Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man By Anonymous (1912) And by James Weldon Johnson (1927)

James Weldon Johnson(June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) • He was an author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, professor, lawyer, songwriter, early civil rights activist, and prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance Johnson and is best remembered for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. • 1894- Graduates from Atlanta University • 1901- Writes: Lift E’vry Voice and Sing • 1904- Joins Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential campaign. • 1906-1908 United States Consul to Venezuela • 1909-1913 United States Consul to Nicaragua • 1910 Marries Grace Nail in Nicaragua • 1912 Writes AUTOBIOGRAPHY anonymously • 9) While serving the NAACP from 1914 through 1930 Johnson started as an organizer and eventually became the first black male secretary in the organization's history. • 10) 1927 Asserts authorship of AUTOBIOGRAPHY, making it a “Renaissance text”

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored ManShotgun Overview The novel, although it fooled many, is not an autobiography, but perhaps what might be termed the culmination of the genre of the slave narrative in an anti-slave narrative. This is the case because this faux-autobiography systematically refuses to take on the “burden of representativity” which is perhaps the constitutive component of the slave narrative. The novel accomplishes this by inverting the key tropes and polemics of the genre to serve alternative purposes. These purposes are, on the surface, to offer a tragic meditation on race mixing and miscegenation, but when one delves deeper, she finds a fictional incarnation of the theory of “double consciousness” that W.E.B. Du Bois in Johnson’s narrator. EX revels not only in irony, but also in a novel whose very form is a double parody in the Bahktinian sense (where content stands in dualistic relationship to the form’s intent). The novel makes an initial claim to be representative of a race, but continually emphasizes individualism and the malleability of racial categories and castes.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored ManMajor Themes and Symbols THEMES Representativity Individualism v.s. Universal Humanism Hybridity and Difference in Collectivity Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness and his metaphor of the veil Oral and/or “improvisational culture” v.s. Written culture The dichotomy of black autobiography and white fiction Self-Awareness and Diasporic Solidarity Interracial relations and the color line; race, class, caste or all three. The ethics of “Passing” Retracing the history of a nascent black nationalism Travel “Laws of Nature” and “Laws of Economics” The inadequacy and/or failure to fulfill Enlightenment Ideals Passivity v.s. Revolt SYMBOLS Music (especially the piano) The watch The chain Literacy and books Minstrelsy FIGURES IN THE BACKGROUND Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Olauda Equiano, Toussaint L’ Overture, Fredrick Douglas, and Alexander Dumas

Invoking and Reworking the Tropes of the Slave Narrative: The Timepiece and the Trope of the “Talking Book” THE TIMPIECE “The first object that engaged my attention was a watch that hung on the chimney, and was going. I was quite surprised at the noise it made, and was afraid it would tell the gentleman anything I do amiss” THE TROPE OF THE TALKING BOOK “I had often seen my master and Dick employed in reading; and so to learn how all things had a beginning: for that purpose I have often taken up a book, and have talked to it, and then put my ears to it, when alone, in hopes it would answer me; and I have been very much concerned when I found it remained silent. The Polemics and Objectives of the Slave Narrative The chief objective of the slave narrative is to demonstrate the common humanity of slave and master in furtherance of abolition. The autobiography is presented to the reader in the form of a bildungroman, and the writing Subject (already at the end of his or her journey) offers an account of his or her life that is meant not only to testify to his/her humanity, but also to testify to the common humanity of the enslaved population as a whole (hence, “the burden of representativity” is, in the slave narrative, key to its polemic). One must equate the writing Subject with the entirety of his/her race in order for the narrative to function as effective propaganda. Almost all slave narratives offer the reader a depiction of the horrors of slavery through, mostly, childhood eyes (or those of the newly captured slave). The acquisition of literacy as the child grows--which equates to an ability to read and understand the Gospel [a common humanity in Christianity]--is also a more than common trope. Lastly, the adult make a passionate political plea (usually for abolition) using him/herself as a case example.

Revisiting Johnson’s Du Boisian Allusions:The Veil and Double Conciousness 3) The Theory of Double Consciousness “After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. ...” (The Souls of Black Folk) • The Souls of Black Folk (1903) • The Notion of the Veil • The veil is first mentioned in Du Bois’s forethought, and he extends the metaphor throughout the book. The veil is a metaphoric film between black people and white people in America that obscures the identity of black people. Du Bois attributes the confused dual identity of “his people” to “the veil,” which also makes it impossible to see themselves as well.

The Autobiography Mix-Up/TrickSlave NarrativesThe Representational Dilemma of the African American Author

PREFACE TO THE 1912 EDITION THIS VIVID and startlingly new picture of conditions brought about by the race question in the united states make no special plea for the Negro, But shows a dispassionate, though sympathetic, manner conditions as they actually exist between whites and blacks to-day. Special pleas have already been made for and against the Negro in hundreds of books, but in these books either his virtues of his vices have been exaggerated. This is because writers, in nearly every instance, have treated the colored American as a whole; each has taken some group of the race to prove his case. Not before has a composite and proportionate presentation of the entire race, embracing all of its various groups and elements, showing their relation with each other and with whites been made. It is very likely that the Negroes of the United States have a fairly correct idea of what the white people of the country think of them, for that opinion has for a long time been and is still being constantly stated; but they are less themselves more or less a sphinx to the whites. It is curiously interesting and even vitally important to know what are the thoughts of ten millions of them concerning the people among whom they live. In these pages it is as though a veil has been drawn aside: the reader is given a view of the inner life of the Negro in America, is initiated into the “freemasonry,” as it were, of the race. These pages also reveal the unsuspected fact that prejudice against the Negro is exerting a pressure, which, in New York and other large cities where the opportunity is open, is actually and constantly forcing an unascertainable number of fair-complexioned colored people over into the white race. In this book the reader is given a glimpse behind the scenes of this race drama which is being here enacted,-- he is taken upon an elevation where he can catch a bird’s eye view of the conflict being waged. THE PUBLISHERS Talking Points What do you make of the “Publishers’” paradoxical claim that this autobiography is “a composite and proportionate presentation of the entire race, embracing all its groups and elements? In light in this paradox (and outside of it), what do you make of the claim that the thoughts contained in this autobiography will give whites access to the thoughts of “tens of millions.”? How does these hyperbolic claims speak to the “burden of representativity”? How does this disrupt the traditional economy of the slave narrative? What is the chief Du Boisian allusion at work here? What rhetorical effect does its invocation produce? What do you make of the almost out of place commentary of the increase of “passing” in urban metropoles? What rhetorical effect does it produce? Describe the irony at work in the final paragraph. PrefaceDouble Consciousness and the Burden of Representativity

“To teach the slaves not to be the slaves of their archetypes.” Franz Fanon

I know now that in the writing of the following pages I am divulging a great secret of my life, the secret I have kept guard far more carefully than any earthly possessions; and it is a curious study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the unfound criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is liable, even certain, to lead to his undoing. I know that I am playing with fire, and I feel the thrill which accompanies the most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all, I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little tragedies of life, and turn them into a practical joke on society. Talking Points What is the rhetorical and polemical effect vis-à-vis the genre of biography of X’s “divulging the great secret of his life” in the interests of a “practical joke?” Does this increase or decrease his credulity. What is the effect of this increase or decrease? Ex begins in a confessional tone invoking Rousseau and Heine’s critiques of Rouseau. How is Johnson’s refashioning the, arguably, self-serving/bombastic nature of the tradition of confessional literature here? How does this make us think Ex’s “motives”? Fire works as a potent metaphor in this passage that is, in turn, liked to a decent into the diabolical. What multiple rhetorical/polemical strategies might this serve? What kind of “protagonist” does this make? I

I I was born in Georgia a few years after the close of the Civil War. I shall not mention the name of this town, because there who could be connected with this narrative. I have a dim recollection of several people who moved about in and about this little house, but I have a distinct mental image of only two: one, my mother, and the other a tall slender man with a dark mustache. I remember that his shoes and boots were always shiny, and the wore a gold chain with a great watch and chain and the shoes. [….] I remember distinctly the last time this tall man came to the little house in Georgia; that evening before I went to bed he took me up in his arms, squeezed me very tightly; my mother stood behind his chair wiping tears from her eyes. I remember how I sat upon his knee, and watched him laboriously drill a whole through a ten dollar gold piece, and then tie the piece around my neck with a string. I have worn that gold piece around my neck the greater part of my life, and still possess it, but more than once I have wished that had been found of attaching it to me besides putting a whole in it. Talking Points Ex locates the time of his birth at the close of the Civil War and at the beginning of the beginning of the Pos-Bellum “race problem” It is also an approximate date of birth he shares in common with Booker T. Washington who similarly, as do many slave narratives, obscures names and places for the benefit of those still living. What are the multiple rhetorical purposes served by this parallel? How does Ex characterize his father? What is notably absent in the description and what does this absence suggest? We have spoken about the tropes of slave narratives. How are they, and the legacy of slavery, invoked and reworked here? What is the rhetorical significance of ex’s attachment to the gold piece vis-à-vis his lamentation of the hole drilled in it in and the manner in which it was affixed? What do you make of Ex’s vivid memory of his father’s watch in a “dim recollection”? Is he deploying the trope of the watch in the same manner as Equiano? If so, why?

