Kate Chopin/African Folktales/Clemens

I will begin with the short story by Kate Chopin "Désirée's Baby," I really enjoyed this tragedy with the unexpected twist at the end. I like the way she alludes to the baby being black when the mother visits, but the girl doesn't see it. She is blissfully unaware, in love with her husband and child, not seeing what is before her. As I was reading I was thinking the obvious, that the girl must be of black heritage. I am disliking her husband for falling out of love with her for this, petty little racist that he is. Poor Désirée is so heartbroken when finally facing the truth, or what she believes is the truth, she takes her baby and disappears into the swamp. Probably killing herself and her child, the optimist in me would like to think she wandered to her mothers but that would in a way make the story a little less compelling. How rewarding to find out at the end that it was the husband who was really the son of a slave. Sad though that his mother and father were not around for his upbringing and he turned out to be such a lout. It seems to me that two such parents who were so forward thinking would not leave their son in the racist south to become a terrible plantation owner who treated his slaves horribly. However, it made for a really good story anyway.

Next I read the African Folktales and enjoyed the story telling of each of the short stories. You can see how the language progresses from early slavery as very crude and a bit hard to read to a dialect that is a little easier to understand. I'm wondering if this was because many of the early stories had to be done in the oral tradition due to the inability for the slaves to be educated? I also noticed that many of the stories are similar in that they are most often about trickery at the expense of the "Master" or they show the "Master" as the foolish character. You can also see the culture of superstition heavily in the work like in "Talking Bones" and "Old Boss Wants into Heaven" where there is the strong belief in ghosts depicted. The writing also portrays many of the negative and racist beliefs of the white people of that time as well. Reading these stories are like stepping back in time to the attitudes of the south and their way of life.

Another story that I felt appropriate for this section was "A True Story" by Samuel Clemens. I liked the part of the title that says "Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It" stating that this is a story that is told in the oral tradition. This is a story about "Aunt Rachel" who is a servant in her 60s who has a jovial sense of humor. Since her temperment is so jolly her owner (for lack of better term) makes the comment that she has never seen "any trouble" in her life because she has such a good humor. Then she tells the story of being raised a slave and having her husband and children sold away from her at auction. She relates how her youngest son finally found her in this story and then after telling her tale of woe, she says to her owner, "Oh no, Misto C, I hain't had no trouble. An' no joy!" I can just hear the sarcasm dripping of these final words of the story.

To sum up all of these stories is humbling for me...being white I am from the race that does not know racism the way that these people experienced it. I can only read these stories and appreciate what the African race has had to endure and how they survived it to see the day that one of them became the President of the United States. Now that is progress...slow moving...but progress never the less.