lthough the magnitude of child abuse in the antebellum South is impossible to determine, historian Nell Irvin Painter has provided a useful way to approach the issue. She hypothesized that the rate of wife abuse in the Old South was probably not lower than the rate for contemporary households, roughly 25 percent.1 Similar reasoning would suggest that the rate of antebellum child maltreatment would have been not less than that of contemporary society, i.e., 12.1 of every 1,000 children suffered abuse.2 Yet, while this may seem a sensible first step in dealing with child abuse among slaveholders, it may not be the most pertinent approach. The Old South was a backward society. Over vast stretches of terrain, it was a wilderness.…
The Beast of the Southern Wild begins with strong winds of a hurricane approaching on an isolated town called The Bathtub. The Bathtub is a little community that is cut off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee. Six year old Hushpuppy exist on the brink of orphan-hood. Her mother is long gone and is said to have “sailed away” shortly after the Hushpuppy birth. Her father, Wink is a Wildman that is on a collision course. When Wink is home, he lives under a different roof than Hushpuppy. Wink lives in a rusted-out shack and Hushpuppy lives in a trailer on two oil drums. Hushpuppy is often left on her own to fend for herself on the isolated compound filled with wild life, where she perceive the natural world to be a circular of living, breathing, and squirting things. In this universe, Hushpuppy believes that everything should be fitting just right.…
In chapter 12, “The South Expands: Slavery and Society” many of the main themes are about slavery and the idea of ‘ad infinitum’. Ad infinitum was very prominent in the Carolinas and the idea itself was a paradox. “To sell cotton in order to buy negroes - to make more cotton to buy more negroes” which left a large amount of the plantation owners ruthlessly pushing their slaves to work harder. A slave by the name of “Biddy Mason” had a rather unique life as an African American. Biddy’s experiences with the new religion of Mormonism, coerced miscegenation, and her trek across the continent were rather unique and are inconsistent with the themes of chapter 12.…
In the old south the Antebellum era was characterized by a slave society that affected nearly everything. In the South’s slavery defined social and political institutions while also fueling their economy. Slavery influenced made the South’s cotton trade more efficient with codependence on northern banks and merchants. The south’s cotton industry depended on slave labor a lot and later fueled political debates at economic conventions in 1837 to 1839. Regards the south northern dependence on financiers and importers these two things were the threat of the Old South’s commercial independence. Slavery had many other effects on politics where yeomen farmers wished to shape the society off their own democratic values.…
In the time just before the Civil War, the United States was one of the most successful nations in the world. The United States had become the world’s leading cotton producing country and had developed industry, which would in the future, surpass that of Great Britain. Also, the United States possessed an advanced railroad and transportation system. However, despite its successes, the United States was becoming increasingly divided. The North and the South had many distinct differences in terms of their social, cultural, and economic characteristics that brought about sectionalism and, eventually, the Civil War.…
One of King's primary purposes for writing this book was to have its reader empathize with the boy and girl. He wanted you to take a walk in the little boy and girl's shoes. He wanted to let the reader see firsthand what struggles African-Americans had to conquer. He wanted his readers to swim into the deep crevices of the past to see what history books left out. He wanted to arouse his reader's minds, so they could indulge themselves into what he had to say and see that African- Americans helped build our nation despite trying circumstances.…
Most all short story authors use one central idea, or theme, throughout their stories to make the story flow and influence the characters actions. In Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, the theme of a work is defined as “… not its subject but its central idea which may be stated directly or indirectly” (Cuddon 969). Some themes might be difficult for a reader to recognize; however, because most themes are the author’s muse, or inspiration for the whole story, the reader can detect these themes immediately. Some authors, like the legendary William Faulkner, use a common theme throughout the majority of their short stories. Because of Faulkner’s experiences living in the Old South, he often compares the themes of the Old South to show the stark contrast of the new generation of Southerners and…
My topic for this discussion is “The Myth Of The New South”. Reformers used this term to call for a modernization of society and attitudes, to integrate more fully with the United States, and reject the economy and traditions of the Old South and slavery based plantation which is a system of the antebellum period (Grem 1850 - 1889).…
