male

Saleem Sinai

This entry was posted in Midnight's Children and tagged Indian male white on by

midnightschildren

Character: Saleem Sinai

Source Text:  Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Random House, 2006. .

Entry Author: Shalyn Hopley

 

Saleem Sinai is the illegitimate son of William Methwold, a white British officer, and Vanita, a poor Indian street performer’s wife. However, Saleem is born at the same moment as Shiva, the son of Amhed and Amina Sinai, a wealthy Kashmiri family moved to Bombay. Shiva and Saleem are switched at birth by Mary Pereira, and Saleem is raised as the Sinai’s son without them knowing. Saleem is the protagonist and narrator of Midnight’s Children yet his birth and the revelation of his mixed race heritage do not occur until about a fifth of the way through the book. The beginning portion of his story is spent describing his family history. Yet with Saleem’s birth, the audience discovers that this history is not that of his biological family but that of his unwitting adoptive family. Rather than tell the story of his poor Indian mother, his colonizing British father, and their extra-marital affair, he has chosen to tell the story of his Kashmiri family. Saleem interestingly acknowledges his mixed-race heritage and gives it a significant place in the story, including its revelation during one of the turning points of the novel—his birth, which coincides with the partition of Indian and Indian independence (132); still while acknowledging his mixed race parentage, he is privileging a monoracial identity and even discounting the significance of his parentage saying “…there’s something more important than that. It’s this: when we eventually discovered the crime of Mary Pereira, we all found that it made no difference! I was still their son:  they remained my parents.” (131).Saleem’s mixed birth however cannot be so easily discounted in the significance to the story. Saleem’s status as a mixed race character and child who not truly his parent’s child is symbolic of the status of India at the time of his birth. He is the result of colonization, and evidence of an Indian divided by foreign powers who are on their way out. He speaks of himself and the other midnight’s children, “children were being born who were only partially the offspring of their parents—the children of midnight where also the children of the time:  fathered, you understand, by history.” Saleem, and his mixed heritage, becomes central to Rushdie’s allegorical tale of Indian independence.Saleem and his fellow Midnight’s children usher in a new period in India’s history, and in the novel, are granted with special abilities which destine them to stand out in both society and history. Much of Saleem’s personal history is interwoven with Indian history, his action being key to some of the wars in India. Eventually, his existence and that of his cohorts becomes central to Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. She declares the state of Emergency to imprison and sterilize the midnight’s children, draining them not only of their reproductive abilities but their magical abilities and their hope (505). Her actions are tinged with a dark history of sterilizing the racial other, the undesirable elements of society so they and their progeny can no longer contribute to society. The power of the midnight’s children is intrinsically tied to their ability to reproduce, and so without powers and their ability to have children, they cannot affect the story of India. No longer connected to history, Saleem begins to fall apart, supposedly literally disintegrating at the young age of thirty-one.

Harry Potter

This entry was posted in Harry Potter and tagged Indian male white on by

harrypotter

Character: Harry Potter

Source Text:  Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter Series. New York: Scholastic, 1998-2007. Print.

Entry Author: Jessica Davis

Harry James Potter holds half-blood status in Rowling’s imagined wizarding world because his mother is Muggle-born and his father is pure-blood. There are three main blood statuses; pure-blood, half-blood, and Muggle-born, which are all methods of determining a witch or wizard’s magical lineage. Pure-blood status is kept by only marrying other pure-bloods, Muggle-borns are the magical product of two Muggle parents, and half-bloods are any mixture of Muggle-born and pure-blood parents. This can be a pure-blood or half-blood witch or wizard procreating with a half-blood, Muggle-born, or Muggle. Blood status (like race) has nothing to do with magical ability, but is a long-lasting prejudice by the self-appointed superiority of pure-bloods. Many pure-blood witches and wizards intermarry within the series to keep their status “pure” and many lie about their status, claiming complete purity of their family tree. Harry possesses impressive magical abilities, proving that his half-blood status has no correlations with magical ability.The significance of Harry’s half-blood status is his middleman position between the Muggle and wizarding worlds. The first ten years of Harry’s life were spent growing up with his magic-hating aunt and uncle in the muggle world, which allows him Muggle world knowledge when he goes to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but also an innate comfort and belonging in the wizarding world. Harry’s half-blood status also keeps him balanced between his two best friends, Ron Weasley, who is of pure-blood status, and Hermione Granger, who is a Muggle-born witch, and top student in the school. During Rowling’s second novel of the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, we uncover some of the story’s underlining racism through Draco Malfoy’s inappropriate slur towards Hermione.

