Clotel - The President's Daughter: Post #4

Taking notice of the true noteworthiness of the brief poems before each of the chapters, I have taken understanding that they each weave off into a deeper meaning of the previous chapter. Every quote installs the sense that slavery is an ongoing, heated issue that is so much more serious than what the whites take it for, which is really the entire purpose of why Brown wrote this novel. I think he uses these poems to evoke his readers and to prompt them to understand that throughout all of the aspects of his storyline, the most significant component to trace is his voice in opposition to slavery and the misdemeanors of slave-holders. His acknowledgement of the distinctive social classes is made clear through his utilization of continuous wordplay such as "It ain't no use for 'em to try that, for if they do, we puts 'em through by daylight," (118) and "'What's de matter wid you? Where is you sick?'" (139). This really puts forth the belief that although Brown is an African-American man, he is literate and understands that the majority of the people of his race are not as educated as he and other whites are, but he in fact is a representation that contradicts the whites' point of view during that time: Blacks were inferior to whites in every possible way.

Brown makes a beautiful transition to Chapter VIII, "The Seperation," which is comprised of a very compelling but convoluted chapter. I foreshadowed from before that Clotel and Horatio would separate, but Brown makes his readers so sympathetic to both of these characters in that he depicts Horatio, the husband, using very emotional descriptions of him, "'Oh God, Clotel, do not say that;'" and covering his face with his hands, he wept like a child," (121). He truly shifts from him repetitively emphasizing how detrimental the institution of slavery is to emotionally arousing his readers with the traumatic breakup of Clotel and Horatio which is an element of Romantic writing.

Clotel - The President's Daughter: Post #3

Upon reaching Chapter V, "The Slave Market," Brown furthermore uses descriptive writing, "gang of human cattle" (103) to enrapture the sharp boundary between the state of happiness and misery, which also ties into what I said earlier about his continuous pattern throughout this book. His utilization of the cycle of happy vs. reality within Clotel really serves a purpose: to understand the path that the human nature must endure to reach their inner "perfectionism," but I also have realized another element to this concept. I also think it represents the notion of paternal benevolence and the conviction of how many Southern slave owners believed that slavery was vested by God in the scriptures, even though the nature of slavery, in reality, was immensely jarring and unconstitutional. He uses this technique to encompass the beliefs of the slave owners of when this book had been written, and also, to allow his readers to fully absorb and remain interested in the novel.

Through the lines of "human agony and suffering which sends its cry from the slave markets and negro pens, unheard and unheeded by man up to his ear; mothers weeping for their children, burst of bitter lamentation, while from others the loud hysteric laugh," (105), readers are able to acknowledge what Brown's visible verdict of how unjust slavery is. He does this throughout the entire book so far, which makes it extremely easy for his readers to understand what he is trying to drill into the minds of his readers. He ends this chapter with the sense that there is no hope for the slaves, and begins chapter six with another poem about how slavery was "rightful" in the scriptures, what I had mentioned earlier: "What! preach and enslave men? Give thanks - and rob thy own afflicted poor?" (106). Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" is also referred to in this chapter (108) signifying the influence of his talk of independence, and even though this was set in the Romantic period, the Rationalism period truly set the values and ideals of Romanticism, as well. This reinforces that although each American literature time period consists of different values and beliefs, the foundation for those beliefs come from the movement or movements before it, which in turn is an impetus for the next and future literary movements.