The Murderous South: The Difference in Violence From the Pre to Post-Civil War Era in “An Odor of Verbena” In William Faulkner’s “An Odor of Verbena,” the death of Bayard’s father leads him to a moral conflict regarding the actions he should take against his father’s killer, Redmond. This clash of different mentalities illustrates the rift between the new focus on education of the post-Civil War South versus the cruelty and social expectations of the Antebellum South, which is prevalent throughout the narrative. In the pre-Civil War era, the south was best known for constant violence. This is where Bayard’s moral dilemma begins to take hold. The pressure to conform to the unhinged society is forced upon Bayard by the surrounding members of …show more content…
When he returns home after his father’s death, he is bombarded by the town’s people that “gathered a few yards behind him with the curious vulture-like formality” (Faulkner 386). They are studying him to see if he has the strength to kill Redmond on his own. George Wyatt and Drusilla especially symbolize the old South by demonstrating their eagerness to kill with no remorse. They both believe that Bayard’s new-found kindness, that he got while studying with Professor Wilkins, is a sign of weakness and Bayard wishes to prove them wrong in order to protect his manhood. “A commitment to chivalry and honor could be interpreted as a predilection for unreflective violence; a premium on manners and hospitality could be seen as a weakness for sham sentiment and self-delusion” (Murphy 2). Many in the old South believe that Bayard’s feelings of empathy and remorse are weak and will make him be seen as less of a man. Bayard wants to make his father proud and uphold his family legacy, but that comes at the price of taking another man’s life. Over the three years that Bayard is away from his family, he begins to understand a different perspective that adds to his dilemma. The schooling that he has received from Professor Wilkins demonstrates to him that there is a possibility of success without the constant death. He is conflicted over whether he should …show more content…
This is illustrated by Aunt Jenny, Professor Wilkins, and Bayard himself. Bayard is pursuing his degree in law, when the call comes about his father’s untimely demise. This is the turning point that forces Bayard to choose between becoming the traditional version of a man or choosing his own path and continue to pursue his new life and career. “This estrangement from all formal education was complete in the antebellum South” (Urban 3). People after the Civil War became more driven and focused on education. Education became the new way to show one’s success, not the amount of people that they have killed. This other half of Bayard’s life presented some difficulty in making his decisions and because of his schooling, he is now considered to be more level-headed and thorough in his approach. Bayard’s father
Between the years of 1954 to 1968, racism was at its peak in the South. This occurred even though the blacks were no longer slaves as of 1865 when slavery was abolished. The blacks were treated very poorly and they were still considered unequal to whites. Hiram, the main character of this novel, is a 9 year old boy who is clueless about racism. He is moved from the South to the North, away from his favorite grandfather. He wishes to go back to Mississippi and to be with his grandfather again. He never understood why his father, Harlan, wouldn't let him go. Hiram, who moved from Mississippi to Arizona, is in for a rude awakening when he is visiting his Grandfather in Greenwood, Mississippi at 16 years old. In the novel Mississippi Trial 1955, there were many complicated relationships among Hiram, Harlan, and Grandpa Hillburn. These relationships were complicated because of racism at
In her book, A Voice from the South, Anna J. Cooper expressly addresses two issues: the participation of women in American society and America’s race problem. These are two issues very close to Cooper as an African American woman herself and she claims to speak for all African American women on these points. She argues that for America to be a truly democratic country that has freedoms for all people, it must have participation by women and blacks.
The novel showed a pivotal point prior to the Civil War and how these issues ultimately led to the fueling of quarrel between Americans. While such institutions of slavery no longer exist in the United States, the message resonates with the struggles many groups ostracized today who continue to face prejudice from those in higher
William Faulkner tells his novel The Unvanquished through the eyes and ears of Bayard, the son of Confederate Colonel John Sartoris. The author’s use of a young boy during such a turbulent time in American history allows him to relate events from a unique perspective. Bayard holds dual functions within the novel, as both a character and a narrator. The character of Bayard matures into a young adult within the work, while narrator Bayard relays the events of the story many years later.
