I think that this scene is extremely important in that it seems to help the Ex-Colored Man decide how he wants to live his life. He is in such disbelief and shock that he is actually incapable of moving and taking his eyes from the sight, even though it is something that he does not want to ever witness.
I was fixed to the spot where I stood, powerless to take my eyes from what I did not want to see.” In this scene, he truly sees the racism in society and the characteristics of lynching that make it such a powerful aspect of southern culture. When the burning took place, the Ex-Colored Man describes the horrifying situation – “ Some of the crowd yelled and cheered, others seemed appalled at what they had done, and there were those who turned away sickened at the sight. At the time of the execution, the people had originally decided to hang him, but they ultimately decided to burn him alive instead. That leaves this book, an anonymous tale ending in regret, as the narrator’s only way to make amends and insist on the imperative of fighting for justice.In James Weldon Johnson’s novel, Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the lynching of a black man black man by a crowd of people. This story, like Faust, represents trading one’s identity for immediate comforts the narrator realizes that his slightly greater comfort as a Northern white man does not resolve his shame at being black, or at seeing the way the United States treats its black population, but it does prevent him from openly fighting for civil rights. The last sentence of the novel is an explicit reference to the biblical story of Esau, who sold his birthright (his right to authority as his family’s elder brother) for a bowl of lentil stew (the “mess of pottage”).
This is the sense of regret that, at the beginning of the book, the narrator said he was trying to address by re-encountering the power of black music and political leadership through his character foils, who are given perhaps the world’s most prominent stage, he sees what he could have become.
0 kommentar(er)