I I think she must have derived a fair income from her work. I know, too, that at least once each month she received a letter; I used to watch for the postman, get the letter, and run to her with it, whether she was busy or not she would instantly thrust it into her bosom. I knew these letters contained money, and, what was to her, more than money. As busy as she generally was, she, however, found time to teach me letters and figures and to spell a a number of easy words. Always on Sunday evenings she opened the little square-piano, and picked out hymns. I can recall now that whenever she played she played hymns her tempos were always decidedly largo. Sometimes, on other evenings she would play simple accompaniments to some old southern songs that she sang. In these songs she was freer, because she played them by ear. Those evening on which she opened the piano were the happiest of my childhood. […] And so, for a couple of years my life was divided in between my music and my school books. Music took up the greater part of the time. Talking Points How are literacy and money intertwined in the opening moments of the passage? How does this make a comment on the polemics of the trope of the talking book? Immediately following the invocation of “the letter,” we learn that Ex’s mother taught him his letters and numbers, and that she also would often play the piano for him but in two decidedly different fashions. What is the rhetorical purpose of Ex emphasizing his preference for Southern songs over Hymns? How does his mother’s different styles of playing the piano figure into all of this (keep in mind the role of singing)? What do you make of Ex’s decision to use the word “bosom”? How does it metaphorically and vexingly tie Ex to the letter? What dichotomy does ex’s preference for his mother’s Southern Songs and his preference for music over books invoke? How does the idea of a printed score, the literacy of music, vex this dichotomy?

Booker T. Washington strategy for racial uplift was rooted in the project of increasing the economic efficiency of the Southern Negro. He had a more gradual approach as opposed to that of Du Bois, whose, of course, advocated immediate and total equality both politically and economically. For the time period, Washington saw segregation as de facto and renouncement of political incorporation as an effective means to create a platform for his program of Industrial uplift. He is famous for his “Atlanta Compromise” in which he advocates for economic integration, social segregation, and the abandonment of “racial agitation.” Du Bois urged African Americans to involve themselves in politics. Gaining this power would be essential to immediate beseeching of rights. Political association would prevent blacks from falling behind because when the Negro found himself deprived of influence in politics, therefore, and at the same time unprepared to participate in the higher functions in the industrial development that this country began to undergo, it soon became evident to him that he was losing ground in the basic things of life (which necessitated political incorporation and intellectual refinement). Du Bois also directly challenged Washington when he stated that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is a not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them. Booker T Washington v.s.? W.E.B. Du BoisTwo Approaches with a Common End

I “You sit down, and rise with the others.” I sat down dazed. I saw and heard nothing. When the others were asked to rise I did not know it. When school was dismissed I went out in a kind of stupor. A few of the white boys jeered me, saying, “Oh, you’re a nigger too.” I heard some of the black children say, We knew he was colored.” “Shiny” said the them, “Come along, don’t tease him,” and thereby won my undying gratitude. As I passed through the hallway, I saw that my mother was busy with one of her customers, I rushed up into my own little room, shut the door, and went quietly to the looking glass that hung on the wall. For an instant I was afraid to look, but when I did I looked long and earnestly. [….] I was accustomed to her remarks about my beauty, but know, for the first time I became conscious of it, and recognized it. I noticed the ivory whiteness of my skin, the beauty of my mouth….” “No, my darling, you are not a nigger.” She went on, you are as good as anybody” […] “Who is my father? Where is he?” She stoked my hair and said, “I’ll tell you about him some day.” I sobbed. “I want to know now.” She answered, “No, not now.” Perhaps it had to be done, but I have never forgiven the woman who did it so cruelly. It may be that she never knew she gave me a sword thrust that day in school which was long in healing. Talking Points Invocations and the refashioning of Du Bois permeate this entire passage. We certainly see an echo of Du Bois’s school girl here, but “Shiny” stands as a figure apart. What do you make of “Shiny,” and of Ex’s embrace and later betrayal of his fraternity? The shock and daze Ex experiences in the first paragraph bring to mind another seminal text. What is it? What purpose is served by invoking it? How does it refashion or reinvoke the importance of the Christian convert in the slave narrative? As Ex’s mother nits something akin to a veil, he “passes” by here but then encounters himself in the mirror? What discourse(s) does this symbolic encounter invoke? How is one of these further invoked with the idea of a “sword thrust?” What do you make of Ex’s anger towards his mother at this point in the narrative? How does ex’s desire to know his patrimony complicate all of this? Ex’s mother tells him he is as good as anybody else, but that fails to console him, and only to make him angrier? What multiple polemical purposes does this anger serve? What is telling about the fact that no anger is reserved for an absent father?

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each colored man in the United States. He is forced to outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen or a man, nor even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man[….] This gives to every colored man, in proportion with his intellectuality, a sort of dual personality; there is one side of him which is disclosed only to the freemasonry of his own race. I have often watched with amazement even ignorant colored men under the cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain this dualism in the presence of white men.” […] But I could not rise to the dramatic, or better, melodramatic climax. Somehow I could not arouse any considerable need for a father. He broke the awkward tableau by saying, “Well boy, aren’t you glad to see me?” He evidently meant the words kindly enough, but I don’t know what he could have said that would have had a worse effect; however my good breeding came to the rescue, and I answered, “Yes, Sir,” and went to him and offered him my hand. He took my hand into one of his. Talking Points In the first passage, we have yet another clear invocation of Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness, and a near (or playful rejection) of one of its tenets. In other words, how does Ex differ from Du Bois (think about how one looks at herself in each), and what are the rhetorical and polemical consequences of this refashioning? The first passage also re-invokes the preface and its promise of a window into the “freemasonry” of the Negro race, but in somewhat contradictory fashion. How so? If this freemasonry depends on the vision of colored eyes, how does the narrator’s position as Ex-colored infect his discourse? Describe the irony Ex’s remarks on minstrelsy? If this freemasonry is closed to white eyes, what other options are open to the men Ex so despises? What does this tell us about Ex’s predicament and to what extent is he the victim of his own flawed thinking? Describe the irony at work with the narrator’s deployment of the term “dualism”? In the second passage, what do you think keeps Ex from reaching melodramatic climax? What are the implications of framing his frustration in sexual/literary terminology? How does the descriptions of hands enhance the multiple polemics at work in the passage? II

II I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music. The former discovery through a big, gilt-bound book. Illustrated copy of the bible which used to lie in splendid neglect on the center table in our little parlor [..] I was overjoyed to find that it contained an inexhaustible supply of pictures. I looked at these pictures many times, in fact so often I knew the story of each one without having to read the subject, and then, somehow I picked up on a thread of history on which strung the trials and tribulations of the Hebrew children: this I followed with feverish interest and excitement. For a long time King David, with Samson a close second, stood at the list of my heroes; he was not displaced until I came to know Robert the Bruce. I read a good portion of the Old testament, all that part treating wars and rumors of war and then started in on the New. I became interested in the life of Christ, but became impatient and disappointed when I found that, notwithstanding the great power he possessed, he did not make use of it when, in my judgment, he most needed to do so. Talking Points How is Ex re-shaping the trope of the talking book in this passage and what rhetorical purpose does it serve? What is the rhetorical significance of Ex’s affinities for the Hebrew Children, Samson,King David and Robert the Bruce? How does this serve as a commentary on black nationalism? Ex expresses disappointment that Christ did not use his powers, when “he most needed to.” What moment is this in Ex’s mind and how does it disrupt the traditional economy of Christian salvation? How does it serve as a commentary on his feelings about individualism/community? What do all these examples suggest about how young and mature Ex’s views on passivity? Given that we are dealing with a bildungsroman, how is Ex’s rejection of Christ significant after his fall from grace (his racial awakening)? And how is it significant from the viewpoint of the mature narrator who is in nothing but need of redemption? Are the significances the same or do they differ? If the latter, how so? What do you make of Ex’s fascination with pictures and Johnson’s decision to have young Ex remove a photo album to get to an illustrated Bible? Here, Ex begins to draw a line between a world of books and music, how does his very narrative vex the line which he wishes to draw?

