Planters and Sharecroppers
The two works, Lanterns on the Levee: the Recollections of Planter'sSon by William A. Percy and All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw byTheodore Rosengarten are very representative of the mind of the Southduring the era in which they were written. Though they are simply thestories of two men the works have often been used as a reasonablecomparison between the lives of the social elite whites in the rural southand the lives of the financially and socially oppressed blacks. Although it is impossible to create a complete picture of the lives ofall people living within the conditions of the antebellum south, throughthe stories of just two men, the messages of these two works express somehints of the ideals of each class represented. Additionally, within thesetwo works can be found reasons for individual successes of these two menand by default those who shared their respective statuses.Within the text of these two works there are many points of comparison thatleave the reader with both questions and answers to some of the mostperplexing questions of the antebellum era. The comparison, between these two works and specifically between thesetwo men gives many people, reared within
Percy was able to rise above the economic reality of his region partlythrough the prominence of his ancestry, the luck of being born into afamily with money, partly through the value of education and especiallythrough his valiant war record. Over-simplification can be easily avoided as the reader beginsto get into the mind of these two men. His image has therefore been burned in the minds of many civilrights proponents as the face of the enemy. During the recent clamor for greater leisure for the children of men, I have often wondered what men are worthy of leisure. He givesno mention of the fact that those who were at the top continued to be ableto stay at the top even during the most bleak of natural disasters, becausethey had the financial support to do so. Additionally, he served as an example for his own class and the white classjust below his own. Hissuccess is knowledge based and his work is foundational to the ideal of hisrace. The way in which he glosses over the conditionsof the levee camps and attempts to represent the blacks as thestereotypically shiftless working class is deplorable and yet must in someprofound way represent how many men in his class really felt about therural blacks who literally built the successful rural whites through theirown blood, sweat and tears. One thing that is bothersome about thenarrative is that one point, driven home repeatedly by the work is thatShaw's success was rooted in his own belief that the white man was not theonly enemy that the black man must face. The inter-working and interactions are avoided anddreaded. The characterizations of these twomen play a significant role in the understanding of the South as it wasduring their lifetimes. The challenges and hard work that any black manborn of the first free generation are profound. The blacks, homeless anddesperate were not even given the opportunity to return and rebuild as theforced labor they endured was for the good of the whole, when in realitythey were not benefiting at all. The Negroes had behaved admirably during the first weeks of the flood.
Common topics in this essay:
Uncle Herbert,
Delta Negroes,
Law School,
Theodore Rosengarten,
Percy Shaw,
African American,
Nate Shaw,
antebellum south,
shaw's narrative,
hard black,
forced labor,
nate shaw,
able rise,
white percy,
rosengarten 7,
war record,
percy 264,
|
Acceptance Essays