“Mudblood is a really foul name for someone who was Muggle-born – you know, non-magical parents. There are some wizards – like Malfoy’s family – who think they’re better than everyone else because they’re what people call pure-blood… I mean, the rest of us know it doesn’t make any difference at all” (Rowling, Chamber of Secrets, 89).

Mudblood is a sort of racial term describing a witch or wizard born to two muggle parents, describing their blood as filthy.

One of the most profound advocates for equal rights of blood status, is Albus Dumbledore. He is a constant reminder in the series to treat people equally, and never judge them based on where they come from or what they may be.

“You place too much importance, and you always have done, on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!” (Rowling, Goblet of Fire, 708).

This sort of stance is what Rowling is trying to teach her readers that differences mean nothing to those with open minds and a willingness to accept others. The pureness of a witch or wizard’s blood is thought to keep magical ability within magical families, but magic can be passed down even through muggle families.

Ironically, Harry’s half-blood status is one of the greatest plot movers, since Lord Voldemort uses this fact to choose Harry as his eventual downfall, due to a prophecy. The choice is between Harry the half-blood, and Neville Longbottom, a pure-blood schoolmate of Harry’s. It is believed that Lord Voldemort chooses Harry because his half-blood status is closest to Lord Voldemort’s half-blood status. This choice drives the whole novel from beginning to end, with the underlying message of tolerance towards others and social discrimination.

Danny

This entry was posted in Tortilla Flat and tagged Caucasian Indian male Mexican Spanish on by

tortillaflat
Character: Danny 

Source Text:  Steinbeck, John. Tortilla Flat. 1935. New York: Penguin Books, 1963. Print.

Entry Author: James Tyler

In The Grapes of Wrath, Mexicans only warrant vague mention as a massive throng of scabs threatening the prospects of Californian farmers and Midwestern migrant workers (Owens, 60). John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, a novella based on a Medieval Mexican folktale, presents its two main characters, Kino and Juana, more as symbolic victims of circumstance than as introspective human beings exhibiting any control over their situation. Despite the fact that a majority of John Steinbeck’s novels are set in California, one familiar with his work could very well argue that Steinbeck’s literature offers few complex Mexican-American characters.  A refutation to this argument would inevitably have to include a discussion of Tortilla Flat (1935). In this variation on the Legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Tortilla Flat’s hero, Danny, outwardly emerges as the level-headed voice of reason and authority figure; in effect, the “King Arthur” figure of the “Paisanos.” A “Paisano” is defined by Steinbeck as “a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods. His ancestors have lived in California for a hundred or two [hundred] years. He speaks English with a Paisano accent and Spanish with a Paisano accent” (Steinbeck 2). Like the other “Paisanos” of Tortilla Flat in Monterey, California, Danny is of Mexican-Anglo-Indian descent, described as “related to nearly everyone in the flat by blood or romance” (Steinbeck 3). Danny’s willingness to open his doors to the other “Paisanos,” when he inherits two houses from his grandfather, establishes him as the unofficial leader of this racially mixed group.

