From reading the first five chapters of Clotel, I am strongly aware of William Wells Brown's recurrent descriptions from everything ranging from the collective list of the thoughts of the characters in the book, especially Currer and her daughters. Combined with many disturbing descriptions of scenes, such as describing the negro dogs to "attack a negro at their master's bidding and cling to him as the bull-dog will cling to a beast," (96) and "then he sent forth cries of agony painful to the ear, begging some one to blow his brains out; at the same time surging with almost superhuman strength, until the staple with which the chain was fastened to the tree drew out," (98). The author takes his time to unveil instances of the inequalities that all African Americans had faced during this period in order to emotionally move his readers. This is an element of the Romanticism writing style.
Another attribute that I observed is how the writer includes a poem before every chapter, and this emphasizes how the writers of Romanticism believed that poetry was a way of expressing their imagination, which is why they valued poetry so much. Also, Brown tends to shift the mood back and forth throughout the first chapters of the book. There are constant successions of happiness and despair. For example, Chapter III tends to demonstrate brutality as it returns to the "inhumanity and barbarity of the inhabitants of Natchez," however, in Chapter IV, Brown dramatically shifts towards a very peaceful and romantic atmosphere to describe how innocent Clotel and Horatio (a white man's) relationship. The expressions of "rural beauty," "majestic magnolia," "in loving amity," "fragrance of flowers," "harmonious disorder of nature," (100) all combine together to depict a very untroubled, serene environment and nature that the couple lives in. However, although the chapter is very sweet and soft, the very next chapter begins with the slave auction in New Orleans.
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