The Nephew's reaction

In the four horsemen chapter in Beloved, Morrison writes the scene from the point of view of each of the horsemen. Although all of the points of view are interesting, especially the slave catcher who views the whole capture as a job and only that, and Schoolteacher who just sees the lost goods and is think of how to punish his nephew, I think the nephew's take on what is happening is also really interesting.

The first line we get was, "he didn't know he was shaking." This is immediately followed by what can be seen as something like denial. Although Schoolteacher warned him that something like this could happen, he didn't expect it and he seems to start feeling regret at his actions. The nephew thinking things like "Hell he'd been beat a million times" and then later, "I mean no way he could have..." give us the sense that he really didn't think that this could happen. The second quote gives us the sense that the nephew feels responsible for this to some extent. The fact that he is shaking also supports this assertion. Although when he does what he does he thinks nothing of it, as soon as he sees the consequences of his actions, children being killed, he regrets what he has done.

I think this is a really interesting perspective to look at. In the case of the others who are trying to take Sethe and the kids back to Sweet Home, they view none of her actions as their own fault, but the nephew does see what happens as at least partly his fault. This gives us a more nuanced picture of how slavery affected people. In addition to harming the slaves physically and mentally, it harms the masters too in the sense that they have to lose enough regard for fellow humans that they can cause so much harm and not feel bad about it. Basically the nephew in this story shows us the sheer amount of conditioning that the southerners went through to be able to do what they did and not regret any of it.

Overall, these four different perspectives on what is happening in the shed give a nuanced view of the relationship between the slaves and the masters. What do you guys think about these perspectives? 

Style Wars and biting

While watching Style Wars and in the discussion we had afterwords, biting was one of the main issues that each artist or group had with other artists and groups. This idea of a personal style that only you have the right to use is something that is very interesting and can even be seen in modern derivations of this style of art and in the hip-hop culture.

Biting is when another person takes something that you created and copies it blatantly, but this can make some interesting cases. This can apply not only to things like tags and such, but also to color schemes, lettering and the ideas that you throw out. As always there is a very fine line with drawing inspiration from another work and just copying it, but the fact that biting is so frowned upon means that you have to be especially creative in how you portray what you want to portray. You need to make sure that no one else can take offense to what you are putting out. This also applies to break dancing in the form of copying peoples moves or sets of moves. All of this just further increases the amount of creativity that these people have as there are so many way in which they express themselves without copying other people's styles.

Another way to look at the impressiveness of these people is in how rap artist deal with biting. The complexity of the rhymes and references they use is impressive already, and if you add in the fact that they have to make sure to not copy anyone else's rhymes it makes it even more impressive.

One example of this distinctiveness of style can be seen in the songs "Around my way (freedom ain't free) by Lupe Fiasco and "They Reminisce Over You" (T.R.O.Y) by Pete Rock and CL Smooth. "Around My Way" samples the saxophone beat from T.R.O.Y, and when you listen to them they sound very similar, but if you listen closely you can tell that the way the rappers rhyme over the same beat is quite different. Both rappers pause in different places and manipulate the beat to how they want to use it.

Overall, basically the importance of not biting other artists' styles makes pretty much everything done by each of the individual artists more impressive.

Duality in "Afro-American"

Afro-American by Henry Dumas has many contradictions that shed light on to the situations of slavery in America, America itself and Christianity. At the basic level in the poem we get the distinct difference in how his "black mother" and "white mother" are described. He describes the white mother using terms like whore and overall just using language with negative connotations and negative wording. In contrast to this he describes his black mother as "a fine beautiful thang" and uses other language that describes his black mother in a positive light.

The other major contradiction is in how religion is described. The first instance we get of this is in the first stanza when the narrator says said that the white mother sanctified and crucified me. Although both are religious, sanctification is a very positive, giving holiness to somebody, and crucifixion is a very bad side of the religion, being a cause of death. Another duality happens when the narrator says "the holy white plague." White plague is already a contradiction as white usually implies pure or undisturbed while a plague only happens when something is tainted. In addition, there is a distinct contradiction between holy and plague as usually something that brings death isn't holy.

This paradoxical religiously slanted wording provides a very nuanced view of America and Christianity. Although there are good aspects of both, looking at them from another view point can make them look really terrible. In addition to this paradoxical nature, we also get a fairly bad view of Christianity, which seems a little weird as the slave population used Christianity often to reverse the power dynamic and give themselves hope for the future. Overall, the poem gives us a different view of Christianity than we might expect, but the bashing of the whites in charge of slavery/the state of America during the slavery era is portrayed badly as it often is.