As such, Danny emerges as the focal point of the story and the calm center around which the comparatively more colorful Pilon, Pablo, and Big Joe, revolve. Unlike the stereotypical authority figure, however, Danny is unhappy with this arrangement. He hails from wealth, but is entirely unenthused with the finery of “influential relatives,” choosing to live as a “vagrant wresting his food and wine from an unwilling world” (Steinbeck 3). Burdened with the responsibility of managing not one, but two houses, Danny is obligated to abandon these vagabond ways in favor of focusing on property management and fiscal responsibility. He seethes with frustration for a month, before disappearing from the house and embarking on a crime spree, or a “quest,” if you will, leaving the town of Tortilla Flat in almost complete disarray. Upon the realization that this act has not changed his situation, he grows disillusioned and descends into alcoholism. Danny’s friends’ best attempts to help him fail, and most spectacularly with a party in his honor. Danny descends into madness and throws himself to his doom after erupting into hysterical fits of violent anger, likely induced by heavy drinking.

The source of Danny’s rage is ambiguous and Steinbeck dances around the legitimate cause of Danny’s almost quixotic disillusionment with life, choosing to assign its origins to a populist yearning for independence from legitimate responsibility. But, could Danny really have exhibited a difficulty adjusting to civilian life and finding his identity following his WWI service? According to historian Gregory Rodriguez, WWI “accelerated assimilation” for the Mexican community, and “some soldiers returned home having experienced prejudice at the hands of Anglo officers” (Rodriguez 154). If Danny’s anger is motivated by a latent insecurity over his racial identity, it is unclear. Nonetheless, Steinbeck establishes Danny’s racial identity enigma almost from the start, when he describes the Protagonist’s behavior when asked about his race. “Whenever [Danny is] questioned concerning his race, he indignantly claims pure Spanish blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm is nearly white” (Steinbeck 2).  Described as “dark and intent” with a skin color like “a well-browned meerschaum pipe,” Danny attributes his complexion to sunburns, vehemently denying any mixed ancestry (Steinbeck 3).  Interestingly enough, Danny is not above his own racial antipathy towards the very Caucasians he tries to claim kinship with. Upon learning of his new inheritance, he chooses to target Italian fishermen by assailing them with ethnic slurs. “Race antipathy overcame Danny’s good sense. He menaced the fishermen. ‘Sicilian bastards,’ he called them, and ‘Scum from the prison-island,’ and ‘Dogs of dogs of dogs.’ He cried, ‘Chinga tu madre, Piojo.’ He thumbed his nose and made obscene gestures below his waist” (Steinbeck 6). Although the Italians hardly take his mockery seriously in the least, with an identity crisis of this magnitude, it is no wonder that Danny eventually was goaded into virtually losing contact with reality. Although Steinbeck does not attribute it to Danny’s descent into madness, neither does he absolve his inner conflict over racial identity from complicity in Danny’s Arthurian fall from grace.

Hiro Protagonist

This entry was posted in Snow Crash and tagged black Korean male on by

 

snowcrashCharacter: Hiro Protagonist

Source Text:  Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam Books, 1992. Print.

Entry Author: Erin O’Kelly

Stephenson’s character Hiro is half-American Black, half-Korean, and all protagonist. A talented programmer and hacker, Hiro is instrumental to the world of the story even before its events drag him into an informational intrigue, having helped to create and develop the immersive Internet equivalent known in the novel as the Metaverse. When the story opens he’s working a high-risk, low-pay job as a futuristic pizza deliveryman, but that quickly comes to a crashing halt when he crashes the Mafia-owned delivery car, sending him back to his backup job as a freelance information-gatherer. Soon he is embroiled in a high-tech struggle for a new sort of infoweapon that his unorthodox hacker past has made him well-prepared to deal with.

 

While his ability to deal with the plot twists leading up to the final showdown is not predicated on his race, the course of the story makes several turns that do rely on racially charged events to get from plot point A to plot point B to plot point Z.Hiro’s role in the novel covers everything from gathering information to protecting himself and others to chopping people up with swords and, interestingly, his mixed heritage makes subtle but important contributions in all of those areas. He uses his heritage as an American Black to make get the social results he wants in some situations, like when he forces a confrontation with a Japanese pop star to make sure that a concert he organized goes on as planned: “What the hell. This is America, Hiro is American, and there’s no reason to take this politeness thing to an unhealthy extreme” (Stephenson 132). Similarly, in the novel’s world of racially-specific closed-gate communities, a type of franchise called “burbclaves”, his Korean ancestry gives him an in to the city-franchise Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong. Without that access to the refuge of a Greater Hong Kong that his citizenship affords him, he and one of the other main characters, YT, would have likely been taken out of commission in the first hundred pages by a bunch of angry taxi drivers; later on, his ability to access the Asian-centric franchise saves him from getting shot by a bunch of Russian gunmen. His ability to bring YT into this otherwise off-limits sphere of influence also advances the plot by setting the stage for a later karmatic payback for an act of kindness performed during her stay.