II One afternoon, after school, during my third term, I rushed home in a great hurry to get my dinner, and go to my music teacher’s. I was never reluctant about going there, but on this particular afternoon I was impetuous. The reason was this, I had been asked to play accompaniment for a young lady who was to play a violin solo at a concert given by the people of our church, and on this afternoon we were to have our first rehearsal. At that time playing accompaniments was the only thing in music I did not enjoy; later this feeling grew into positive dislike. I have never been a really good accompanist because my ideas of interpretation were always too strongly individual. I constantly forced my accelerandos and rubatos upon the soloist, often throwing the duet entirely out of gear. She was my first love and I loved her as only a boy loves. I dreamed of her, built air castles for her, she was the incarnation of every beautiful heroine I knew, when I played the piano it was to her, not even did music furnish an adequate outlet for my passion; I bought a new notebook, and trying to sing her praises, mad my first and last attempts at poetry. Talking Points Ex sees his inability to successfully accompany the violinist as both a function of his interpretive prowess and his individuality (both to which he has legitimate claim). Nevertheless, he regrets his impetuosity. He also figures his accompaniment as an un-welcomed sexual advance. What do you think Johnson is trying to suggest about African American creativity and individualism here? Are both simultaneous possibilities? If so, what is the cost of this possibility? Describe how the failed duet serves as a symbol for and symbolic explanation of Ex’s first love? What is the polemical effect produced by Ex’s admiration for “she of the brown eyes” as an incarnation of “every beautiful heroine I ever new” vis-à-vis the burden of representativity? Why do you think Johnson repeatedly invokes the color brown with “she of the brown eyes”? Why would Ex find “brown so attractive,” and what might be the symbolic importance of the nature of this attraction? Ex calls attention to himself here, and elsewhere, as a bad writer, yet his prose is impeccable (in terms of syntax, grammar, etc.). How doe this effect the reader’s perception of his tale? Does it invoke another trope common to the preface of slave narratives? What is the effect of this invocation?

For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of Old Negroes as foolish as he , the proof is that they stayed on the plantation that furnished sinews for the army that was keeping them enslaved. But, in these years, several cases have come to my personal knowledge in which Old Negroes have died and left what was a considerable amount to their former masters[….] I do not think it is claiming too much to say that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a fair and truthful panorama of slavery; however that may be, it opened my eyes to who I was and what I was, and what my country considered me; in fact, it gave me my bearing. But there was no shock; I took the whole revelation in a kind of stoical way. One of the greatest benefits I derived from reading the book was that I could afterwards talk frankly with y mother on al the questions that had been troubling my mind. As a result, she was entirely freed from reserve, and often herself brought up the subject, talking of her life and mine and of things which had come down to her through the “old folks.” What she told me interested and even fascinated me, and what may seem strange, kindled in me a strong desire to see the South. Talking Points What do you make Of Ex’s distancing of himself from Uncle Tom? What is the rhetorical significance of Ex turning to a fictional book to prove his misconceptions of the historical Southern slave? What is Uncle Tom’s”type of goodness”? And why do you think Ex disapproves of it especially given that they both ultimately capitulate to the demands of white society? What ironies are at work here? Ex notes that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was assailed a “fiction,” but, nevertheless, in the second passage refers to the book as a “fair and truthful panorama of slavery”? What are the meta-textual implications of Ex’s observation vis-à-vis Johnson’s project (keeping in mind the promise of the preface)? Ex also sees Stowe’s novel as a window or entryway into an authentic past (in terms of his heritage). Does this give us insight into a flaw in his thinking? If so, what is it? And how can we reconcile this flaw with what seems to be, at first, a good result: namely a closer relationship with his mother? What do you make of the fact Ex’s reading leads to talking? And that this talking is really the vehicle for Ex’s intimacy with his mother and his enslaved ancestors? How does this complicate, or does it, the binary between written and oral cultures (keeping in mind, once again, that this is all presented in a book)? This intimacy also prompts Ex to head for a South he ultimately finds disappointing? What do you make of this fact? To what trickery has he fallen victim and what is the symbolic importance of its source? III

IV I think that little solitary black figure standing there felt that a that time and place he bore the weight and responsibility of his race, (that for him to fail meant general defeat), but he won, and nobly. His oration was Wendell Phillips’ “Toussaint L’Ouverture,” a speech which may now be classed as rhetorical, even, perhaps, bombastic, but as the words fell from “Shiny’s” lips the effect was magical. [….] But the effect upon me of “Shiny’s” speech was double; I not only shared the enthusiasm of his audience, but he imparted to me some of his own enthusiasm. I felt a leap within me pride that I was colored; and I began to form wild dreams of bringing glory to the Negro race. For days I could talk of nothing else with my mother except my ambitions to be a great man, a great colored man, to reflect credit on his race,and gain fame for myself [….] My heroes had been King David, then Robert the Bruce; now Frederick Douglass was enshrined in the place of honor. When I learned that Alexander Dumas was a colored man, I re-read “Monte Cristo” and”The Three Guardsmen” with magnified pleasure. Talking Points Wendell Philip’s oration is a vindication of the “full blooded” Negro in somewhat bombastic terms. Toussaint L’Ouverture is held out as an exemplar, and the argument is basically this: Don’t think for a minute this is was a mulatto (as was the pervasive myth about miscegenation and slave rebellion) who throgh-out the French (and the cowardly mulattos), it was a Negro of pure Negro blood. What is Johnson’s purpose in linking the burden of representativity that Philips assigns L’Ouverture to the one “Shiny” assigns himself? How does the fact that Philips’s was white contaminate “Shiny’s” discourse or complicate his position? Describe the irony of at work in the deployment of the term magical in the first passage? What kind of Black Magic is it? In the second passage Du Boisian double consciousness is again invoked but in an intentionally clumsy way. How does Ex’s doubling differ from Du Boisian double consciousness? (You will want to think of how ex identifies with both largely white audience and the speaker). “Shiny” seems to infect Ex with his speech in a particularly telling way. How would you characterize it? And how does it inform our interpretation of Ex’s new preference for Frederick Douglass over Robert the Bruce? In the two texts by Dumas invoked in the second passage, we have a figure who embraces escape and revenge juxtaposed against figures who embrace loyalty and guardsman-ship? Both, though, are committed to justice and quite far from passive. How does Ex’s embrace of both exemplify his racial dilemma? How is Ex’s desire to be a great man, complicated by his retreat from the social into the world of the fanciful? How does Ex differ from his literary hero’s with respect to the theme of passivity? How does Ex’s affinity for Dumas--based on a perceived racial solidarity--put him in or out of line with Dumas as writer (especially is we take Dumas to be an avatar for his characters)? Given “Shiny’s” burden and audience what other historical figure does he invoke, and what are the rhetorical and polemical implications of this invocation? Does it suggest an inescapable burden, a chosen burden, or both?

