“Tom” and “Rowena’s” death clarified
March 5, 2007
I think that the society that Tom and Roxy live in refuses to acknowledge people of mixed race on a social level and instead chooses to get rid of them. They do this by reaffirming the view that blacks/ mulattoes are inferior and need to be expunged when they commit, what they view as a crime, the act of passing whether it be intentional or not. This is why they will continue to be killed in novels when they take on the lifestyle as a white person. This is the only logical ending given then time period that these books take place in. I personally wouldve preferred that they live (you know in the power to my ppl sort of way) but as frustrating as this is…it is sadly enough in line with the way people thought back then and rationalized punishing black passing for white through death.
March 5, 2007 at 4:01 pm
However, in both cases of these novels, I’m positive that neither of the authors intended to advocate the belief that racially-mixed persons must be killed or expunged from society. For one, Chestnutt himself is a light-skinned man and the child of racially-mixed parents. His writing this book proves that he does not denounce or despise racially-mixed persons (such as himself,), but instead that he sympathizes with them and the oredeals they must face in both the black and white society. Similarl to Chestnutt, Twain condemns the social or racial structures that society has built, so why would Twain advocate the ostracism (sp?) or genocide of racially-mixed people? While this comment does not really provide a different reasoning for the deaths of Tom and Rena, I hope that it furthers someone elses analytical process for that answer.
March 6, 2007 at 5:05 pm
I have a problem with the mixed-race thing alos because it is as if Chesnutt either says die or be totally cold-hearted like Warwick. Warwick does not die and niether does Roxy or Miss Molly. What does it mean for only certain mulattos to dies and others to live?
March 6, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I don’t really think it’s necessarily appropriate to conflate Tom’s fate with Rena’s fate. First of all, I would disagree that being sold down the river is equivalent to death. I don’t mean to argue that being sold down the river is not a heinous and terrible fate; only that it has a very different interpretive significance than death. In Tom’s case, his enslavement and sale down the river is not a punishment for passing, it is simply a function of being a slave. They explicitly do not pass moral judgment on Tom’s actions. We can easily imagine his fate would be equally grim if he was discovered to be a slave in any other way and it was advantageous for his owners to sell him down the river. I would argue that Tom is never judged for passing or even being a murderer. His crime is simply who he is.
I was going to comment on why I think the reason for Rena’s death is actually more complicated than a simple punishment for passing but I don’t think I really have a handle on it yet. Maybe I’ll start a new post on it later.
March 7, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I’m not sure if anyone is actually taking it like this but im going to make a little disclaimer anyway. i don’t think that either author is punishing Tom or Rena because of their mixed-raceness. I just thought it was interesting that there has been this character (or as we learned in class this character is spoken about) and I guess I figured that the authors would know about the character. I thought it was interesting that they would use a character that could be compared to the tragic mullattoe if the rest of their book did not pass moral judgements.
March 7, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I’m not sure if anyone is actually taking it like this but im going to make a little disclaimer anyway. i don’t think that either author is punishing Tom or Rena because of their mixed-raceness. I just thought it was interesting that there has been this character (or as we learned in class this character is spoken about) and I guess I figured that the authors would know about the character. I thought it was interesting that they would use a character that could be compared to the tragic mullattoe if the rest of their book did not pass moral judgements.
March 8, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Okay so that post was my opinion on the matter, not what I thought the authors were trying to do.