The attention his mixed heritage attracts is not entirely benign, however, and also singles him out as a target for curiosity and animosity. Many people are unable to peg his ethnic background, and others’ misinterpretations spark conflict. One Japanese businessman who thinks his black heritage should deny him the use of his inherited Japanese swords challenges his honor and right to hold the weapons (Stephenson 85). A later scene makes him a target for racists who aren’t sure what his heritage is, exactly, but know they don’t like it and can’t figure out which epithet to call him (Stephenson 301). Despite this, a majority of the attention paid to Hiro’s heritage is narrative, not part of any dialogue.  Although the reader is up-to-date on the matter, Hiro doesn’t usually bother to correct the person doing the mislabeling. He simply continues doing what he always does: making effective uses of both sides of his heritage to accomplish what he wants or needs to do, and saving a good chunk of the world in the process.

Khan Noonien Singh

This entry was posted in Star Trek and tagged male multi-racial on by

 

spaceseedCharacter: Khan Noonien Singh 

Source Text:  “Space Seed.” Star Trek: The Original Series. Writ. Gene L. Coon and Carey Wilber. Dir. Mark Daniels. NBC. 1967.

Entry Author: Emma Baker

Perhaps the most memorable or well-known villain of Star Trek: The Original Series, Khan Noonien Singh is a genetically engineered and selectively bred man intended to possess superhuman powers, both physical and mental. Also known as an “augment,” Khan results from an experiment enacted by several scientists on Earth during the 1990s. However, these scientists did not account for the idea that, “superior ability breeds superior ambition,” (“Space Seed”) and many of the augments began to seize control of over 40 different nations. Kirk says on the subject, “an improved breed of human. That’s what the Eugenics War was all about.” (“Space Seed”) Khan, who controlled one third of the earth, from Asia to the Middle East, was the “best of the tyrants,” under his rule there were no massacres, he did not initiate any fights. While Spock found him morally reprehensible and only deserving of scorn, many humans on board expressed an admiration of his strength and abilities while still disapproving of his actions. They consider Khan, “the best of the tyrants and the most dangerous.” (“Space Seed”) He attempts to take over the Enterprise with his augmented crew with the intention of finding a new planet to conquer and almost succeeds with the compliance of Lieutenant McGivers, a white woman, who falls in love with him.  In the end, instead of bringing him to Starfleet, James T. Kirk exiles him and his crew to a planet where they can begin to colonize themselves reflecting the penal colony on Australia, Botany Bay. Later, Khan goes on to be the antagonist of The Wrath of Khan, often considered the best Star Trek movie with the cast of the original series.These “augments” were created from a variety of Earth’s ethnic groups. In the episode, “Space Seed,” Scotty says, “they’re all mixed types–Western, Mid-European, Latin, Oriental.” (“Space Seed”) On the first sight of Khan, the historian Lieutenant McGivers suggests he hails, “From the Northern India area I’d guess, probably a Sikh,” perhaps in an expression of Orientalist anxieties. Though little textual evidence points toward these augments as of a mixture of several different ethnic groups within each individual, rumors among some fan understanding suggest that Khan himself is a mixture of several races, perhaps the end result if all races were mixed. The concept revolves around the beneficial combination of several different ethnic groups to create superhumans that share the best aspects of all races and culminates in the most prominent of the augments, a man who is not white.As such, Khan’s role both challenges and maintains the status quo. A non-white person presented as the superhuman product of the genetic engineering and selective breeding remains rare even in modern day media. In the 1960s, it was arguably revolutionary. The rumor of not only the inclusion many different ethnic groups in genetic engineering but perhaps the explicit mixing also challenges a status quo concerned with historical intents of eugenics movements. Instead of the preservation of a “pure” race revolving around white supremacy, this experiment produced superhumans of all races and the potential of mixed races. Interestingly, the seeds of constructing mixed race as a herald of modernity and a post-race society are recognizable in this interpretation.

