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Discuss the themes of African-American literature
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Discuss the themes of African-American literature
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Peoples’ Rolls In Sula
In the novel Sula all the characters have their roles that they’re molded into just like everyone does in life. Based in the time that it takes place in and the fact that the vast majority of the characters are African-American their roles are pretty much forced for them to live by a predominately White- male society.
The introduction to the novel starts off towards the end of slave times (the late 1800’s). A good white farmer promised freedom and a piece of bottom land to his slave if he would perform some very difficult chores (pg. 5). The slave performs the chores and the White farmer tricks the slave into wanting the hilly land, which he gets. The hilly land is the worst land possible to have. Where Planting was backbreaking, where the soil slid down and washed away the seeds, and where the wind lingered all through the winter (pg. 5). Getting the worst land possible fit the slave’s role perfectly. Because he was a slave he always got the worst end of everything and by getting the so-called “bottom land” he got the worst end of the deal.
Throughout the next few years the town of Medallion was formed. It was a poor town but the people who lived there made the best of it. Their roles in life in Medallion all seem to fit the poor town or poor neighborhood lifestyle perfectly almost as if we’d expect it too.
The town of Medallion is a predominately black town, located in Ohio during the early 1900’s. Blacks weren’t expected to do much. No one really cared about them in a White-ran society. White people looked down on them and in society’s eye they were at the very bottom of the social ladder. Almost all of the characters roles are roles that people would assume in their societies position.
Shadrack’s role in Medallion is that the community thinks he’s kind of crazy. They just leave him to do his own thing. He is a World War One veteran and witnessed something horrible happen during one of the battles.
Because of what he witnessed he realizes how much death is random and unpredictable, therefore he institutes a holiday every January 3rd. This holiday is called National Suicide Day. “This was their only chance to kill themselves or each other.”(Pg. 14). The first year the townspeople were kind-of scared and thought Shadrack was crazy for doing it.
However, after reading the article the author noted that police are mandated to enforce civilian law and order, investigate crimes, and strictly follow legal procedures even when in pursuit of chronic and dangerous criminals (Kagoro, 2014). Ideally, it has been argued, there should be strict dividing lines between the police and the military; the former for domestic purposes with the latter protecting citizens from external threats (Kagoro, 2014). In his article on the anti-militarization of the police in the United States, Kurt Andrew Schlichter aptly put it that the military is designed, organized, and equipped to execute rapid, violent and efficient obliteration of the “enemy”-whoever the enemy may be ( Kagoro, 2014). However, the law enforcement is usually modeled after the military and in fact there a large number of police officers who are former military personnel. This was a new criticism of police that was unfamiliar to me in the study of criminal justice but, I found it to be a valid point. The idea of changing the focus of policing to be less of a battlefield and more of a community may be a compelling approach to make interaction with citizens less
Appropriately, Shadrack is the first major character to be introduced in the novel, much as an unfiltered thought is the first that comes to mind in any given situation. He is an ancestral presence - a husband, a father, a provider dispensed by the gods to “always” be there as the voice in the back of one’s head, constantly present and ever providing the most candid guidance (Lewis 92). People of the Bottom fear Shadrack not only because of his peculiar behavior but also because he does not look like them. Earlier, while he was in the hospital recovering from shell-shock “his fingers began to grow in higgly piggly fashion like Jack's beanstalk, all over the tray” (Morrison 9). This is especially significant as, although Shadrack grew up in the Bottom, he began to look different as he grew older and, subsequently, the community began to fear him. In a similar fashion, as one matures the inner voice becomes more precise and defined and, often, is ignored in lieu of emotions which are more familiar and comforting, though potentially juvenile.
years of slavery. This is a shock to the narrator because it forces him to realize how
The subject this book revolves around slavery, and how white folks’ mindset on black people was popular at that time. Their mindset involved treating black people as inferior to them, and how to them, they were not even considered human but property. Twain also shows how sometimes a fourteen year old boy (Huck) was more morally correct towards treatment of black people than many adults of his time. Twain presents this in a humorous way with its serious points. The issue is obvious throughout the story and makes the reader wonder how even “good” characters treate...
