The Edward P. Jones Roadshow

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Congratulations to Racz Sal of Ubud, Bali for winning an autographed copy of "All Aunt Hagar's Children" in our March 12, 2012 raffle draw!

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CHECK OUT THIS NEW ARTICLE BY AMANDA LOGO FROM GMA NEWS ON-LINE!

http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/240369/lifestyle/literature/sage-writing-advice-from-edward-p-jones

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YOUR LINK to the Manila Literary Festival!

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U.S. Embassy Links to Edward P. Jones

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Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones visits the Philippines

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The Known World

"Esquire" chooses "The Known World" as one of the 75 books that everyone should read!

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/75-books

YouTube Lecture on "The Known World"

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyVOp_svygc
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvMS3A5X3i0

All Aunt Hagar's Children

Read Walter Ang's Review of "The Known World" in "The Philippine Daily Inquirer"!

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Flifestyle.inquirer.net%2F21363%2Fpulitzer-winning-novelist-edward-jones-in-manila-this-week&h=aAQHmWeQM

Dynamic Interviews with Edward P. Jones!

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/july-dec03/jones_9-19.html

http://www.harpercollins.com/author/authorExtra.aspx?authorID=5002&isbn13=9780060557546&displayType=bookinterview

Edward P. Jones in 2004

BOOK RAFFLE WINNERS (THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2011)

The raffle was held during The Great Philippine Book Cafe at Ayala Museum Friday, October 18, 2011!

Win an autographed book WHEREVER YOU ARE!

And the WINNERS are:

Menchu

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Manila Chronicles

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Photo by Jose Wendell Capili

Edward P. Jones with award-winning Filipino novelist Charlson Ong and Philippine P.E.N. International President and National Artist for Literature Bien Lumbera. Photo by Jose Wendell Capili

Embassy Team with Edward P. Jones and National Artist for Literature Frankie Sionil Jose on the third floor of the historic La Solidaridad. Photo by Jose Wendell Capili

Edward P. Jones with fans at the American Corner, Silliman University, Dumaguete City

November 2011. Photo by Khorie Cavile

Edward P. Jones signing his books at the American Corner, Silliman University, Dumaguete City

November 2011. Photo by Khorie Cavile

Edward P. Jones at Writers Village, Dumaguete

Photos by Ian Rosales Casocot. Courtesy of Silliman University

Certificate of Appreciation

Dr. Eve Mascunano, Coordinator of the Writers Workshop and Chair of the English and Literature Department of Silliman University, presents a certificate of appreciation to EPJ after the readings and creative interaction with writers at the Writers Village, Mount Tinalis.

With the oldest living poet in Dumaguete

Group shot in the mountain lodge, as the mist descends

Dinner hosted by Public Affairs Officer Robin Diallo

With Andrea Pasion-Flores of the National Book Development Board of the Philippines, at Barbara's Restaurant, Intramuros, Manila. Photo courtesy of the National Book Development Board of the Philippines

Being interviewed by Professor Vince Groyon of De La Salle University

At The Great Philippine Book Cafe. November 2011. Photo Courtesy of Ayala Museum

Interview by Lexi Schulze of ANC TV

Photo by Andrea Pasion-Flores. Courtesy of the National Book Development Board of the Philippines

De La Salle University Student Reviews of "The Known World"

1) By Olivia Sylvia Estrada Section: A51

Word count: 2,101

Looking for the Narratee in Jones's The Known World

Introduction

When one speaks, there is an assumption that someone is listening. It is also assumed that the manner by which a person speaks or tells a story is in accordance with the capacity of the listener to understand.

In Edward P. Jones’s The Known World, the narrator does not explicitly identify a particular person which the narrator is addressing. However, the narrative juxtaposes the different events, timelines, and texts so that he may come up with a conclusion about a character or occurrence. The narrator showcases his wide collection of information regarding Henry Townsend and the people who are connected to his Virginia plantation, as though to finally explain what really happened long after the narrative took place.

It is therefore curious to find out to whom exactly the narrator talks to. Despite the current era wherein various novels have been published about slavery and racism, it seems that literature has not even begun to exhaust all that it can say about this dark chapter in American history. Could this be due to the fact that the consciousness of the audience is expanding at a faster rate than that of the writer? Or is it due to the fact that since there are numerous texts that deal with this complex topic, there is a need to string them together into a coherent narrative? The latter is what the narrator of The Known World seems to do to as there is a listener who seems to constantly question the various texts he/she is knowledgeable about.