Golden Gray (2nd exhibit)

This entry was posted in Jazz and tagged bi-racial black male white on by

jazz_cover2Character: Golden Gray

Source Text:  Morrison, Toni. Jazz. New York: Vintage International, 2004.

Entry Author:

The majority of Jazz’s narrative takes place in a lower class African American community in Harlem during the 1920s. The plot centers on the violent love triangle formed when Joe, married to Violet, began an affair with a young girl named Dorcas. However, as the pasts of the various characters are explored, the narrative extends back to the mid-19th century American South. The novel introduces Golden Gray, the son of a rich white Aristocratic woman, Vera Louise, and her family’s African American slave, Henry LesTroy. He unites the past of Violet and Joe: He was raised by Violet’s grandmother, True Belle, and as an adult saved Joe’s mother while searching for his father, Henry.The narrator connects the anxiety Vera Louise’s father experiences upon discovering his daughter’s pregnancy by a slave to the fact of there being seven mulatto children on the plantation. Those mulatto children represent the unspoken, yet well known secret about the transgressions in Southern society wherein white male slave owners had sexual relations with their black female slaves, creating mixed race generations. The anxiety stems from the possibility that Gray’s mother would’ve unknowingly committed incest with one of her half siblings, who was born to one of the female slaves.

Gray’s racial identity threatens the structure of the society because his racial mix is identical to those born as slaves to African American mothers, and yet his mother’s racial identity directly connects him to the supposedly elite white family. Golden Gray brings up interesting questions: by law he could be a slave, but his upbringing has created permanent features in his way of carrying himself that translates into whiteness.

Superficial aspects of his appearance create a thin veil hiding his identity. His mother would have regretted him just as she did her affair and given him away if not for his “golden” aspect.

“When [they] bathed him they sometimes passed anxious looks at the palms of his hand, the texture of his drying hair. … True Belle just smiled, and now he knew what she was smiling about, the nigger. But so was he. He had always thought there was only one kind – True Belle’s kind. Black and nothing. Like Henry LesTroy. Like the filthy woman snoring on the cot. But there was another kind – like himself,” (149).

When Gray confronts his father, he seems to project on him all the anxieties and the cognitive dissonance and desires that his newfound knowledge burdens him with. Lestroy narrows in on his fears and confronts him by saying, “‘I know what you came for. To see how black I was. You thought you was white, didn’t you?’” Lestroy offers him ways to be comfortable with his identity and Gray retorts, “’I don’t want to be a free nigger; I want to be a free man.’” He is sensitive to the psychological impact of the categorization even though the reality is the same for him.  Lestroy replies, “‘Be what you want – white or black. Choose. But if you choose black, you got to act black, meaning draw your manhood up – quicklike, and don’t bring me no whiteboy sass,’” (173).

Morrison takes care to note that Gray’s torn identity comes not only from the mix of his race alone, but from the way it locates him in between classes and races, making his full membership/authenticity in either group contested.

“What was I thinking of? How could I have imagined him so poorly? Not noticed the hurt that was not linked to the color of his skin, or the blood that beat beneath it. But to some other thing that longed for authenticity, for a right to be in this place, effortlessly without needing to acquire a false face, a laughless grin, a talking posture,” (160).

The reality is that he can choose which race he performs, but the knowledge of his parentage has made him confront the reality that race is a performance. Gray’s crisis results from having become a self-conscious actor in this broadened playing field of racial identity. Being aware of his choice and the fiction of race, but still afloat in the world of identity politics, he no longer feels naturalized in the choice of either identity.