Walker, S., & Katz, C. (2012). Police in America: An Introduction (8th Edition ed.). New York:
The submissive and sacrificial role, that the only canonical non-white character inhabits, paints a clear picture on how the writers view the role of black female
In Hesiod’s version, Zeus created Pandora as a punishment to man and illustrated her as an evil, deceitful and supposed curse on mankind, “Evil conspirators. And he added another evil to offset the good...she was a real pain for human beings” (Hesiod, 149-164) On the contrary women in Ovid’s tale were treated as companions who worked together for the greater good, as depicted by the myth of Pyrrha and Deucalion, “Then, side by side, they went without delay to seek the waters of Cephisus’ stream.” (Ovid, 17) Deucalion and Pyrrha are portrayed to be righteous and true devotes of the Olympian gods and hence given the responsibility of repopulating earth. Ovid demonstrates that the humans in this myth portray the role of a god, where they repopulate Earth with righteous humans, thus creating order in the universe again. He portrays their role as a vital component in this occurrence as without their diligence and morals—this act would not have been possible. Thus, establishing the human-centered concept of his
No longer is the average police officer the image of Andy Griffith, he is increasingly becoming something akin to a soldier. Senator Tom Coburn asked the perfect question during a congressional meeting when he said, "Tell me what the difference is between an increasingly militarized police force and a standing army” (qtd. in Devaney). The only way to put a stop to this disturbing trend is for citizens to demand that their representatives pass legislation that ends police militarization, as well as the creation of tougher punishments for excessive use of
Sula by Toni Morrison is a very complex novel with many underlying themes. Some of the themes that exist are good and evil, friendship and love, survival and community, and death. In Marie Nigro's article, "In Search of Self: Frustration and Denial in Toni Morrison's Sula" Nigro deals with the themes of survival and community. According to Nigro, "Sula celebrates many lives: It is the story of the friendship of two African-American women; it is the story of growing up black and female; but most of all, it is the story of a community" (1). Sula contains so many important themes that it is hard to say which one is the most important. I agree with Marie Nigro when she says that Sula is a story about community. I believe that community and how the community of Bottom survives is an important theme of the story. But I do not believe that it is a central theme of the story. When I think back on the novel Sula in twenty years, I will remember the relationship and friendship between Nel and Sula. I will not remember the dynamics of the community.
The narrator (not to be confused with the author) is who tells the narrative in a majority of stories; Sula by Toni Morrison is no different. In Sula the story is narrated from a third-person perspective through direct discourse and indirect thought. That is to say that the action is being narrated by a person not present in the story and the reader can still “hear” the character talking. It is important to note that this story is a third person narrative because the character narrating the story is not present in the book, they are a third party person telling the story. Because of this view the reader is able to look into multiple characters thoughts and actions from an outsider perspective. As Smith argues in “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism”: “The use of Black women’s language and cultural experiences in books by Black woman about Black women results in a miraculously rich coalescing of form a...
The social conventions that are set up in this book play out in a small black community in Ohio called "the Bottom." The community itself formed when a white slave owner tricked his naïve black slave into accepting hilly mountainous land that would be hard to farm and very troublesome instead of the actual bottom (fertile valley) land that he was promised. The slave was told "when God looks down, it's the bottom. That's why we call it so. It's the bottom of heaven-best land there is" (4), and on the basis of this lie a community was formed. Its almost as if the towns misfortune is passed down ...
There was some special connection between Prometheus and humanity; it was Prometheus who created man, in the hope of having allies against Zeus. Men are punished for the trickery of Prometheus, not for their own transgressions, as was Adam in the Hebrew Bible. God made Eve as a helper and companion for Adam, but Zeus sends woman to increase man’s suffering. The best women can offer their husbands only a mixture of good and evil, and the worst can bring only sorrow. The story brings
The integrated marketing communications IMC were developed during 1980’s which are many companies are looking for strategy to integrate their promotional tools. As we know, in previous year, many companies use mass-media advertising to promote their product. As marketers embraced the concept of integrated marketing communication, they begin asking their ad agencies to coordinate the promotional tools. The goal of this concept is to build the brands with ensure that they give customers a consistent message about the companies or brand and also to create and sustain relationships between companies or brands and their customers.
There are various challenges faced and even more opportunities for organizational behavior to assist workers in improving the workplace as a whole, people skills, productivity, and customer service. Understanding and taking time to learn and educate one’s self is how attitudes develop and affect behavior is a key component to organizational Behavior. The bottom line is that the more tuned into the needs of its employees, the more successful a company is likely to become. A company will absolutely benefit a great deal so long as employees and management alike are able to control and monitor their attitudes for the appropriate
This theory goes on to explain that the developmental stages of learning a language are universal to all humans and that the amount grammar people gain knowledge of is mostly undetermined by linguistic life experience. These hypotheses that the theory of Universal Grammar make are proven by the explanation of impoverished data, which outlines that despite the grammatical and linguistic errors, unstructured and incomplete sentences that children hear from a young age each child still adopts the correct syntactic rules of their language because of their innate template. Moreover, the hypothesis of innateness is further proven with the fact that most speakers of any given language realize when a sentence is ungrammatical, even if they do not know the reason for this (Fromkin et al. 2014, pp.304-308). As well as this, research has shown that infants instinctively know the sounds of human language and respond to the