We went into the street, and in the passing the railroad station I hired a wagon to take my trunk to the lodging place. We passed along until, finally, we turned into a street that stretched away, up and down a hill, for a mile or two; and here I caught my first sight of colored people in large numbers. I had seen little squads of them around the railroad stations of the south, but here I saw a street crowded with them. They filled the shops and thronged the sidewalks that lined the curb. I asked my companion if all the colored people in Atlanta lived in this street. He said me they did not, and assured me the ones I saw were of the lower class. The unkempt appearance, the shambling, slouching gait and loud talk and laughter of these people aroused in me almost a feeling of repulsion. Only one thing about them awoke a feeling of interest; that way their dialect. I had read some Negro dialect and heard snatches of it on my journey down from Washington, but here I heard all of it in its fullness and freedom. Talking Points Conjecture as to the metaphorical significance of Ex’s climb “up and down” a street on this rather long road. Remember These plot points: that Ex is headed for Atlanta University (because he cannot afford Harvard [where his father wishes him to attend]), and that his train is departing from Washington D.C. What is the significance of his decision to choose universities based on economic factors rather than on their potential for his intellectual betterment? Is it simply a matter of poverty, or does Ex’s decision to dot it all by himself and in this fashion yoke to him to a certain historical figure and distance him from another? What this the significance of this distancing? What is the rhetorical and historical significance of Ex’s use of the phrase “little squads of them around the railroad stations”? Does it point to an awakening to new experience? Is so, is it a clouded awakening, and why portray it so? Conjecture as to the significance of Ex’s trip south vis-à-vis (its port and destination as well as his experiences traveling) vis-à-vis black nationalism. When ex first encounters”large numbers” of Negroes he reacts with a certain amount a revulsion and claustrophobia. He is then “assured” when finds out they are of “lower class”? What is the polemical significance of all of it? What does it tell us about Ex’s psyche? The only ex finds pleasing about the crowd is their dialect. Ex compares his experience reading and experiencing dialect? What is is the nature and significance of this comparison? How does it comment of black nationalism among other things (namely the meta-textual play happening here)? Chapter IV

The husband who up to this time had allowed the woman to do most of the talking, gave me the first bit of tangible hope; he said he could get me a job as a “stripper” in the factory where her worked, and if I succeeded in getting more music pupils I could teach a few of them every night, and so making a living until something better turned up. He went onto say that it would not be a bad thing for me to stay at the factory and learn my trade as a cigar maker, and impressed on me that, for a young man knocking about the country, a trade was a handy thing to have. All of this was interesting to me; and we drifted along in the conversation until my companion struck the subject nearest his heart, the independence of Cuba. He was an exile from the island, and a prominent member of the Jacksonville Junta. Every week sums of money were collected from juntas all over the country. This money went to buy arms for the insurgents. As the man sat there smoking his long “green” cigar, and telling me of the Gomezes, both the white one and the black one, of Maceo, and Bandera, he grew positively eloquent. He also showed me that he was a man of considerable education and reading. Talking Points Keep in mind these plots point. Ex has just been conned, that he way more upset over the loss of his tie than his money, that he is locked in a Pulman’s closet, and that he is now surprised to find Spanish speaking Negroes? What is the significance of of each of them? The husband is a figure associated with trade and industry and hence yoked to a certain discourse. What is it and what is the significance of this tie? What does it tell us about the changes taking place in Ex’s thinking? What are the multiple significance of this change? Keeping in mind that, at this time, Cuba had proclaimed itself a “mulatto nation,” what is the significance of the husbands most passionate subject? What is the significance of the fact that his real labors are dedicated to this end vis-à-vis nationalism and black internationalism? Chapter V

V The “reader” is quite an institution in all the cigar factories which employ Spanish-speaking workmen. He sits I the center of the room the large room in which the cigar makers work and reads to them for a certain amount of hours each day all the important news news from the papers or whatever else he may find interesting. He often selects an exciting novel, and reads it in daily installments. He must of course, have a good voice, but he must also have the reputation among the men for intelligence,for being well posted and having in his head a stock of information. He is generally the final authority on all all arguments that arise [….] My position as a “reader” not only freed me from the rather monotonous work of rolling cigars, and gave me something considerably more in accord with my taste, but also added considerable income. Talking Points What is the role of the written in this selection? What does literacy bring with it? What is the rhetorical, political and polemical significance of this literacy? What is the significance of Ex’s quick acquisition of Spanish and its association with his musical ear invoked just prior to this passage vis-a-vis the pervasive novel’s pervasive binary of orality/literacy? Do Ex’s satisfaction at his newly acquired status and his increased prosperity point to discourses we’ve already discussed and what is the significance of this? Does it invoke new ones? Does does this satisfaction suggest about the ever-changing variable “X” (I.e. where is Ex now in him numerous vacillations? What is the rhetorical effect produced by placing the term “reader” in quotation marks?

V Through my music teaching and my not absolutely irregular attendance at Church I became acquainted with the best class of people in Jacksonville. This was really my entrance into the race. It was my initiation into what I have termed the freemasonry of the race. I had formulated a theory of what it was to be colored, now I was getting the practice. […] And of the many impressions which came to me then I have realized the full import only within the past few years, since I have knowledge of men and history, a fuller comprehension of the the tremendous struggle which is going on between the races in the South. It id s struggle, for though the black man fights passively he nevertheless fights, and his passive resistance is more effective and present […] It is a struggle, for though the white man of the south may be too proud to admit it, he is nevertheless, using in contest his best energies; he is devoting the better part of his thought and endeavor. The South to-day stands panting and breathless at his exertions. And how the scene of the struggle had shifted! The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed a human being with a soul. Later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning, and to-day it is being fought over his social recognition. I said that somewhere in the early part of this narrative that because the colored man looked at his relationship to society as a colored man, and because most of his efforts ran through the narrow channel bounded by his rights and wrongs, it was to wondered at that he has progressed so broadly as he has. The same can be said of the white man of the south: most of his mental efforts run through one narrow channel; his life as a man and citizen. Talking Points Here we encounter freemasonsy of the race and they are, measurably, upper-class. What is the significance of this? What is the significance of the fact that it is Ex’s acceptance into this collective vis-à-vis his later assertion that this is where he “Iearned to be careless about money,” a carelessness that lead to his abandonment of Atlanta University? What is the rhetorical effect produced by Ex’s “absolutely irregular” attendance of Church and what are its multiple significances? Here, Ex confesses of his first time being introduced to the “tremendous struggles” between races in the s=South? What is the significance of this if we take his as sincere? Or as Trickster? Multiple discourses for racial uplift are invoked? What are they and what is the significance of their vexed interplay in Ex’s thinking on matters racial.?

This was the cakewalk in its original form, and it is what the colored performers on the theatrical stage developed into prancing movements now known all over the world, and which some Parisian critics pronounced the acme of poetic motion. There are a great many people ashamed of the cake walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it. It is my opinion that the colored people of this country have done four things which refute the oft advanced theory of the inferiority of the race, which demonstrate that they have originality and artistic conception; and what is more, the power of creating that which can appeal. The first of these are the Uncle Remus stories by Joel chandler Harris, the Jubilee songs, to which the Fisk singers made public and the skilled musicians of both America and Europe listen. The other two are ragtime and the cake walk-walk. No one who has traveled can question the world conquering influence of ragtime; and I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say to say that in Europe the United States is popularly known better by ragtime than by anything else it has produced in a generation. Talking Points What are the multiple rhetorical significance of Ex’s statement “This was the cakewalk in its original form [….] Ex’s statement about Paris is true. How does the pride that Ex take in this fact provide a commentary (or does it) on black internationalism? If this is a black internationalism at work, what kind is it? How does his pride comment on his values vis-à-vis such a collective? Given all this, describe the unstable irony of Ex’s pride in the contributions of “colored people” What is the significance of the hybridity of every achievement in which Ex takes pride? What is its significance vis-à-vis the themes and black nationalism and internationalism? What is the rhetorical significance of the phrase conquered here vis-à-vis these same themes? V

