running.
... noble morality (16). Furthermore, in contrast to the self-contentment of the noble morality, the slave’s lack of outward power led him to direct his power inwards, resulting in man’s first exploration of his inner life.
From Douglass’s narrative, we can conclude that slavery brings out the worst in slave owners. Although one human should not treat another in such tortuous ways, slave owners’ actions towards their slaves deemed socially acceptable among their community. Keeping other human beings as property presumed natural. Slave owners retained wealth from this economic opportunity, resulting in the most valuable possession of all—power. Eventually, the authority they possessed over other human beings led to their abuse of power. Their addiction to dominate diminished all traces of their morality, and unfortunately, transformed them into tyrants. Moreover, the curse of slavery created immoral beings out of even the most virtuous men and women.
Metal clanks against metal as the chains rub on old scars issuing in another day of toil in the heat with head-down and blood streaming as each new lash is inflicted. This is usually the picture envisioned when one thinks of slavery. While often this is an accurate depiction, there are also many other forms of slavery. The Webster’s Dictionary describes slavery as, “submission to a dominating influence.” Everyone has influences that shape who they are and what they do, but a problem arises when a person’s entire life is spent abiding under a certain, destructive influence. Often this is done willingly and a sort of addiction occurs in maintaining the hold the authority has in one’s life. It gives the person identity; all they need to do is live under the power they have created for themselves and make up the rules as they go along. Yet in doing this, they rob themselves of true freedom in knowing right from wrong and choosing the right. In fact, in this regard Fredrick Douglass is one of the freest men in his narrative. In the life story of Fredrick Douglass we not only see an African American man struggling against the oppression of slavery, but also many white masters struggling against their enslavement to reputation, power and religion.
In the novel, The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga the main character, is Balram, one of the children in the “darkness” of India. Adiga sheds a new light on the poor of India, by writing from the point of view of a man who was at one time in the “darkness” or the slums of India and came into the “light” or rich point of view in India. Balram’s job as a driver allows him to see both sides of the poverty line in India. He sees that the poor are used and thrown away, while the rich are well off and have no understanding of the problems the poor people must face. The servants are kept in a mental “Rooster Coop” by their masters. The government in India supposedly tries to help the poor, but if there is one thing Adiga proves in The White Tiger, it is that India’s government is corrupted. Despite the government promises in India designed to satisfy the poor, the extreme differences between the rich and the poor and the idea of the Rooster Coop cause the poor of India to remain in the slums.
Among this race lived a man who, like his oppressors, refused to let that which was given to him by God be taken from him. This man was Frederick Douglass, a slave, an orator, an abolitionist author, but above all a human being. Douglass saw the destruction of his brothers and watched them let their spirit be broken and beaten by hypocrisy. Frederick Douglass began his Narrative as a broken man with nothing but hope that someday he may regain what belonged to him. He later uses his unbreakable spirit to gain his freedom and overcome impossible odds. Then finally, Douglass does not settle with gaining his own freedom but sets out to help others gain theirs as well and in the process becomes one of the most respected abolitionists of all time.