Georges

This entry was posted in The Mulatto and tagged black male white on by
GeorgesCharacter: Georges

Source Text:  Séjour, Victor. “The Mulatto.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Ed. Henry L. Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay. Second ed. N.p.: Penguin Classics, 2003. Print.

Entry Author:  Crystal Carpenter

“Master,” he said…But you know, do you not, that a Negro’s as vile as a dog; society rejects him; men detest him, the laws curse him.” This begins the second paragraph of The Mulatto, a story told by an older freed slave. Slaves were forced to believe the life whites provided was the best for them. The slaves who rebelled were punished so there was no risk of an uprising. This story is about Georges (a mixed race, tragic mulatto) searching for his identity in the name of the father he does not know.The story begins with the rape of Laïsa by her master, Alfred, which leads to the birth of Georges. Not knowing who his father is causes some identity confliction. Georges would beg his mother for the name of his father hoping this would help him gain some of his identity. Georges held on to the closest father figure he knew, his master, Alfred. These symptoms of identity confliction are a natural trope of the tragic mulatto’s characterization.

The tragic mulatto/a is normally characterized as a mixed-race figure who finds him- or herself depressed, suicidal, fratricidal, and/or patricidal due either to a lack of identity or to an innate, biological corruption. According to the stereotype, these individuals do not know whether they fit into white society or into black society and are often made to choose between their dual identities, passing either into whiteness (the most familiar trope) or into blackness (Daut 2).

The tragic mulatto, based on gender, is depicted differently. Both have similar aspects but men usually have an oedipal complex. The plot for a male tragic mulatto usually goes through a pattern of identity confliction, loss, power reversal, revenge and rebellion (and sometimes death). Georges use his revenge on Alfred as a way to reverse Alfred’s power over him, and rebelling against his father in an emblematic way. Any slave born out of “the violation of identity caused by miscegenation” (Daut 12) becomes more intense in their revenge and need to kill – as a way to sever the ties between the absent father. Once Georges has reversed the power roles and now holds Alfred’s fate in his grasp, he will seek justice for his mother, wife, and himself by making Alfred the victim. After Georges has discovered that Alfred is his father he commits his final act as the tragic mulatto, taking his own life. Georges as the tragic mulatto stirs mixed emotions within the reader, because his fictional story as a mixed race slave becomes real to the reader. The motivation of his actions was not to kill for the sake of it, but to right the wrong Alfred would not. If Georges had known Alfred was his father he would not have killed him so readily. This is what makes Georges so tragic he became entwined in a false identity of passionate revenge, and never had the chance to mend his own identity.

 

 

 

Work Cited

Daut, Marlene L. “”Sons of White Fathers”: Mulatto Vengeance and the Haitian Revolution in

Victor Séjour’s “The Mulatto”.” Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.1 (2010): 1-37. JSTOR.

Web. 8 Nov. 2013.

Frankenstein’s Creature

This entry was posted in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus and tagged alive dead human male monster non-human on by
FrankensteinCharacter: Frankenstein’s Creature

Source Text:  Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. New York: Illustrated Editions, 1932. Print.

Entry Author:  Claire Tierney

Mary Shelley originally published Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus in 1818.  The epistolary novel details the story of Dr. Frankenstein as he creates a human made of disparate parts, which he gathers from countless dead bodies. It is possible that he is created from several bodies of different race and ethnicity. Nevertheless, background is undoubtedly mixed, so he is perceived as an outsider and as disturbing. Every character who sees or interacts with the monster is both frightened and disgusted by him, even his creator, who reacts with “breathless horror as disgust filled [his] heart” upon first seeing him(52). His creature soon leaves and the doctor becomes depressed and ill. Meanwhile the creature lives as an outside observer of society, becoming eloquently spoken well-versed in classical literature. He has a human brain; it is his physical appearance which labels him non-human and uncanny.

Frankenstein’s creature is not only mixed with respect to his physicality, but he is also mixed with regard to his identity. Torn between human and nonhuman, he was created “for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body” (51). He is stuck between two binaries, alive and dead. The doctor’s creature is forced to live on the outskirts of civilization as all who encounter him find him abject and horrific.

