"Toussaint Louverture," a play by C.L.R James was produced in London in 1936. Paul Robeson, in the title role, played the military genius who led a slave revolt on the island known as San Domingo to its ultimate triumph: the creation of the republic of Haiti. After reading the play we began looking at the collection of reviews compiled at the end of the book. When reading through these reviews a few common themes emerged but the most absurd and repeating claim to me was the theme of propaganda. In M. Willson Disher review from the Daily Mail brings up the idea of propaganda in his review of the play. Toussaint is portrayed as a model of all the virtues, besides a born ruler and military genius. When his schemes are ruined by Napoleon’s …show more content…
The transition with however leads of us back to the idea of propaganda. This writing as well works as a piece of propaganda just promoting the other view point. The reviewer raise serious sympathy for the other white men similar to how the previous author had. The plight of the white people versus the black in both cases are empathetically incomparable. Especially looking at most of the blacks people suffering derived from the white people. So when he moves onto, “the bias in their favor would appear to deny the whites a shred of nobility of character or honesty of purpose”, it can be obvious why these characteristic don’t really seem seriously relevant to the play. The author then concludes the paragraph with “in his play the blacks are white and the whites are black”. The statement here only has meaning for what we already know about the authors beliefs by looking at “the bias” the play has towards white people. If I read it, or someone now a days who 's properly educated reads it, they see no claim besides people are …show more content…
She calls the play as a whole “a fine piece of negro propaganda” as if it’s some kind of scheme to trick white people into thinking their intelligent. She says without evidence of the “inferiority complex” which is surely nonsense doesn’t show proper negro thought. She follows that up with this being “different and intensely interesting” which seems to contradict the previous idea saying that new research is saying otherwise but hind sight is twenty-twenty. The next paragraph goes into what’s a more accurate critique towards the quality of the