Armand was very proud of his wife and child, and would do anything for them. He soon came to a change of heart, which would cause Desiree to become worrisome. Desiree had found out that Armand was upset, because he found out his baby was partially black. Armand came to an assumption of Desiree not being white as stated in the short story,”Tell me what it means!” Desiree cried disdainfully. “It means” he answered abruptly,”that child is not white; it means that you are not white”(Desiree’s baby).
Throughout the short story entitled “Desiree’s Baby,” Kate Chopin includes many examples of racial and gender bias through irony, element of surprise, and symbolism to support that Armand was unaware of his past and ethnic origin, only learning about his parentage from reading a letter discovered at the end of the story. In the story, Armand, the father and plantation owner, treated his slaves with no respect or human decency just as his father treated slaves growing up. Due to his lighter skin tone, Armand believed it made him much superior to the African American slaves. Chopin states “...the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves”(2). This evidence shows the reader how the slaves viewed him as their owner, which was not in a positive light.
In my opinion the story of “Desiree’s Baby” is about injustice because Desiree’s husband was so cold hearted with her. These three literary devices also helped the story by supporting it with some techniques that the author uses in his writing to help get the message across the reader. The story would of been extra engaging if the author let the reader know what happened at the end of the story; when Armand reads the letter his mother left behind talking about what kind of heritage he was from. My honest assumption is that I highly recommend more people to read this story because it catches an individual’s attention at the beginning with the way it plays off in the beginning as happy story and at the end it leaves the audience in a cliffhanger. It makes the reader think of what feelings could of been going through Armand when he found out how wrong he
He destroys his marriage and family and orders Desiree and the baby to leave and never come back.While being so enraged with anger he starts to burn everything that belonged to Desiree from all of her clothes and gowns to all of the letters they wrote to each other. In doing this he came across a letter from his mother intended for his father. When he opened and read it, he realized that he is part black and that he is the reason why the baby came out part African. The letter read “I thank God for having so arranged our lives that our dear Armand will never know that his mother, who adores him, belongs to the race that is cursed with the brand of slavery” (Chopin 5). This is a good example of irony because it is a very dramatic plot twist, nobody would have every expected this and it leaves the reader in “Awe” (Owleyes
With Chopin’s foreshadowing, she was able to make a reference to Romeo and Juliet by predicting the terrible fate of Desiree and Armand’s love story. The plot of “Desiree’s Baby” had focused on Armand’s white pride since his love for honor had forced him to be naive with his family by removing them from his life, however as Armand later realized that he was the one who is not white. Chopin’s writing and description of Armand showcased that love will make a person ignorant as Armand’s love Desiree and their son blinded him from finding out his
I cannot be so unhappy, and live” (Chopin, 1894, p. 1608). Her mother’s response does not confirm nor deny these claims, and only asks Desiree to come home with the baby, for even her mother is unsure of Desiree’s true race (Chopin, 1894). Upon bringing the letter to Armand, he tells her to leave, breaking her heart. This letter foreshadows the event of Desiree’s suicide, killing not only herself, but her baby too (Chopin, 1894). Armand, having tossed her away like a worthless piece of property, has brought Desiree to the point of hopelessness.
Joseph Rosenblum wrote in an exert from his book, and literary analysis of Desiree’s Baby: “Kate Chopin clearly sympathizes with the plight of people of mixed blood and points out the evils of a slave system that one creates a condemned miscegenation. Her chief concern, however is not with the souths “particular institution”, a topic she rarely treated in her fiction.” (Joseph Rosenblum) The main reason that so many authors agree on the same point of view is because of the ironic ending. “It means the child is not white, that you are not white.” “Night and day I thank God that Armand will never know that his mother who adores him belongs to the race that is cursed with the bland of slavery.” In those words from the letter his mother wrote to his father Armand’s world came crashing down upon his head. His hate, and vicious blows to his beloved wife’s heart was all for nothing. How he himself is the thing he hates the most, a beautiful and masterfully crafted endings to a wonderful story, justice was served, and we the readers now know that this was clearly a play against slavers, due to how ironic the ending
The friend, Todd Clifton, is selling Sambo dolls on the side of the road, a highly racist and derogatory doll that perpetuates the stereotype of blacks as non-human performers for other’s entertainment. Clifton, in contrast, was a handsome, intelligent, and politically active member of the Brotherhood who is shown to want to help Harlem and push for black and white equality. The Invisible Man is both shaken by Clifton's blatant betrayal of his own race and saddened, yet again, by the theme of black repression by those who claim to try and help. However, later he chooses to forgive Clifton at his funeral, thinking to himself “Yes, the dolls were obscene and his act a betrayal. But he was only a salesman not an inventor, and it was necessary that we make it known that the meaning of his death was greater than the incident or the object that caused it” (448).
You have probably thought that slavery was bad but you have no idea how bad it actually was. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a Autobiography by Frederick Douglass, his purpose of the story was to expose the real darkness of a slavery. Douglass was a slave before and he has gone through a lot of pain during those times. Douglass’ position on slavery was that slavery was terrible for slaves & that it corrupts the slave owners because the slave owners dehumanized other slaves, the slaves were treated inhumanely and were broken mentally. People believe that slavery is good for the slave owners and for the slaves, on the other hand Frederick Douglass believes that slavery corrupts the slave owners.
Slavery is bad because it is an abuse of blacks.Slaves owners would abuse their slaves by beating them when they did something wrong, or sometimes even starve them. My first reason of why slavery is bad is because whites would say that the blacks were horrible people when they were the ones that would kill the blacks for protecting themselves. Whites would go parading on African Americans homes killing and kidnapping anyone they could, so that they could sell them for work and the blacks were hardly able to fight back while whites would be saying that there the monsters.The reason that I chose this to write is because it proves that while the blacks were getting beat to death by whites the whites thought the blacks were the awful human beings.Another example of why the whites were wrong about who was wrong is that the whites killed the blacks but didn 't get thrown in jail because if they had then people would start to think that the person