After living in solitude for a time, the monster finds his creator and asks nothing more of him than to create a partner so that he could be less lonely. As a mixed character, the monster has no community or others with which to identify. Dr. Frankenstein finds the notion of a female monster to even more terrifying and reviling than his male creation, saying, “shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world?” (151). Frankenstein’s discomfort with a female monster has many implications, including a fear of female sexuality, as well as a fear of the two creature’s reproducing and creating proof of their relations. This discomfort with a complication to the feminine ideal is comparable to society’s discomfort with female mixed race, in that multi-racial women are portrayed to be exotic, yet tamable.The Doctor’s fear of his creature reproducing is also reflective of society’s fear of containing the non-dominant binary, of creating something which cannot be contained. By giving the creature his own life-force, his own ability to create life, he is giving up control of this new “race”.

The Doctor reluctantly agrees, yet never follows through on his promise to create a female. The creature is angered and forced to violence, which impels Dr. Frankenstein to devote his life to the destruction of his creation. He fails in his search, and his creature is last seen by the narrator walking into the cold northern tundra, “lost in darkness and distance” (239).

The title’s allusion to Prometheus compares Dr. Frankenstein’s creature to a heroic figure in Greek mythology responsible for providing humanity with fire, a intellectual and progressive achievement. Prometheus is created from clay, an origin not dissimilar to Frankenstein’s patchwork configuration. His punishment is tragic, as he is to be eternally tortured.

Frankenstein fits the trope of the tragic mulatto, never fitting into any culture, forever an outsider in his own world. Frankenstein suffers because no one is like him. No One exists who is the same as him, physically, culturally, or racially. Frankenstein is a gothic novel, acting as mirror to societal fears of of the unknown, and the abject. Just as humanity repeatedly finds the notion of fellow humans that look and sound different to be threatening, so Frankenstein is perceived as a menace.

Caliban

This entry was posted in William Shakespeare: Collected Works and tagged animal beast devil human male man on by

 

CalibanCharacter:  Caliban

Source Text:  Shakespeare, William. “The Tempest.” William Shakespeare: Collected Works. Ed. Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. London: Wordsworth Editions, 1996. 1135-1159.

Entry Author:  Alexandra Katechis

 

Caliban of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1610-1611) is the half human and half beast native to the island upon Prospero and his daughter have adopted. This poem strives to emphasize the ambiguity of Caliban’s parentage. The poem also explores the many forms he might appear as (man, beast, animal, devil). The point of view will be first person, so that the speaker can draw the reader into the pain of being reviled and enslaved as a result of physical difference and suspected inferiority. Additionally, this poem attempts to emphasize the struggle between Caliban’s inner humanity and outer bestiality. Caliban’s aggressive voice is evoked in order to fully flesh out this sense of injustice which is so central to his humanness.

 

Caliban

Acerbic article of Algiers, I am the son of Sycorax, antithesis of Ariel, and yet

Brother. What family has not forsaken me, banished and abandoned me in basest beastly

Condition, which does cull cruelty from civility. When did censure reach such consensus?

Duke of Milan, Prospero, doest thou attend me? Thy crippled devil did befriend thee. This

Eden I ennobled onto you, you, who conducts the eulogy of my only claim to the

Flesh of this Earth. Foiled by my own manhood, which did enflame thy eyes before fruition:

Godless, ghastly love for Miranda, o gracious nonpareil, who gave me voice to groan,

Howl, hatch into this hostile realm. What hellfire has my humanity bought? Master,

Imposter, sinuous ivy of incantation and vile thought, ignominy of my inheritance, my isle.

Jealousy betrays this jape of justice, which does lengthen my jailor’s sentence of solitude.

