Desiree's Baby Literary Analysis
Separate, but Equal: White Lies and Local Color
The specific attributes of social, political, and cultural implications in both literal and metaphorical boundary crossing distinguish Kate Chopin 's "Desiree 's Baby" as a work of absolute realism.
In therapy, a boundary is the edge of appropriate behavior in a given situation. In a boundary crossing, the therapist steps out of the "usual framework" in some way, but this action neither exploits nor harms the patient; indeed, it may advance the therapeutic alliance or the therapy itself. Examples that clearly fit this description include offering a crying patient a tissue; helping up a patient who has fallen, and even disclosing some facts about oneself (Gutheil and Gabbard, 1993). Throughout …show more content…
In particular, the bomb fire fed by Desiree 's and her child 's belongings by the slaves serves two purposes. The pyre itself is metaphorically the burning of "desire" within Armand symbolically through the things he gave to her and his boy, "and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze" (363). Armand is trying to put out the fire he feels inside for Desiree by burning all that connects he to her and he to the child, in a sense, he is "fighting fire with fire."
The political aspect of this scenario regards the tactfully shrewd manner in which Armand destroys his burning passion for her by setting it on fire before all the slaves. This "spectacle" reinforces the notion of how the white man can and will deal with any infiltration of his common way of life by any race, ethnicity, and even gender that steps out of bounds. In a sense, he is deliberately conveying to the crowd that he will step out of his bounds into their own and so they go back to the old way of enslavement on the
The specific attributes of social, political, and cultural implications in both literal and metaphorical boundary crossing distinguish Kate Chopin 's "Desiree 's Baby" as a work of absolute realism.
In therapy, a boundary is the edge of appropriate behavior in a given situation. In a boundary crossing, the therapist steps out of the "usual framework" in some way, but this action neither exploits nor harms the patient; indeed, it may advance the therapeutic alliance or the therapy itself. Examples that clearly fit this description include offering a crying patient a tissue; helping up a patient who has fallen, and even disclosing some facts about oneself (Gutheil and Gabbard, 1993). Throughout …show more content…
In particular, the bomb fire fed by Desiree 's and her child 's belongings by the slaves serves two purposes. The pyre itself is metaphorically the burning of "desire" within Armand symbolically through the things he gave to her and his boy, "and it was he who dealt out to a half dozen negroes the material which kept this fire ablaze" (363). Armand is trying to put out the fire he feels inside for Desiree by burning all that connects he to her and he to the child, in a sense, he is "fighting fire with fire."
The political aspect of this scenario regards the tactfully shrewd manner in which Armand destroys his burning passion for her by setting it on fire before all the slaves. This "spectacle" reinforces the notion of how the white man can and will deal with any infiltration of his common way of life by any race, ethnicity, and even gender that steps out of bounds. In a sense, he is deliberately conveying to the crowd that he will step out of his bounds into their own and so they go back to the old way of enslavement on the