The Lynching Of Jube Benson: Character Analysis

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In Dunbar’s short story “The Lynching of Jube Benson” Doctor Melville makes a grave mistake when participates in the lynching of an innocent man. When the reader takes into account the loyalty and devotion that Jube showed Annie and Dr. Melville, the gravity of this error is magnified. When the doctor tells the story years later, he sets it up as a series of unfortunate events which resulted in an unfortunate outcome. In reality, Dr. Melville’s role in Jube’s lynching was inevitable. Dr. Melville’s upbringing which conditioned him to see blackness as evil and sub-human as well as his hypocritical nature culminated in him murdering Jube Benson. From a young age, Dr. Melville was surrounded by the racist ideology which portrayed black men as …show more content…

Melville proves to be an unreliable doctor and friend. The doctor only finds Jube at fault for lying to keep suitors away from Annie even though she was complicit in the lies. She cackled from behind the curtains as Jube sent away gentleman after gentleman. Dr. Melville never saw Annie’s faults because, she like all other white women at that time were seen as pure deities. When the doctor slips in and out of consciousness, he envisions Annie as a pure white fairy and Jube who faithfully stayed by his side as a black but gentle demon. Additionally, Annie and Dr. Melville used Jube to do Annie’s tasks so that they could spend an extra hour together. While Dr. Melville failed to acknowledge his own act of deception, he and Annie were just as deceitful as Jube. Dr. Melville failed as a doctor because despite his training, he acted against reason. When he finds the body, he does not take the time examine the body or even take in the surroundings. Instead, he quickly joins a mob to hunt his supposed friend. If he had acted logically, he would have checked Annie’s fingernails to see if she had fought with her attacker. When they find out that Jube is not the killer, he again fails as a doctor because he leaves the body that could be resuscitated for a body that has been dead for hours. Throughout this short story, Dunbar pokes holes in myths and assumptions about the difference between blackness and whiteness. In “the Lynching of Jube Benson” white characters consistently display barbaric attributes and show very little regard for human life, while the black characters show their humanity through the ways in which they care for those around them. By the end, I think his story acts as a persuasive argument for why racist ideology goes against science and

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