Who then exactly is the narratee of The Known World? What are the characteristics which define him as a narratee that push the narrator to divulge certain facts and conceal others? Furthermore, does the narratee represent a mindset which is akin to the real reader?

The Narratee

Gerald Prince’s Introduction to the Study of the Narratee, defines as the narratee “someone whom the narrator addresses.” The narratee in different from the real reader in the same breath that the author is apart from the narrator. This entity may be directly recognized in the narrative but also may be hidden. The narratee is someone who is governed by principles which the narrator, by constructing his story, tries to work with or be rid of, in accordance to the objective of the narrator.

In characterizing the narratee, Prince specifies the characteristics of a “zero-degree narratee.” This type of narratee can be compared to a completely blank page. This narratee knows no texts other than the novel at hand. However, the “zero-degree narratee” is a master at the language which the narrator uses but is unable to pick up any connotations of a word or a phrase, only the denotations as specified by the utilized language. The “zero-degree narratee” does not interpret the text with any social or personal experiences.

Prince then explains that any deviation from the characteristics of the “zero-degree narratee” is then an indicator of who the actual narratee in the novel may be. He also lists a number of ways by which the texts hint at a certain narratee.

In this study, the three most salient types of a narratee’s signals which in the novel are presented. The signals are taken from the many which Prince discusses in his essay. Along with these signals are example passages as quoted directly fromThe Known World. The analysis of these passages aims to characterize the narratee.

Negations

In the novel, the narrator shows that he is most aware of the narratee in instances wherein the he tells of the future of a certain character side by side with the current event which is taking place. This serves as the book’s device to negate the ideals of the narratee. An example of which is found on page 168 of novel. In this scene, the narrator tells of Broussard, who has been jailed on the accusation of murder. As Broussard talks to Sherriff Skiffington, “‘Stay and pursue the happiness, heh, as be always the right of you and me.’”, there is an immediate interjection by the narrator of what happened to Broussard’s future. “Broussard’s wife had taken a lover two years after he left. The wife and every last one of Broussard’s children were in love with the lover. It was a love from which would not have been able to retrieve them.”

This contrast not only brings out the irony in the situation. The juxtaposition also serves as a form of presenting one argument and immediately giving a rebuttal. The notion of happiness which brought Broussard to America is at once countered by the account of his future.

Such a set-up replaces a direct dialogue of the narratee and the narrator. Instead of the narrator speaking up against his listener or vice-versa, the narrator seems to pre-empt what the narratee would say.

Furthermore, in this sequence, it can be seen that the narrator is clumping all the information he knows so that he may pass judgment about it. There is a clue that the narrator is not simply retelling events but is also analyzing them for the sake whomever it may be listening to him. Page 176 of the book begins with the narrator saying: “Perhaps it was just as well that Jean Broussard came to the end that he did in America. His family would never have separated from the lover; he would have had come to terms with them, or they would not come at all. No, it was over for him in France.” It is here that the narrator addresses the narratee not only with information but also with his opinion, mixing past events with hindsight.

Extra/Inter-textuality: What the Narratee has Read

On the other hand, the demonstrative significance or extra-textual experience and the comparisons which are is grouped together under one signal of the “zero-degree narratee” -Barthes’ “Book.”

Prince explains that the zero-degree narratee does not correlate any text (life, culture, other novels) to the present text. He is does not read the book as a sign within a greater structure as expounded upon by Roland Barthes. Prince quotes Barthes’ words from the book S/Z in his essay that a code, such as a novel, is “ ‘made up of fragments of this something which always has already been read, seen, done, lived: the code is in the groove of the already. Referring back to what has been written, that is, to the Book (of culture, of life, of life as culture)…’ ”

Therefore, any reference to a text outside the novel which it does not explain thoroughly, assumes that the narratee is already aware of this. The extra and inter-textual references in The Known World characterize the narratee as a very well-read individual. The narratee must know of Shakespeare, Irving, and of the Bible to understand the narrator’s need to use them in the descriptions or explanations.

Among the many inter-texts which The Known World uses, the Bible is the most prevalent. Many other characters’ motivations draw from their interpretation of the Bible. However, to conclude that the use of such references shows a mastery of the narratee of the Bible is ambiguous. There are several instances wherein the narrator seems to be introducing the Bible for the first time. An example of which is the beginning of chapter two: “In the Bible, God commanded men to take wives, and John Skiffington obeyed.” Or in page 301, “There was a reason God had made telling the truth one of his commandments; lying had the power to be a high wall to hide all transgressions.”