To Kill A Mockingbird displays an environment where one must be inhumane to another in order to become socially compatible. Maycomb has established a hierarchy where social compartmentalisation is the way of life. Men with a profession and a career are superior, while the farmers are near the bottom of the social strata and are considered inferior. No matter which remarkable qualities Negroes possess, they are always s...
President Abraham Lincoln envisioned a conservative plan for the reconstruction of the south. Under Lincoln’s plan, as soon as ten percent of the voters in a southern state whom have voted in 1860 and had taken an oath of loyalty to the United States, they could then elect constitutional conventions. These conventions, upon adopting new state constitutions and abolishing slavery they would then be readmitted to the union. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln would change polices towards reconstruction of the south.
the pre-Civil War era, only about 5 percent of white Southern women actually lived on plantations and about half the Southern households owned no slaves at all. Still, slavery defined everything about life in the South, including the status of white women. Southern culture orbited around the strong father figure, simultaneously ruling and caring for his dependents - Mary Hamilton Campbell was struck when her servant Eliza refererred to Campbell's husband as "our master". Black and white women never seemed to develop any sense of common cause, but every Southern female from the plantation wife to the field slave was assinged a role that involved powerlessness and the need of a white man's constant guidance. A Southern slave owner named George Balcombe advised a friend to "Let women and Negroes alone. Leave them in their humility, their grateful affection, ther self-renouncing loyalty, their subordination of the heart, and let it be your study to become worthy to be the object of their sentiments."
Both of these authors’ short stories cover the changing south. Both of their short stories give us a profound impact on the thinking of these two men when it comes to their views of the south. Coming from different backgrounds this gives the reader a good view of what the overall picture of the south looked like at the time. Faulkner and Ellis disagreed about how differences were handled in the south and whether the changing south was good or bad, but they both of them agreed that the south changing was unavoidable.
Desmond King and Stephen Tuck’s “De-Centring the South: America’s Nationwide White Supremacist Order after Reconstruction” was focused on how white supremacy flourished in not only the South, but in the North and West as well, debunked that the North and West were much better places to live regarding racial discrimination, and how African Americans had lacking representation in the political sphere. Laura F. Edwards, on the other hand, discusses how the legal system judged certain crimes, such as rape, were affected by one’s sex, black women’s and white women’s experiences with sexual assault, the assumptions related to the lower class affected women, and misogyny in her “Sexual Violence, Gender, Reconstruction, and the Extension of Patriarchy
“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (Lee 304). Harper Lee is the renowned author of To Kill a Mockingbird which was inspired by the real events of the Scottsboro Trials. Throughout her novel, Lee indirectly references the case by creating characters, events, and symbols that resemble and contrast the case. These elements allow the novel to emerge with a more realistic and historic plot. In particular, the similarities and differences between Judge Horton and Judge Taylor, Victoria and Mayella, and the atmosphere of the courtroom are most prevalent. By examining these components one will be able to respect the historical features present in Harper Lee’s fictional literary phenomenon, To Kill a Mockingbird.
Growing up in a prejudiced environment can cause individuals to develop biased views in regard to both gender and class. This is true in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, where such prejudices are prevalent in the way of life of 1930s Maycomb, Alabama. The novel is centered around the trial of a black man who is accused of raping a white woman. The narrator, a young girl named Scout, is able to get a close up view of the trial because her father is defending Tom Robinson, the defendant. The aura of the town divided by the trial reveals certain people’s prejudices to Scout, giving her a better perspective of her world.
Faulkner uses the view point of an unnamed town member while he uses a third person perspective to show the general corrosion of the southern town’s people.
The south was the picture of excess in pre-war times, and although after the war this changed, old ideas and prejudices died slowly. When the construction company came to the town with "niggers and mules and machinery," those old views were evident. (83) The treatment of the blacks in the south remained a vestige of that decadence for years to come, as evidenced by the need for the civil rights movement. This corruption illustrates the townspeople's willingness to look the ...
Was there a New South after the Civil War? What elements marked or did not mark the New South?
Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of fourteen elegantly written pages, Phillips advances his thesis with evidence from a variety of primary sources gleaned from his years of research. All of his reasoning and experience add weight to his distillation of Southern history into this one fairly simple idea, an idea so deceptively simple that it invites further study.