The Wife Of His Youth Analysis

The Wife Of His Youth is a short story written by Charles Chesnutt in the late 1800’s. The story starts with the introduction to the Blue Veins society; A society where a small group of colored people formed up in the Northern City after the Civil War. Blue Veins society distinguished a person’s social standing but basically geared only toward those of light complexion where you could visibly see one’s Blue Veins. Mr. Ryder a handsome bachelor, and dean of the Blue Veins society is soon to end his bachelor status and marry Miss. Molly Dixon. That was soon to change when he is approached by a face of his past, the wife of his youth. Mr. Ryder a past apprentice during the Civil War was previously married to Liza Jane. Liza Jane spent 25 years in search of her love Sam Taylor or known now as Mr. Ryder. Late into the story Mr. Ryder throws a ball for the Blue Veins society in honor of Molly Dixon his “soon to be” wife. During the Blue Veins ball, Mr. Ryder reaches out to the crowd with hypothetical question about the wife of his youth; in regards to advice on what he should do. Mr.Ryder brings Liza Jane to the ball and introduces everyone in the crowd as the wife of his youth. This short story really makes one question the certain aspects of race.

One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land.

All their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine…. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny…. Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.

A comparison of the narrative of Douglass and the narrative of Jacobs was very interesting to me because, they vividly establishes the full range of burdens and conditions many slaves experience. I couldn’t help when I read the first half of these narratives to notice the similarities they both share and make the connection between them, as I relived their experiences through the lenses of a mixed male and a black female slaves with a white lover; that was also raped by her white master. Mr. Douglass was born in Talbot County, Maryland, and he expresses is frustration for not knowing or not being allow to know his age. The show this when he stated in his narrative by saying; “A want of information concerning my own was a source of unhappiness to me even doing childhood. The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived on the same privilege.”(pg. 17) Douglass explain this is the fate of many slave of this time, they were not told or had any ideas of where and when they were born.

Education is the basic key to one’s life and the shift of time shows the process in one’s mind. Migration Portraiture by Nikkey Finney is a poem focuses on the importance of education to African Americans while they were in the South and the key will to learn growing through the movement to the South. This sense of education is seen through the transition of life for African Americans between their time in the South and then to the North. The poem goes through this shift of time to emphasize experiences. We get this feeling of the past (The South) and the future (The North) through the usage of specific words, imagery and repetition of North and South through every line breaking point in the poem.

Having similar passions can create family bonds and rituals that can be passed down generations. In From Father, with Love by Doris Kearns Goodwin, her and her father share a bond through their love of baseball, and this bond makes Goodwin nostalgic towards the end of the passage. She reveals the passion she had with her father through memories and subsequent bonds she developed with her friends and children. When her father dies, the significant connection between them is lost as she then becomes ambivalent towards baseball and despondent. Eventually Goodwin gets back into baseball and finds bonds with other women who share her similar passion of enjoying baseball.

Liza Jane is nothing like Mrs. Molly Dixon who he was set to marry. Mrs. Molly Dixon was even lighter than Ryder and would advance his standing in Groveland and among the Blue Veins. Marrying Dixon would get him so much closer to being fully accepted into the white race. Liza Jane would bring down his stature a great deal in that it would prove that he was not born a free black and that he also wasn't well educated.

The dominant white male of the story speaks the following statement, "Now I like the colored people, and sympathize with all this reasonable aspirations; but you and I both know, John, that in this country the Negro must remain subordinate and can never expect to be equal of white men" (373). This is a fundamental sentiment that white people in the American society during that time held on to. In this essay W.E.B DuBois shows how this black man, John, was treated in his hometown after returning home with a college education. Both blacks and whites reject his new views. However, to whites the black John represents a devaluing of the college education. If a black person can have a college degree, then having a college degree must not have value. After this reaction from society John started to think, "John Jones, you're a natural born fool" (369). This behavior from society kept the average black person stagnant, and unmotivated.