King and keeper of my soul, strengthen the knot of thy goddess who does tempt me. Thy

Leal servant licks at lust and knows no limit to its loathsome breath which you have lent me:

Mooncalf monster, cry out the wicked; only good men mark my root in our maker’s mind. A

Naked native truth to which I am nailed, bound nose to navel by a plague of nymphs. The

Orphan obeys, instrument of this diabolical orchestra of occult hymns. And so

Perdition is my immortality, part served on this pelagic stage, the rest in pandemonium’s pit.

Quiet quivers of mine own heart do sometimes feign forgiveness, quintessence of thy fool’s wit.

Reason can no longer rebuke the rabid refrain of my repugnance, reborn the same in every

Strain of this savage’s story. Spirit, sprite, and simplest man: subject to the sorcerer of quill,

Trick and thrill, the madman’s slight of hand. Sing out my threnody, tale of a tyrannical torment.

Ugly underworld, ubiquitous cacophony, and my prison, molded from past paradise by the

Villain who knows naught else but to rule and part. I am the victim of the minister of fate

Whose rapture is my worldly woe, whose rejoice is bitterest curse and weakest foe.

Exculpate me, or else scorn this half-worn existence as do all others who drink his poison ink.

Yesterday’s heart can no more be broken. I have no other.

Zealotry has no parallel, no pardon.

Charles Bon

This entry was posted in Absalom Absalom and tagged black father/son Haiti male part black South on by
Absalom, Absalom! cover

Absalom, Absalom! cover

Character:  Charles Bon

Source Text:  Faulkner, William. Absalom, Absalom! 1936. New York: Random House, 1951.

Entry Author:  Claire McDonald

Charles Bon is the son of protagonist Thomas Sutpen and Sutpen’s first wife, Eulalia Bon Sutpen. During Sutpen’s time spent as a plantation overseer in Haiti, he was offered Eulalia’s hand in marriage after ending a slave rebellion on the plantation. Sutpen assumes that she is of Spanish descent, but she is actually part black, meaning that their son is also part black. Sutpen cannot bear the knowledge that his wife and son are partially black, and so he abandons them and attempts to begin a new life. Eventually, Eulalia and Bon leave Haiti and move to New Orleans.As a student at the University of Mississippi, Bon is admired and practically idolized by many of his classmates, including Sutpen’s recognized son, Henry Sutpen. Henry and Bon become friends at school, and Henry brings Bon to Sutpen’s Hundred for Christmas; at the time, Henry is unaware that Bon is his half-brother. Bon’s reunion with Sutpen poses a significant threat to Sutpen, as Bon is evidence of Sutpen’s past actions. However, he refuses to acknowledge him as his son until Bon and Judith, Sutpen’s daughter, express their desire to marry each other. Sutpen is furious about this, but his anger is more directed at Bon’s perceived blackness than at the fact that Judith and Bon are half-siblings.Just as Sutpen disowned Bon because of his blackness, Henry eventually does the same. Henry and Bon are close friends while they are attending University of Mississippi together, and Henry initially repudiates his father when he learns that Bon is his half-brother and that Sutpen had abandoned him and his mother. He continues to support Bon’s wish to marry Judith until Sutpen reveals that Bon is partially black. Henry, much like his father, is also disgusted and infuriated by the thought of Bon tainting their family’s pure bloodline. Bon’s death comes at the hands of Henry, who shoots him at the gate of Sutpen’s Hundred.

Bon’s race is important to Absalom, Absalom! because of his father and brother’s response to it. Despite the fact that both Bon and Henry are Sutpen’s biological sons, Sutpen rejects Bon because he cannot accept the fact that Bon is partially black. Bon’s status as black also means that Sutpen’s dream of becoming a Southern aristocrat cannot be achieved; Bon cannot inherit his father’s plantation because of it, meaning that Sutpen’s goal of creating a legacy cannot be achieved. Bon also signifies the desecration of the Sutpen bloodline’s purity, which Sutpen also cannot abide by. Faulkner is able to use Bon as a way to comment on Southern perceptions of race. Because Bon is considered to be black, he brings shame upon his own father because he is seen as subordinate; the bond between father and son is severed because Sutpen refuses to accept a son who is, by the one-drop rule, black.