Bloody civil war Essay Example for Free

Bloody civil warfare EssayThe final two chapters of the novel, Ike tries to discover and understand the history of his own family and the elan in which they had enured the total darknesss. He horizontal attempts to admit amendments to integrity of them, by sending some money. The brief chronicle that he finds of his family helps him reconstruct some parts of the history. He remembers for example, the little hut in which all the black race were herded together, and the way in which the colors manufactures bleaching substances for the blacks to use so as to change their colorthe square, galleried, wooden building sit like a portent above the fields whose laborers it still held in thrall 65 or no and placarded over with advertisements for snuff and cures for chills and salves and potions manufactured and sold by flannel men to bleach the pigment and straighten the hair of Negroes that they might resemble the rattling race which for two hundred years had held them in bondag e and from which for a nonher hundred years non level(p) a bloody civil war would have set them completely free. (Faulkner, 245)This forced change of hair color is very significant the indite emphasizes the fact that the whites wanted to transform the black and make them as themselves, a race however rather imperfect since it is the one that invented slavery. Neither the land nor the people can be bought, since they have been left to lead free by the creator of the world. Mans experienceion of land or of slaves only imaginary, since these unproblematic things cannot be bought Bought nothing.Because He told in the Book how He created the earth, made it and looked at it and said it was all right, and because He made man. He made the earth first and peopled it with dumb creatures, and then He created man to be His overseer on earthBecause it was never Ikkemotubbes bring forths fathers to bequeath Ikkemotubbe to sell to Grandfather or all man because on the instant when Ikk emotubbe discovered, realised, that he could sell it for money, on that instant it ceased ever to have been his forever, father to father to father, and the man who bought it bought nothing. (247) In the familys brief chronicle, Ike discovers many of the iniquities that were common at the time, in what regarded the black people. His grandfather had had sons and daughters of the black slaves, and never acknowledged them. Also, the contracts done between the blacks and the whites were invalid, since the black man had no way to claim his rights or to prove them, since he was usually even unable to readand it would seem to the boy that he could actually see the black man, the slave whom his white owner had forever manumitted by the very act from which the black man could never be free so eagle-eyed as store lasted, entering the commissary, asking permission perhaps of the white mans son to see the ledger-page which he could not even read, not even asking for the white mans word, whic h he would have had to accept for the reason that there was suddenly no way under the sun for him to test it(256)Ike ironically observes the extent of the injustice done to the children that were not acknowledged because they were black, and the way in which they were usually simply given a sum of money to make amends So I reckon that was cheaper than saying My son to a nigger he thought. veritable(a) if My son wasnt moreover just two words. (259) Thus, Faulkners novel is centered around the root of the inhering freedom given by nature to any creature.The bear is a symbol for this freedom, and his spirit is similar to that of the blacks and Indians an old bear, red and ruthless not just to stay alive but ruthless with the fierce pride of liberty and freedom, jealous and proud enough of liberty and freedom to see it threatened not with fear nor even alarm but almost with joy, seeming deliberately to put it into jeopardy in order to savor it and keep his old strong bones and f lesh supple and quick to symbolize and preserve it an old man, son of a Negro slave and an Indian king, inheritor on the one hand of the long chronicle of a people who had wise to(p) humility through suffering and learned pride through the endurance which survived the suffering, and on the other side the chronicle of a people even longer in the land than the first. (Faulkner, 267) The same ideas appear in the short story called That Evening Sun, but the author here emphasizes the barrier that existed between the blacks and the whites.The story, which has the same characters of the Compson family as The Sound and the Fury, is centered on a black servant called Nancy and on her agony at having been left by her husband and the terror that he might return and kill her. Nancy is terribly beaten by the police when she tries to claim her pay from a white man, and then locked up When you leaving to pay me, white man? When you going to pay me, white man? Its been troika times now since y ou paid me a cent- Mr. Stovall knocked her down, but she kept on saying, When you going to pay me, white man?Its been three times now since until Mr. Stovall kicked her in the mouth with his heel and the come up caught Mr. Stovall back, and Nancy lying in the street, laughing. She turned her head and spat out some blood and teeth and said, Its been three times now since he paid me a cent. (Faulkner, 289) The story focuses on the impressive agony of the woman and her loneliness, as the whites refuse to comfort her in any way. The prejudices against the blacks are again obvious as in The Bear, the villagers remark that a black person would never commit suicide, unless under the power of a do drugs He said that it was cocaine and not whiskey, because no nigger would try to commit suicide unless he was full of cocaine, because a nigger full of cocaine was not a nigger any longer. (Faulkner, 291)The idea of the white people is that the black have no feelings and no inner feel of their own, and that they live more often than not like beasts, therefore could never have the impulse to suicide. The woman tries to cling to the childrens company in her distress and her fear of the husband that she thinks will come after her. The recurrent remark that she makes, saying that she is no more than a nigger is very significant. She underlies the fact that she is actually perceived as only a nigger, and that even she feels like that I aint nothing but a nigger, Nancy said. It aint none of my fault. (Faulkner, 296) She cannot escape her race, and, although she feels she has an inner life she does not have an identity to associate it with.The last fragment of the story is of utter importance Quentin, the teller remains listening to the sounds made by Nancy after they live her house, and hints at the barrier between the white and the black. The whites merely live her and her problems, as she is not considered to be important enough for further consideration but we could sti ll hear her. She began as soon as we were out of the house, sitting there above the fire, her long brown hands between her knees. We could still hear her when we had crossed the ditch, Jason high and close and little about(predicate) fathers head. Then we had crossed the ditch, walking out of Nancys life. Then her life was sitting there with the door unaffixed and the lamp lit, waiting, and the ditch between us and us going on, dividing the impinged lives of us and Nancy. (Faulkner, 300)Thus, Faulkner describes the lives of the black and white people in the Southern world with great insight, emphasizing the essential freedom of man as of nature, and the impossibility to possess or reduce them and limit their importance.Works CitedAbadie, Ann J. Faulkner in Cultural Context. Jackson University Press of multiple sclerosis, 1997. Clark, Jim. On Faulkner. The Mississippi Quarterly. http//www. questia. com/app/direct/SM. qst Faulkner, William. Collected Stories of William Faulkner. Ne w York Random House, 1950. Three Famous Short Novels. New York, Vintage Books, 1958. Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner The reservation of the Modernist. Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1997. William Faulkner. http//www. kirjasto. sci. fi/faulkner. htm