These passages show the Bible as a text unique to the characters and how this text has already been appropriated by the characters. Hence, this serves not only as the narrator’s explanation of the character’s actions but also an explanation of the nature of the Bible itself.

On the other hand, the lack of a direct explication of what the Bible is can be qualified as proof that the narratee is aware of this text. What the narrator does is present the different ways by which the novel’s characters speak of the Holy Book and of God. This is seen when the black characters speak of God as the one responsible for their conduct. Such is the purpose of Fern Elston in saying that: “‘All of us do only what the law and God tell us we can do. No one of us who believes in the law and God does more than that.’” Some questions which are presented in the story also point to a narratee’s first-hand knowledge of the Bible such as “Did God deny David and Solomon any less?” which is asked in the context of Moffet and his extra-marital affairs.

Throughout the novel, God and the Bible are seen as the primary concepts which everyone follows. The white slave masters only follow God’s Word and so do their black slaves. However, there is certain inconclusiveness as to who can be identified as knowledgeable about the Bible or not. In turn, the narrator, by showing different sides by which the Bible is used, questions the know-how of his narratee.

Questions/Pseudo-Questions

Many questions are posed by the narrator and the characters to no one in particular. These questions usually beg for a judgment which neither the narrators nor the characters verbally resolve. This is the most straightforward manner by which the narrator comes close to addressing the narratee.

In the nature that the questions are left hanging or at times not precisely attributed to a character, there is reason to believe that these are questions are either posed by the narrator to the narratee or asked by the narratee himself as repeated by the narrator. Take for example the quote from page 293, “Where did a slave wife and a slave son fit in with a man who was on his way to being freed and then marrying a free woman? Or on his way to becoming Mr Townsend?”

The use of the second and third degree pronoun already distances the question away from the consciousness of Moses, who was thinking he will be finally free due to his relations to Caldonia Townsend, Henry’s widow. The transition from Moses thoughts to the one question quoted above are abrupt, which suggest a new train of consciousness but nevertheless running along the consciousness of the character in focus.

Another example is found on page 5: “Who knew what a nigger really planned to do with other niggers?” The use of indefinite attributions suggests of another entity to which the questions are presented/come from. These questions therefore solidify the dialectic between the narrator and his narratee.

Conclusion

From the signals of a narratee discussed above, it can be concluded that the narratee is on the same level of consciousness as the narrator. The narratee is educated enough to know the text which the narrator refers to. However, the narratee has certain doubts about his knowledge which the narrator plays with. This is the purpose of the questions/pseudo questions and negations.

The texts which the narratee is aware of are placed side by side to give off a certain image of coherence. One event explains those that follow after. However, the cracks in this coherence are not specifically resolved.

In this manner, there seems to be a conversation between the narrator and the narratee who try to piece together everything to fit a logical narrative. They are try to figure out what are the reasons behind certain events by associating them with information uncovered after.

However, anything that does not fit into a logical narrative is simply left as an unresolved contrast and comparison. The narratee is left to put together how one event happened after the other without really stating how one caused the other.

In this, the function of the narratee is to demythologize the America found in the different viewpoints and texts in the novel. In leading the narrator to argue using pre-existing texts, put one event which happened years after directly after the plot’s current setting, and to present the various consciousness one after the other, the narratee knows that there are certain myths which do not make sense or jive together with a set of rules. This is perhaps indicative of the state of mind which real readers are. Given the vast amount of information available to them, there is still no possible way to explain how slavery was given logic. And the tools which were used to justify it are far more questionable now than even before since the current generation is aware of its aftermath. R

2) By Ronaldo M. Recto

CONLITE – Midterm Paper

What is Known in The Known World

Though the nuances of pre Civil War American culture are lost to a foreign reader, Edward Jones’s The Known World is not at all exclusive in terms of how it presents a history that is mostly about the American “self” and the black-white relationship that has itself become part of that “self.” What then becomes particularly interesting about the novel is its difficult refusal to antagonize the subjective realities of its characters. What I mean by difficult is that the very easy way out of stories that have to do with a community’s oppression—usually with the set up of two distinct groups, one the victimizer and the other the victim—is abandoned. Now what I mean by subjective realities is that the double standard given to the quality of life an individual has the right to, that is common in the dominance of one particular culture over another, is not only acknowledged but is the focal point which the interweaving narratives balance on. Jones does not allow his reader to fall for cheap narrative tricks where empathy for characters is one-dimensional and unearned, and where character roles are pre-rendered by the obvious agenda of political-correctness.