Defining and Redefining the MulattoCensus, The Tragic Mulatto(a), The Revolutionary Mulatto, the Literary Mulatto(a) "Mulatto" was an official census category until 1930. In the south of the country, mulattos inherited slave status if their mother was a slave, although in Spanish and French-influenced areas of the South prior to the Civil War (particularly in New Orleans), a number of mulattos were also free and slave-owning. During the years 1700 – 1800, the term mulatto represented a American Indian child ; it was not used to represent mixed ancestry . The definition changed after the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1868. Lydia Maria Child introduced the literary character that we call the tragic mulatto in two short stories: "The Quadroons" (1842) and "Slavery's Pleasant Homes" (1843). She portrayed this light skinned woman as the offspring of a White slaveholder and his Black female slave. This mulatto's life was indeed tragic. She was ignorant of both her mother's race and her own. She believed herself to be White and free. Her heart was pure, her manners impeccable, her language polished, and her face beautiful. Her father died; her "negro blood" discovered, she was remanded to slavery, deserted by her White lover, and died a victim of slavery and White male violence. A similar portrayal of the near-White mulatto appeared in Clotel (1853), a novel written by Black abolitionist William Wells Brown. Hughes’s friend and contemporary, Nella Larsen, brought the tragic mulatto to the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance in her novel “Quicksand” with the tragic fate of the novel’s heroine, Helga Crane. In Southern Plantation culture, the mulatto—especially when educated--was commonly associated with rebellion and revolt. Nearly all Southern slave revolts (whether it was the case or not) were blamed on mulatto agitation. The theory behind the stereotype was simple: “pure-blood” Negroes lacked the intelligence to coordinate a revolt.

Clotel: Passing and Passing out of the Slave Narrative: The English. French, the Mulatto Nation, and the Discourse of The Tragic Mulatto/a Thus died Clotel, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson, a president of the United States; a man distinguished as the author of the Declaration of American Independence, and one of the first statesmen of that country. The fairness of Clotel's complexion was regarded with envy as well by the other servants as by the mistress herself. This is one of the hard features of slavery. To-day the woman is mistress of her own cottage; to-morrow she is sold to one who aims to make her life as intolerable as possible. And be it remembered, that the house servant has the best situation which a slave can occupy. Some American writers have tried to make the world believe that the condition of the labouring classes of England is as bad as the slaves of the United States. The English labourer may be oppressed, he may be cheated, defrauded, swindled, and even starved; but it is not slavery under which he groans. He cannot be sold; in point of law he is equal to the prime minister. "It is easy to captivate the unthinking and the prejudiced, by eloquent declamation about the oppression of English operatives being worse than that of American slaves, and by exaggerating the wrongs on one side and hiding them on the other. But all informed and reflecting minds, knowing that bad as are the social evils of England, those of Slavery are immeasurably worse." But the degradation and harsh treatment that Clotel experienced in her new home was nothing compared with the grief she underwent at being separated from her dear child. Taken from her without scarcely a moment's warning, she knew not what had become of her. The deep and heartfelt grief of Clotel was soon perceived by her owners, and fearing that her refusal to take food would cause her death, they resolved to sell her. Mr. French found no difficulty in getting a purchaser for the quadroon woman, for such are usually the most marketable kind of property. Clotel was sold at private sale to a young man for a housekeeper; but even he had missed his aim.

Rousseau’s Confessions, Heine, and Dostoevsky 1) The Confessions was one of the first autobiographies in which an individual wrote of his own life mainly in terms of his worldly experiences and personal feelings. Rousseau recognized the unique nature of his work; it opens with the famous words: I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself. 2) The Confessions is also noted for its detailed account of Rousseau's more humiliating and shameful moments. 3) In addition, Rousseau explains the manner in which he disposes of his five illegitimate children, whom he had with his world-wide known companion, Therese Levasseur. 4) I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous, generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my depravity, let them tremble at my sufferings; let each in his turn expose with equal sincerity the failings, the wanderings of his heart, and, if he dare, aver, I was better than that man 5) Heinrich Heine's strongly critiqued Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions: the French philosopher, Heine asserts, made himself out to be a monster who consigned his natural children to an orphanage to suppress an even nastier truth, namely that the children were not his in the first place. Better a monster than a cuckold, thought Rousseau.

The Romance Novel and the National Project 1) The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western Culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.“ Separate from their type, a romance novel can exist within one of many subgenres, including contemporary, historical, science fiction and paranormal. One of the earliest romance novels was Samuel Richardson’s popular 1740 novel Pamela. Or Virtue Rewarded which was revolutionary on two counts: it focused almost entirely on courtship and did so entirely from the perspective of a female protagonist. vis-à-vis the novel and nationalism: The successful marriage of the romantic duo connotes favor for the national issue in question, nd it its failure represnts a rejection of the same. ]

The Sentimental Novel 1)The sentimental novel or the novel of sensibility is an 18thh century literary genre which celebrates the emotional and intellectual concepts of sentiment, sentimentalism, and sensibility. 2) Sentimental novels relied heavily on emotional response both from their readers and characters. 3) They feature scenes of distress and tenderness, and the plot is arranged to advance emotions rather than action. 4) The result is a valorization of "fine feeling," displaying the characters as a model for refined, sensitive emotional effect. The ability to display feelings was thought to show character and experience, and to shape social life and relations. 5) These novels commonly featured individuals who were prone to sensibility, often weeping, fainting, feeling weak, or having fits in reaction to an emotionally moving experience. 5) Sentimental novels gave rise to the subgenre of domestic fiction the early eighteenth century, commonly called conduct novels. The story's hero in domestic fiction is generally set in a domestic world and centers on a woman going through various types of hardship, and who is juxtaposed with either a foolish and passive or a woefully undereducated woman. The contrast between the heroic woman's actions and her foil's is meant to draw sympathy to the character's plight and to instruct them about expected conduct of women. The domestic novel uses sentimentalism as a tool to convince readers of the importance of its message. 6) Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility s most often seen as a satire of the sentimental novel“ that works by y juxtaposing Enlightenment values (sense, reason) with and those of the later Romantic eighteenth century (sensibility, feeling).

The Byronic Hero The Byronic hero is an idealized but flawed character exemplified in the life and writings, of Lord Byron characterised by his ex-lover The Byronic hero first appears in Byron's semi-autobiogrphical epic narrative poem Child Harold’s Pilgramagae 1812-1818). The Byronic hero typically exhibits several of the following characteristics: a strong sense of arrogance high level of intelligence and perception cunning and able to adapt suffering from an unnamed crime a troubled past sophisticated and educated self-critical and introspective mysterious, magnetic and charismatic struggling with integrity power of seduction and sexual attraction social and sexual dominance emotional conflicts, bipolar tendencies, or modiness, a distaste for social institutions and norms being an exile, and outcast, or an outlaw "dark" attributes not normally associated with a hero disrespect of rank and privilege has seen the world jaded, world-weary cynicism self-destructive behaviour a good heart in the end

The Gothic Novel and The Female Gothic • The Gothic novel's story occurs in a distant time and place, often Medieval or Renaissance Europe (especially Italy and Spain), and involved the fantastic exploits of a virtuous heroine imperiled by dark, tyrannical forces beyond her control. The first Gothic novel is Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Orlanto (1764), but its most famous and popular practitioner was Anne Radcliffe • The notion of the sublime is central to the Gothic Novel. Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory, following Edmund Burke, held that the sublime and the beautiful were juxtaposed. The sublime was awful (awe-inspiring) and terrifying while the beautiful was calm and reassuring. • The characters and landscapes of the Gothic rest almost entirely within the sublime, with the heroine serving as the great exception. The “beautiful” heroine’s susceptibility to supernatural elements, integral to these novels, both celebrates and problematizes what came to be seen as hyper-sensibility. • Gothic and sentimental novels are considered a form of popular fiction, reaching their height of popularity in the late 18th Century. They reflected a popular shift from Neoclassical ideals of order and reason to Romantic ideals emotion and imagination. • The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. • Prominent features of Gothic fiction include terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses, darkness, death, decay madness, hereditary secrets. • The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, maniacs, bandits, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, madwomen, demons, angels, ghosts, monks, nuns, and the devil. perception of the genre as inferior, formulaic, and stereotypical. Among other elements, Ann Radcliffe introduced the brooding figure of the gothic villain, which developed into the Byronic hero.

