The Child?s Hidden Tiger

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Recommended: Problems with racism in literature

The Child’s Hidden Tiger In the short story The Child by Tiger, Thomas Wolfe portrays mans dark side through the unexpected madness of the seemingly good-natured Dick Prosser and the actions taken by the town people. This story is set in an era when people believed race determined the moral character of a person. Many viewed blacks as social outcast and hence the cause of most crimes. This is true to the extent that African Americans were committing a large number of petty crimes, but were they really the cause. Many factors play into determining a cause, and in this case it is quite evident that the social conditions in which African Americans were forced to live in contributed to there social behavior. However, can these pressures push a man to mental madness and drive him towards mass murder? It is not just to say that he is without fault, but it is true to say that, the coldness of one man will decrease the warmth of another. The story gives us a glimpse of Dick’s life a short period before the climax. We are left to probe clues and use our imagination and intuition to come to a personal conclusion of why Dick committed mass murder. The time in which the story takes place was a period of severe racial discrimination especially toward Blacks. The most prevalent attitude toward African Americans was that they were somehow inferior to the whites. This is evident by the referral of Dick as the “Shepperton’s Negro man” (Wolfe 24). “Mr. Shepperton himself Arellano 2 declared ...

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