This is profoundly resonant with, I suspect, all post-colonial cultures. There is more often than not general unconscious disdain for colonial influence, because this influence has been conditioned to be associated with suffering and oppression. It is not difficult to imagine offhanded remarks about what the Spaniards and the Americans have done with the Filipino culture. The novel’s take on this type of relationship is refreshing to read, given the plethora of stuff out there that unabashedly give the dark hats and the long twirling mustaches to anyone that does not resemble the aforementioned “self.”

This is where the novel is very careful not to fall victim to political correctness, which deals more with language representation and the misguided need to Not Offend Anybody than it does with actually not offending anybody. Jones opts out of choosing a political side, perhaps because the affirmation of one somehow must deny the other. It is hardwired into our system to split the world into convenient halves. Our default-mode is to create protagonists and antagonists to make sense of the world around us and with that comes the great setup for misunderstanding and incorrect political correctness.

The ostensible black and white differences between the two groups shape only the peripheral scene. The novel’s characters are constantly denied full solace, even those who at surface-level seem to have the capacity and resources to do so. Most, if not all, the white men are troubled, be it through a failing marriage, an unceasing sense of justice, the Job-like tragedy of having lost everything, and even poverty.

It is then significant that Broussard’s character exists, a Frenchman who leaves his home and his family in search of the American Dream. Imprisoned for killing another white man, a Swiss (or so he claimed at the time), the narrator explains: “I am thinking that I will stay forever to live here, stay in this place and be happy.” Broussard had been a citizen of the United States for three years. He had not seen France and his family since he left them eight years ago. He still planned to bring his family to America. Only his two oldest children even remember what Broussard looked like. “Stay and pursue the happiness, heh, as be always the right of you and me.” Broussard’s wife had taken a lover two years after he left. The wife and every last one of Broussard’s children were in love with the lover. It was a love from which Broussard would not have been able to retrieve them. “I sing America. I sing America happiness.” An outsider to America, still with the strange English of a foreigner, is brought in the narrative as an anomaly: the only white man in the story to be treated with an otherness, though not similar to the one given to the blacks, an otherness nonetheless. It becomes especially ironic when his life is presented in this simultaneous instance, where the past is just as much the present (a stylistic element present throughout the novel). In this way, the irony is tragic, and the tragedy sad. Not sad to him, but sad to the reader. We are always at the advantage of these characters in our knowing their full history, which is perhaps where the third option begins, in the knowing.

It’s very easy to antagonize the arbiters of suffering. The real truth is more complex, that we may not even allow ourselves to believe. The truth is that much of our reality and identity has been shaped by the very same people who we claim to have taken it away from us. This may be why we aren’t so quick to make generalizations about our culture, and that we can claim to be a particular something and take it back within the same breath. We can claim certain truths to our behavior but when the realization comes to us that the origin of these things is not inherent, which it really isn’t 100% of the time, we so easily point fingers at the Spaniards, or the Americans; blame colonial history.

The novel’s alternative route is a somewhat truer politically correct novel, with its agenda that is less about politics and more about suffering, which is a major part of what makes us human. In our knowing of their history, detailed with almost every significant event in their lives, we are left in tune with the possible emotions these characters have felt at particular points in time. Which is why The Known World appeals a lot to the part of me that has realized that, given enough time and contemplation, there really is no one to blame. The acceptance of which is difficult to express, and even more difficult to believe. This is why it relates again to suffering and pain which is immediate and felt allowing us to bypass the intellectual barriers we put up that tries constantly to make logical sense of things, which at times brings us back to cutting the world in half.

What is presented really is “knowing” or more accurately its process. Our judgments of these characters are inhibited by the lack of a linear conception of time. Motivation, action, and consequence are rolled together already anticipating tragedy, grief, loss, etc. Given that the lives of Jones’s characters exist as memory the illusion of a chronological unfolding is absent, and this may not necessarily be a bad thing. The omniscient advantage of the reader leaves more room for understanding. Jones’s dismantling of time in this way resembles the image of a man on his deathbed, and in his retrospection finds peace in the life he’s lived, yet Jones makes it that this apotheosis is constant, not only to appear at the very end. The sense that bias has turned from either side is what keeps the narrative condensed with the lives of characters, more so than any other aspect of the novel. What The Known World reminds us is that history is not just a collection of places and events, but really and more importantly it is about the people who inhabited it. What it does is it re-imagines a history that comes up short in defining for us what was human in the inhumane era of slavery.