After viewing "Analyzing White America" by Paul Mooney, I was initially taken aback by the content. I never expected the rawness that Mooney brought to the stage and he hit the ground running with such a tone without looking back. A lot of the material made me laugh or at the very least smile because i found it to be identifiable with my own life and some of the surroundings that I was brought up in. The part that I found most amusing was Mooney's suggestion that white people were happier before slavery was abolished. I believe racism is very much present in today's world. When I was growing up, I can recall plenty of neighborhoods in my hometown that were considered "white" or even "black" for that matter. In these neighborhoods, if you were not from that part of town, you were not considered welcomed there. Any parts of the film that I did not laugh at, there was no particular reason other than I simply was not amused by the material because there were not any parts that I found personally offensive. I feel as though the word "nigger" is so controversial solely because of it's history and the origin of it's meaning. This word was meant to degrade and disparage African Americans when it was originated.Today, people use the term in a different context. The new meaning is one of affection but with it's use comes this unwritten rule that white people are prohibited from saying it. I never could wrap my mind fully around the idea that I can say the word "nigga" in reference to a friend of mine but a white kid was not allowed to use it, in the same context, all because we are of different races. In my opinion, it's not right for either myself or a white person to use the word in any context. In today's society, everything is just as much about race as it was in the days of slavery. The only difference between now and then is that openly addressing the issues that we, as a culture, all have with race is socially unacceptable. Mooney's antics on stage were…
This paper presents the life experience of two African-Americans as slaves during the nineteenth century. Henry Bibb was the author of his own narrative, which he published in 1849 with the assistance of Lucius Matlack. The second source was the narrative of W. L. Bost, a slave from North Carolina. He was interviewed as many other enslaved African-Americans by the members of the Federal Writer’s Project around the 1930s. The purpose of these narratives was to describe to the public what it meant to be slave at that period of time. Both authors recalled the difficult and cruel conditions they faced during their journey as slaves. First, they were sold as merchandises on the market. Bost depicted that both men and women were chained and inappropriately…
Robert Grey is an imagist who paints with words. Using imagery in his poems, Grey is able to visually communicate emotions and ideas. His poetry is concerned with the urbanisation effects on Australian nature and changes it brought within the lifestyle. This is metaphorically expressed in the poem ‘Journey: The North Coast’ as he dwells on the sheer beauty that can be found in the natural world in contrast to the alienated environments manufactured by men. In contrast to the idea of modernisation, Grey also expresses values of love and respect for the environment and nature through the physical and emotional journey. Additionally, the idea of Australian landscapes and strong sense of identity in ‘Journey: The North Coast’ reflects in poet’s visualisation of the country side where he allows the readers to explore the beauty of Australian landscapes and empathize with the poet.…
A large proportion of whites in the South supported slavery even though less than a quarter of these whites actually owned slaves. They felt that slavery was a necessary evil and that it was an important southern institution. The slave population in 1800 was just under 900,000 slaves and of that only 36,000 of these slaves were in the northern states. In 1860 this number grew to almost 4 million slaves were in the southern states. Many important statesmen such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington regarded slavery as a necessity even though it was evil. Individuals and groups of people of all sects defended slavery.…
In the 1840’s slavery was very common because of the booming cotton industry in the south, slaves were cheap and skillful, and there were plenty of them to go around, hence the reason the southern economy relied on them so heavily. However, because the North was economically sound and economically more advanced than the south, they saw the wrong behind slavery.…
Reconstruction is the Federal Governments plan(s) to abolish slavery, change the way of life in the South, and to bring the nation back together after the devastating effects of the Civil War. Many Government plans were brought up but never fell through. Likewise, Presidents over the years, after the Civil War, had also brought their own Reconstruction plans to the nation. Several good things came from each plan but not one individual plan had drastically changed America on its own. Although Lincoln and his 10% plan would have reshaped the nation and connected the broken line between the North and South, however, it had never taken action because of Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865. However, Reconstruction created many new social changes to the nation. Civil Rights had been shaped over many years; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were passed giving African Americans the right to vote, and the Freedmen’s Bureau was established. Reconstruction was a long and rough time for the government and the people. Our Nation had never before needed to recover from such a tremendous loss from something like the Civil War.…
The Civil War was a war in the United States fought from 1861 to 1865 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War) between the north and south. The north was fighting to outlaw slavery and the south was fighting to keep it. Although conditions were bad the north generally had better conditions during this war.…
