The moment of enlightenment I came
to happened in two very different points in the “Learning to read” and “The
Wife of his Youth” texts. In Frances E.W. Harper’s “Learning to Read”, I was
able to identify that she was a black woman and probably a slave within the
first stanza. Throughout the poem, Harper describes the lengths at which slaves
went to in order to learn how to read. Once the narrator of this poem had
finally learned how to read, she then bought a cabin, “And I felt independent /
As the queen upon her throne”. Literacy brought her liberation and gratitude –
she was able to control her own life.
In Charles W Chesnutt’s “The Wife
of his Youth”, it was not until after ‘Liza Jane had come and talked to him
that I realized who Mr. Ryder really was – Sam Taylor. At first I suspected
that Mr. Ryder was Sam Taylor when he began questioning why ‘Liza Jane had been
looking for this estranged husband for 25 years and asking her what if this man
was already married, or dead. However, My Aha! Moment occurred when Chesnutt
writes, “When she had turned the corner, he went upstairs to his bedroom, and
stood for a long time before the mirror of his dressing-case, gazing
thoughtfully at the reflection of his own face” (Chesnutt). Picturing this in
my mind helped me to identify where the rest of the story was going to go. On
another note, I did not realize that Mr. Ryder was a mulatto, or mixed blood,
until Chesnutt had actually stated it. At first I thought he was white, then I
thought he was a light skinned black, and then I thought he was white again –
the idea was going back and forth through my head the entire time until it was
actually in writing. The most significant thing about Mr. Ryder being mixed is
that he believed, “… we people of mixed blood are ground between the upper and
the nether millstone. Our fate lies between absorption by white race extinction
in the black. The one doesn’t want us yet, but may take us in time. The other
would welcome us, but it would be for us a backward step…” (Chesnutt). This
shows the readers that Mr. Ryder believed in the social structure of that time:
(1) whites, (2) mulattos (3) African Americans.
Finally, the one thing that I
observed that these two texts have in common is the “American Dream”. Both Mr.
Ryder and the woman in “Learning to Read” were able to come from a very
low-point in society to a higher, more dignified one. In “Learning to Read” her
ambitions were not as grand as Mr. Ryder’s. However, buying her own house made
her feel like a queen. Mr. Ryder came from working on a plantation, although free,
was still going to be sold. He had escaped that and become the head of the Blue
Veins Society, had a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and finally was
reunited with the love of his life. Both texts show and can inspire readers
that however big or small your dream may be, it is possible to obtain.
Great point about the mirror! I wish you had been in class to share it with us.
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