Transfection Of Power In The Kingdom Of This World By Alejo Carpentier

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The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier is a historical fiction book focusing on the Haitian revolutionary period. This time period proved to be the perfect opportunity for Carpentier to address the motif of power, the control it has over people and that of transformation. The book pushes these along throughout the pages. The exploitation of power in The Kingdom of This World have a few separate outlets. These come in the form of physical, including sexual, economic, and intelectual, as in knowledge. Through the use of power, various persons in the book experience transformation in a variety of ways. There is physical transformation, political, cultural, and spiritual. This story begins and ends with abuse of power, and in a very real …show more content…

These slaves hailed from Africa, known as “Back There” in The Kingdom of This World, and became a subservient underclass to European colonists and masters. Within the pages, Carpentier describes the abuse of slaves like Macandal by masters such as Lenormand de Mezy. This begins unpleasantly, and simply with physical abuse. Apart from being literally worked to death, slaves were also whipped on and off the fields to satiate their anger and jealous hypocrisy (page 54). The abuse of some even so far as to amputate limbs and continue to make them serve hard labor, as was the case of the character, Macandal (page 15). De Mezy also exemplifies the abuse of power in a more sexual nature by raping the female slaves on his plantation, and beating them when he was not able to perform (page …show more content…

For revolutionaries that followed the blueprints already laid out for them, imitation became their way of life. Two names are at the forefront of this travesty, Henri Christophe, and Ti Noel. For Ti Noel, there were many people in his life with power he looked up to. Ti Noel had an obsession with power, which he curbed in times when his master was more powerful, and quenched when tasted freedom. In Bouckman’s revolution Ti Noel had but one objective in the midst of the chaos, to rape Mlle Floridor (page 68). Later in the book he desperately seeks to imitate Macandal in his efforts to become an animal. Henri Christophe on the other hand is portrayed as the worst offender of this abuse and imitation of power on every

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