Sentimentality and Sensibility 1) Sentimentality is both a literary device used to induce a tender emotional response disproportionate to the situation,[and thus to substitute heightened and generally uncritical feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgments, and a heightened reader response willing to invest previously prepared emotions to respond disproportionately to a literary situation. 2) Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered. 2) It also became associated with sentimental moral philosophy. One of the first of such texts would be John Lockes’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), where he says, "I conceive that Ideas in the Understanding, are coeval with Sensation; which is such an Impression or Motion, made in some part of the Body, as makes it be taken notice of in the Understanding” 2A) Although it originated in philosophical and scientific writings, sensibility became an English-language literary movement, particularly in the then-new genre of the novel 2B) If one were especially sensible, one might react this way to scenes or objects that appear insignificant to others. This reactivity was considered an indication of a sensible person's ability to perceive something intellectually or emotionally stirring in the world around them. 2C) In the last decades of the eighteenth century, anti-sensibility thinkers often associated the emotional volatility of sensibility with the exuberant violence of the French Revolution, and in response to fears of revolution coming to Britain, sensible figures were coded as anti-patriotic or even politically subversive.

Then he began to play: and such playing I stopped talking to listen. It as music of a kind I had never heard before. It was music that demanded physical response, patting of the e feet, drumming of the fingers, or nodding of the head in time with the beat. The barbaric harmonies, the audacious resolutions often consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another, the intricate rhythms in, which the accents fell in the most unexpected places, but in which the beat was never lost, produced a most curious effect. And too, the player--the dexterity of his left hand in making rapid runs and jumps was little short of marvelous; and, with his right hand, he frequently swept half the the keyboard with clean cut chromatics which he fitted nicely as to never to fail to arouse in his listeners a sort of pleasant surprise, and t he accomplishment of the feat. This was ragtime music, then a novelty in New York, and just growing to be rage which had not yet subsided.. It was originated in the questionable resorts about Memphis and St. Louis by negro piano players, who knew no more the theory of music than they did the theory of the universe, but were guided by natural instinct and talent. American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it or dismiss with a contemptuous word [….[ whatever is popular is spoken of as not worth the while Talking Points Keep in this mind and conjecture on its significance: It is Ex’s social and economic failure that lead him to Harlem. What is the rhetorical use of the phrase “barbaric” vis-à-vis both its juxtaposition to the “lower” and the”left” and the discourse of primitivism. What is the rhetoricsl and polemical fact of Ex’s obscuring the origins of ragtime? Here, Ex remarks on the ragtime players prowess with respect to “talent and instinct” while inferring an ignorance of theory. What is the significance of this inference? How does inform our perception of Ex’s discovery of ragtime? What are the the significances of invoking European opinion here? VI

VII For several weeks longer I was in a troubled state of mind. Added to the fact that I was loath to leave my good friend, was the weight of the question he had aroused in my mind, whether I was not making a fatal mistake. I suffered more than one sleepless night during that time. Finally, I settled the question on purely selfish grounds, in accordance with my “millionaire’s” philosophy. I argued that music offered me a better future than anything else I had any knowledge of, and, in opposition to my friend’s opinion, that I should have greater chances of attracting attention as a colored composer than as a white one. But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions of the American Negro, in classic musical form. Talking Points How does EX articulate his desire to his millionaire friends, and how does this articulation differ from, the he gives himself (purely selfish grounds)? Contextualize the metaphorical significance of Ex’s trip South in terms of its goals its assumption, and the discourse for racial uplift it invokes vis-a-vis its purported goals and the theme of individualism?. Contextualize the metaphorical significance of the confidence game that Ex is playing in this passage.

IX Talking Points Here two tropes from the slave narrative genre concerning London and France are re-fashioned? What are they, and what is the significance of this refashioning? In light of this, what are the multiple ironies at work in Ex’s affinity for London and his viewpoints on both cities? Looking hardly a day older than when I had seen him some ten years before. What a strange coincidence! What should I say to him? What would he say to me? Before I had recovered from my first surprise there came another shock in the realization that the beautiful, tender girl at my side was my sister The beauty in and about London is entirely different from that in and about Paris; and I could not but admit that the beauty of the French city seemed hand-made, artificial, as though set up for the photographer’s camera, everything nicely adjusted so as not to spoil the picture; while that of the English city was rugged, natural and fresh. How these two cities typify the two peoples who built them! Even the sound of their names expresses a certain racial difference. Paris is the concrete expression of the gayety, regard for symmetry, love of art and, I might well add, of the morality of the French people. London stands for the conservatism, the solidarity, the utilitarianism and, I might well add, the hypocrisy of the Anglo-Saxon. It may sound odd to speak of the morality of the French, if not of the hypocrisy of the English; but this seeming paradox impressed me as a deep truth. I saw many things in Paris which were immoral according to English standards, but the absence of hypocrisy, the absence of the spirit to do the thing if it might only be done in secret, robbed these very immoralities of the damning influence of the same evils in London. .

IX Talking Points Why invoke CLOTEL at this moment of recognition so carefully orchestrated. What inversions are at work? How does Ex’s nonchalance afterwards play into all of this? What are the metatextual implications of Johnson’s liking of his work to Brown’s? What us the symbolic importance of “Faust” in this scene? One night I went to hear ‘Faust.’ I got into my seat just as the lights went down for the first act. At the end of the act I noticed that my neighbor on the left was a young girl. I cannot describe her either as to feature, color of her hair, or of her eyes; she was so young, so fair, so ethereal, that I felt to stare at her would be a violation; yet I was distinctly conscious of her beauty. During the intermission she spoke English in a low voice to a gentleman and a lady who sat in the seats to her left, addressing them as father and mother. I held my programme as though studying it, but listened to catch every sound of her voice. Her observations on the performance and the audience were so fresh and naive as to be almost amusing. I gathered that she was just out of school, and that this was her first trip to Paris. I occasionally stole a glance at her, and each time I did so my heart leaped into my throat. Once I glanced beyond to the gentleman who sat next to her. My glance immediately turned into a stare. Yes, there he was, unmistakably, my father.

Clotel: Passing and Passing out of the Slave Narrative: Recognition AT length the news of the approaching marriage of Horatio met the ear of Clotel. Her head grew dizzy, and her heart fainted within her; but, with a strong effort at composure, she inquired all the particulars, and her pure mind at once took its resolution. Horatio came that evening, and though she would fain have met him as usual, her heart was too full not to throw a deep sadness over her looks and tones. She had never complained of his decreasing tenderness, or of her own lonely hours; but he felt that the mute appeal of her heart-broken looks was more terrible than words. He kissed the hand she offered, and with a countenance almost as sad as her own, led her to a window in the recess shadowed by a luxuriant passion flower. It was the same seat where they had spent the first evening in this beautiful cottage, consecrated to their first loves. The same calm, clear moonlight looked in through the trellis. The vine then planted had now a luxuriant growth; and many a time had Horatio fondly twined its sacred blossoms with the glossy ringlets of her raven hair.