The Other Wife is a short story written by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette. Colette is credited for challenging rigid attitudes and assumptions about gender roles. “The Other Wife” is about a French aristocrat and his second wife has a brief encounter with his ex-wife in a restaurant. The story’s point of view is 3rd person omniscient. An analysis of how France 20th century gender roles influence the multiple personalities of a husband, wife, and ex-wife.

Hughes lost his father during the Civil War, he had become a soldier and was killed in battle. The young Mr. Hughes found himself along with his siblings and mother trying their best to get along during the war. Their owner “B.” had fled the war as he could not find a substitute to fight for him. When he returned after the war he fell ill and passed away, according to Mr. Hughes is was all for the best as there was little food to go around by this time. When the soldiers came to town they had broken the flour mill, dumped the flour into the river, broken inot the stores and threw all the meats and sugar into the streets. Slave children lime himself would go to these sites and recover as much as they could, all to see those who were once of privilege eating everything they could get their hands on, leaving nothing for the slaves to eat. At the time of emancipation, they hardly knew what to do at first. They slept under the stars at night, which they were used to already, Mr. Hughes stated; “Why then we'd just go and stay anywheres we could. Lay out a night in underwear. We had no home, you know. We was just turned out like a lot of cattle.” His mother with no money to afford to care for the children did what was called bounding, she found someone to take her two oldest children as servants for the wages of one dollar per month. Not unlike Abraham Lincolns father did to him back in the

African American individuals still faced inhumane discrimination and were often not looked at as people, let alone cared for or acknowledged. To anyone else, their opinions did not matter and their lives were not valued. The 1930?s was also a time in which America was being rebuilt after the detrimental effects of the Great Depression. Furthermore, there was a greater presence of African Americans in northern states, which brought about racial tension from powerful white figures who did not want African Americans in what they believed to be ?their cities?. The struggle to find jobs was present all over, and African Americans found it even more difficult to support themselves. The narrator faced all these obstacles throughout the course of this novel.

Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. Although it is not as easily defined as some may make it. Every situation and the lessons we learn from those times, help to form what we believe love to be. For some it may be a physical attachment that others degrade to lust. For some it may be their reason for continuing on in life; but overall for most, love is what drives our lives. From childhood to adulthood we seek to find relationships that will fulfill our hearts and make our short time on Earth a little more enjoyable. However as well as any other activity we partake in, ways in which we perceive love and marriage have changed over time. Although there is slight variations, when most imagine the life of a married couple pure happiness is what is expected. As wonderful as that expectation may be, not every marriage fits into this ideal. The criteria of marriage used to be based off of what your partner can offer you. However as times have changed and gender roles have begun to disappear, marriage has now

Romare Bearden, a great artist that expresses many feelings throughout his photos. He expresses different types of feelings and meanings through colors, background, character demeanor, and even the posture of the characters in the picture. My favorite painting by Romare Bearden has to be "The Family"(1941) due to the fact that I had a personal connection to the picture. I never knew of Romare Bearden's other painting that related to this one which is "The Family"(1975). This is a similar picture but the family isn't as depressed as the family in the first picture. This family doesn't seem to be struggling and

A corrupted society is also evident throughout Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl when Jacobs questions her audience several times on how they would feel if the same horrors that are happening to slaves were to happen to them . By comparing a corrupt society to the northern non-slave society, Jacobs is able to show clearly the negative relationship that slavery has on its society. As Jacobs flees to the north she leaves “dear ties behind” and blames the loss of her loved ones on the “demon Slavery” . This sad depiction allows for the reader to comprehend how the institution of slavery forced Jacobs into leaving her society and her network of love in fear for her safety. Earlier in the narrative Jacobs compares the white northerners’ view of a celebratory New Year’s Day with that of southerner slaves

The African-American authors of this time period wrote stories describing life during and after slavery. Real life issues that these authors lived through and experienced through the world around them. The excerpts that we read of Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery,” told a compelling tale of his life of being born into