In a previous chapter I spoke of social life among colored people; so there is no need to take it up again here. But there is one thing I did not mention: among Negroes themselves there is the peculiar inconsistency of a color question. Its existence is rarely admitted and hardly ever mentioned; it may not be too strong a statement to say that the greater portion of the race is unconscious of its influence; yet this influence, though silent, is constant. It is evidenced most plainly in marriage selection; thus the black men generally marry women fairer than themselves; while, on the other hand, the dark women of stronger mental endowment are very often married to light-complexioned men;’ the effect is a tendency toward lighter complexions, especially among the more active elements in the race. Some might claim that this is a tacit admission of colored people among themselves of their own inferiority judged by the color line. I do not think so. What I have termed an inconsistency is, after all, most natural; it is, in fact, a tendency in accordance with what might be called an economic necessity. So far as racial differences go, the United States puts a greater premium on color, or better, lack of color, than upon anything else in the world. To paraphrase, “Have a white skin, and all things else may be added unto you.” I have seen advertisements in newspapers for waiters, bell boys or elevator men, which read, “Light colored man wanted.” It is this tremendous pressure which the sentiment of the country exerts that is operating on the race. There is involved not only the question of higher opportunity, but often the question of earning a livelihood; and so I say it is not strange, but a natural tendency. nor is it any more a sacrifice of self respect that a black man should give to his children every advantage he can which complexion of the skin carries, than that of the new or vulgar rich should purchase for their children the advantages which ancestry, aristocracy, and social position carry. I once heard a colored man sum it up in these words, “It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.” Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst. As I drove around with the doctor, he commented rather harshly on those of the latter class which we saw. He remarked: “You see those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies, they’re not worth digging graves for; yet they are the ones who create impressions of the race for the casual observer. It’s because they are always in evidence on the street corners, while the rest of us are hard at work, and you know a dozen loafing darkies make a bigger crowd and a worse impression in this country than fifty white men of the same class. But they ought not to represent the race. We are the race, and the race ought to be judged by us, not by them. Every race and every nation is judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.” Talking Points Ex frames his predicament, in this passage, as one of economic necessity and economic advantage? What are the multiple significances of this framing and how is it accomplished? Ex quotes from Dubois at the end of this passage. What rhetorical effect does it produce? How does it comment on Du Bois’s notion of the talented tenth? Explicate the multiply symbolic importance of Washington in this scene. Marriage and the National Commentary X

IX “Well,” replied the Texan, “anything – no country at all is better than having niggers over you. But anyhow, the war was fought and the niggers were freed; for it’s no use beating around the bush, the niggers, and not the Union, was the cause of it; and now do you believe that all the niggers on earth are worth the good white blood that was spilt? You freed the nigger and you gave him the ballot, but you couldn’t make a citizen out of him. he don’t know what he’s voting for, and we buy ‘em like so many hogs. You’re giving ‘em education, but that only makes slick rascals out of ‘em.” “Don’t fancy for a moment,” said the Northern man, “that you have any monopoly in buying ignorant votes. The same thing is done on a larger scale in New York and Boston, and in Chicago and San Francisco; and they are not black votes either. As to education making the Negro worse, you had just as well tell me that religion does the same thing. And, by the way, how many educated colored men do you know personally?” The Texan admitted that he knew only one, and added that he was in the penitentiary. “But,” he said, “do you mean to claim, ballot or no ballot, education or no education, that niggers are the equals of white men?” “That’s not the question,” answered the other, “but if the Negro is so distinctly inferior, it is a strange thing to me that it takes such tremendous effort on the part of the white man to make him realize it, and to keep him in the same place into which inferior men naturally fall. However, let us grant for the sake of argument that the Negro is inferior in every respect to the white man; that fact only increases our moral responsibility in regard to our actions toward him. Inequalities of numbers, wealth and power, even of intelligence and morals, should make no difference in the essential rights of men” “If he’s inferior and weaker, and is shoved to the wall, that’s his own look out,” said the Texan. “That’s the law of nature, and he’s bound to go to the wall; for no race in the world has ever been able to stand competition with the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon race has always been and always will be the masters of the world, and the niggers in the South ain’t going to change all the records of history.” “My friend,” said the old soldier slowly, “if you have studied history, will you tell me, as confidentially between whit men, what the Anglo-Saxon has ever done? The Texan was too much astonished by the question to venture a reply. His opponent continued, “Can you name a single one of the great fundamental and original intellectual achievements which have raised man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon? The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of painting, of the drama, of architecture; the science of mathematics, of astronomy, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of metals and the principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations. We have carried many of these too their highest point of perfection, but the foundation was laid by others. Talking Points Alll the discussion of the rail car is positioned, by Ex, to come to a head in this encounter. What do the veterans remarks suggest about the effect of slavery/racism on oppressor and oppressor alike? What is the significance of the fact that this conversation is taking place between the Texan and a figure associated with emancipation? What do you make of the soldier’s lack of pride in this respect? Anglo Saxon civilization is figured, here, as a derivative and sick hybrid. Negro culture is by opposition valorized. What is the significance of all this? What are the multiple ironies at work in the Texan’s fear of a “mulatto nation”

Clotel: Passing and Passing out of the Slave Narrative: The Train "There," said he, "can you find anything against Connecticut equal to that?" The Southerner had to admit that he was beat by the Yankee. During all this time, it must not be supposed that the old gent with the two daughters, and even the young ladies themselves, had been silent. Clotel and they had not only given their opinions as regarded the merits of the discussion, but that sly glance of the eye, which is ever given where the young of both sexes meet, had been freely at work. The American ladies are rather partial to foreigners, and Clotel had the appearance of a fine Italian. The old gentleman was now near his home, and a whisper from the eldest daughter, who was unmarried but marriageable, induced him to extend to "Mr. Johnson" an invitation to stop and spend a week with the young ladies at their family residence. Clotel excused herself upon various grounds, and at last, to cut short the matter, promised that she would pay them a visit on her return. The arrival of the coach at Lynchburgh separated the young ladies from the Italian gent, and the coach again resumed its journey.

X When I reached Macon I decided to leave my trunk and all my surplus belongings, to pack my bag, and strike out into the interior. This I did; and by train, by mule and ox-cart, I traveled through many counties. This was my first real experience among rural colored people, and all I saw was interesting to me; but there was a great deal which does not require description at my hands; for log cabins and plantations and dialect-speaking darkies are perhaps better known in American literature than any other single picture of our national life. Indeed, they form an ideal and exclusive literary concept of the American Negro to such an extent that it is almost impossible to get the reading public to recognize him in any other setting; but I shall endeavor to avoid giving the reader any overworked and hackneyed descriptions. This generally accepted literary ideal of the American Negro constitutes what is really an obstacle in the way of the thoughtful and progressive element of the race. His character has been established as a happy-go-lucky, laughing, shuffling, banjo-picking being, and the reading public has not yet been prevailed upon to take him seriously. His efforts to elevate himself socially are looked upon as a sort of absurd caricature of “white civilization.” A novel dealing with colored people who lived in respectable homes and amidst a fair degree of culture and who naturally acted “just like white folks” would be taken in a comic opera sense. In this respect the Negro is much in the position of a great comedian who gives up the lighter roles to play tragedy. No matter how well he may portray the deeper passions, the public is loathe to give him up in his old character; they even conspire to make him a failure in serious work, in order to force him back into comedy. In the same respect, the public is not to much to be blamed, for great comedians are far more scarce than mediocre tragedians, every amateur actor is a tragedian. However, this very fact constitutes the opportunity of the future Negro novelist and poet to give the country something new and unknown, in depicting the life, the ambitions, the struggles and the passions of those of their race who are striving to break the narrow limits of traditions. A beginning has already been made in that remarkable book by Dr. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk.” Talking Points How does this passage function as a meta-textual commentary on that of the novel’s? How do previous depictions of African-Americans play into it? 2) With all this in mind, conjecture as to the multiple significance of Ex’s views on minstrelsy and its causes? What are these causes and what double bind do they present the minstrel Subject? What are some of the many ways to interpret the multiple significances of Ex’s overt love of “The Souls of Black Folk”?

X Before noon they brought him in. Two horsemen rode abreast; between them, half dragged, the poor wretch made his way through the dust. His hands were tied behind him, and ropes around his body were fastened to the saddle horns of his double guard. The men who at midnight had been stern and silent were now emitting that terror instilling sound known as the “rebel yell.” A space was quickly cleared in the crowd, and a rope placed about his neck; when from somewhere came the suggestion, “Burn him.” It ran like an electric current. Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts? Nothing can be more terrible. A railroad tie was sunk into the ground, the rope was removed and a chain brought and securely coiled around the victim and the stake. There he stood, a man only in form and stature, every sign of degeneracy stamped upon his countenance. His eyes were dull and vacant, indicating not a single ray of thought. Evidently the realization of his fearful fate had robbed him of whatever reasoning power he had ever possessed. He was too stunned and stupefied even to tremble. Fuel was brought from everywhere, oil, the torch; the flames crouched for an instant as though to gather strength, then leaped up as high as their victim’s head. He squirmed, he writhed, strained at his chains, then gave out cries and groans that I shall always hear. The cries and groans were choked off by the fire and smoke, but his eyes bulging from their sockets, rolled from side to side, appealing in vain for help. Some of the crowd yelled and cheered, others seemed appalled at what they had done, and there were those who turned away sickened at the sight. I was fixed to the spot where I stood, powerless to take my eyes from what I did not want to see. It was over before I realized that time had elapsed. Before I could make myself believe that what I saw was really happening, I was looking at a scorched post, a smoldering fire, blackened bones, charred fragments sifting down through coils of chain, and the smell of burnt flesh – human flesh – was in my nostrils. I walked a short distance away, and sat down in order to clear my dazed mind. A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with, and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive. My heart turned bitter within me. I could understand why Negroes are led to sympathize with even their worst criminals, and to protect them when possible. By all the impulses of normal human nature they can and should do nothing less. Talking Points What rhetorical effect is produced by referring to the mob as one transformed into “savage beasts”? Contextualize as to the multiple significance of Ex’s multiple shames? How does the concept “normal human nature” play out in this passage? Ex locates this as the point where his heart “turned bitter.” What are the rhetorical significances of this gesture for the book’s ability to capitalize on the “confessional economy.?”

XI Up to this time I had assumed and played my role as a white man with a certain degree of nonchalance, a carelessness as to the outcome which made the whole thing more amusing to me than serious; but now I ceased to regard “being a white man” as a sort of practical joke. My acting had called for mere external effects. Now I began to doubt my ability to play the part. I watched her to see if she was scrutinizing me, to see if she was looking for anything in me which made me differ from the other men she knew. In place of an old inward feeling of superiority over many of my friends, I began to doubt myself. I began to wonder if I really was like the men I associated with; if there was not, after all, an indefinable something which marked a difference. But, in spite of my doubts and timidity, my affair progressed; and I finally felt sufficiently encouraged to decide to ask her to marry me. Then began the hardest struggle of my life, whether to ask her to marry me under false colors or to tell her the whole truth. My sense of what was exigent made me feel there was no necessity of saying anything; but my inborn sense of honor rebelled at even indirect deception in this case. But however much I moralized on the question, I found it more and more difficult to reach the point of confession. The dread that I might lose her took possession of me each time I sought to speak, and rendered it impossible for me to do so. That moral courage requires more than physical courage is no mere poetic fancy. I am sure I would have found it easier to take the place of a gladiator, no matter how fierce the Numidian lion, than to tell that slender girl that I had Negro blood in my veins. The fact which I had at times wished to cry out, I now wished to hide forever. Talking Points Here, Ex supposedly forsakes the practical joke offers us his confession. What is it? How does it make us think about it the manner Heine thinks of Rousseau’s? Why offer the “fake-out” confession in this form?

XI One evening, a few days afterwards, at her home, we were going over some new songs and compilations, when she asked m, as she often did, to play the “13th Nocturne.” When I began she drew a chair near to my right, and sat leaning wish her elbow on the end of the piano, her chin resting on her hand, and her eyes reflecting the emotions which the music awoke in her. An impulse which I could not control rushed over me, a wave of exaltation, the music under my fingers sank to almost a whisper, and calling her for the first time by her Christian name, but without daring to look at her, I said, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” My fingers were trembling, so that I ceased playing. I felt her hand creep to mine, and when I looked at her her eyes were glistening with tears. I understood, and could scarcely resist the longing to take her in my arms; but I remembered, remembered that which has been the sacrificial altar of so much happiness—Duty; and bending over her hand in mine, I said, “Yes, I love you; but there is something more, too, that I must tell you.” Then I told her, in what words I do not know, the truth. I felt her hand grow cold, and when I looked up she was gazing at me with a wild, fixed stare as though I was some object she had never seen. Under the strange light in her eyes I felt that I was growing black and thick-featured and crimp-haired. She appeared not to have comprehended what I had said. Her lips trembled and she attempted to say something to me; but the words stuck in her throat. Then dropping her head on the piano she began to weep with great sobs that shook her frail body. I tried to console her, and blurted out incoherent words of love; but this seemed only to increase her distress, and when I left her she was still weeping. When I got into the street I felt very much as I did the night after meeting my father and sister at the opera house in Paris, even a similar desperate inclination to get drunk; but my self-control was stronger. This was the only time in my life that I ever felt absolute regret at being colored that I cursed the drops of African blood in my veins, and wished that I were really white. Talking Points Here ex offers the details behind his supposed sin? What are they and what ere their significances? Ex compares this love affair to the moment he somewhat casually renounce his patrimony in Paris? What is the significance of this tie? Here we have another explanation for Ex’s decision to pass. Describe its nature and its rhetorical effect with respect to the economies of confession, hybridity, and (choice) individualism?

Clotel: Passing and Passing out of the Slave Narrative: The Dark Secret The rush of memory almost overpowered poor Clotel; and Horatio felt too much oppressed and ashamed to break the long deep silence. At length, in words scarcely audible, Clotel said: "Tell me, dear Horatio, are you to be married next week?" He dropped her hand as if a rifle ball had struck him; and it was not until after long hesitation, that he began to make some reply about the necessity of circumstances. Mildly but earnestly the poor girl begged him to spare apologies. It was enough that he no longer loved her, and that they must bid farewell. Trusting to the yielding tenderness of her character, he ventured, in the most soothing accents, to suggest that as he still loved her better than all the world, she would ever be his real wife, and they might see each other frequently. He was not prepared for the storm of indignant emotion his words excited. True, she was his slave; her bones, and sinews had been purchased by his gold, yet she had the heart of a true woman, and hers was a passion too deep and absorbing to admit of partnership, and her spirit was too pure to form a selfish league with crime.

XI The few years of our married life were supremely happy, and, perhaps she was even happier than I; for after our marriage, in spite of all the wealth of her love which she lavished upon me, there came a new dread to haunt me, a dread which I cannot explain and which was unfounded, but one that never left me. I was in constant fear that she would discover in me some shortcoming which she would unconsciously attribute to my blood rather than to a failing of human nature. But no cloud ever came to mar our life together; her lose to me is irreparable. My children need a mother’s care, but I shall never marry again. It is to my children that I have devoted my life. I no longer have the same fear for myself of my secret being found out; for since my wife’s death I have gradually dropped out of social life; but there is noting I would not suffer to keep the “brand” from being placed upon them. Talking Points Ex’s married life was happy, but now he find himself wealthy and socially isolated? What is the significance of invoking class in this context and with respect to previous uplift strategies invoked? Ex offers us a reason for his anonymity? How does it, too serve to legitimize the choice that leads to his lamentable fate. How is Ex rehearsing his mother’s un-forgiven crimes here?

XI It is difficult for me to analyze my feelings concerning my present position in the world. Sometimes it seems to me that I have never really been a Negro; that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life; at other times I feel that I have been a coward, a deserter, and I am possessed by a strange longing for my mother’s people. Several years ago I attended a great meeting in the interest of Hampton Institute at Carnegie Hall. The Hampton students sang the old songs and awoke memories that left me sad. Among the speakers were R.C. Ogden, Ex-Ambassador Choate, and Mark Twain; but the greatest interest of the audience was centered on Booker T. Washington; and not because he so much surpassed the others in eloquence, but because of what he represented with so much earnestness and faith. And it is this that all of that small but gallant band of colored men who are publicly fighting the cause of their race have behind them. Even those who oppose them know that these men have the eternal principles of right on their side, and they will be victors even though they should go down in defeat. Beside them I feel small and selfish. I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are men who are making history and a race. I, too, might have taken part in a work so glorious. My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage. Talking Points Here, Ex offers us a reflection on the implications of his confessional sin. How does it comment and invoke Du Bois? Ex’s faux confession presents us with a mulatto who has been Tricked into renouncing his heritage? What multiple factors complicate the logic of that confession? Look at the invocation of Washington and Twain in this passage. How does Ex’s reverence for the former inform our view of these the the final moments of his confessionary bildungsroman? Ex says he has sold his soul. What is this faux confession of a tragic mulatto also an endorsement of? In short, what is the trick?

Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

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