3) By Christianne Smile P. Yu

1,885 words 10938389 CONLITE

Alice in No Man’s Land

In the novel The Known World by Edward P. Jones, several black slaves had their stories told – some in short narratives, while some in lengthy ones. But throughout the book, one particular slave had caught my attention and that is Alice. As can be seen, the novel is composed of several other small narratives and it is very fragmented in that sense. These narratives give a little history or background on the characters that are introduced as the story moves on. I believe this is very much like Alice herself – how she seems insane on the outside and very fragmented but she has such or enough sanity in her to create that grand piece of art in the end of the novel. As one can see it is also her insanity that brings her freedom. Because she has convinced people enough with her story with the mule, the patrollers no longer care about her wandering about at night. She has the freedom to act like a child, sing and chant songs, or even flip her skirt up without having to feel embarrassed. With these ideas in mind, this paper aims to study the character of Alice by 1) questioning the basis of her insanity or sanity using Michel Foucault’s ideas on discourse; and 2) focusing on her work (the great piece of art described in Calvin’s letter to Caldonia) using Professor Amy Hungerford’s lecture on The American Novel Since 1945.

Alice as described in the “About the Book” section of the novel was “Henry’s wandering slave, believed to be kicked by a mule.” (6). She was believed to be insane after having been kicked by a mule in the head and all sanity escaped her that moment. But it is interesting to note what Moses had pointed out - that “Maybe you could just be crazy by pretending to be crazy for a long time.” (272) and this was after he followed Alice wandering about in the night. She constantly looked back in search for who was following her and “Each time she took up the chant again, it was with less of the confidence of any previous nights.” (272). Is she really insane or is she pretending to be insane? In Professor Amy Hungerford’s lecture on The American Novel Since 1945 when she focused on the book The Known World, she managed to bring up the topic of discourse and in doing so manages to cite Michel Foucault. “So, the argument goes something like: you can't be a modern madman without the asylum. It's not like madness existed, and then asylums got built to take care of it. He sees the rise of the asylum and the rise of clinical insanity as requiring one another; you can't have one without the other.” (oyc.yale.edu). Here one can see the power of language and discourse in that insanity would not exist if there are no asylums which in other words could be said in this way: there can be no bad if there was no good. The only reason “insanity” exists is because there are asylums which dictate that certain beings are not normal. Without these standards upheld by the asylum, insane people would not exist. In the same way, if the law did not prohibit rape, there would be no rapists. Using this argument, Alice is then insane only because of her story. Alice became insane when she said she was insane. When she told of her story - of how the mule kicked away all her sanity, people believed her story and in the eyes of others she became what her language made her to be. But if she hadn’t said she was insane, or chanted the words she chanted, she would probably still be weird but not insane. The way she would constantly look back looking for Moses in the bushes behind her, the way fear gripped her and ate at her confidence as she chanted was pretty sane. The way she would work well in the fields, how she talked to Elias while he carved the corncob doll for his daughter was pretty sane. But another factor to consider would be her story of the mule itself.

…[T]he story went, the mule had kicked her on the plantation in a faraway county whose name only she remembered. In her saner moments, which were very rare since the day Moses’s master bought her, Alice could describe everything about the Sunday the mule kicked her in the head and sent all common sense flying out of her. No one questioned her because her story was so vivid, so sad… No one knew enough about the place she had come from to know that her former master was terrified of mules and would not have them on his place, had even banished pictures and books about mules from his little world. (4)

In the above mentioned block quote, one can notice that Alice’s former master was afraid of mules and had banished away all traces of the animal from his “little world” (4). Therefore it is highly unlikely that Alice was even kicked by a mule in the first place and this makes her story highly questionable.

In Professor Amy Hungerford’s lecture, she managed to discuss the idea of insanity in the novel and she cited two other characters which were Wilson and Stamford. “Here you see a figure for someone whose imagination is so powerful that it makes the dead talk, and think back again to the image of Stamford finding--by placing the image of his parents all over the mansion, all over the plantation--finding their names.” (oyc.yale.edu). She discusses the blurring between imagination and insanity and this can be seen in Alice. Is she really insane or is she just imaginative? One can argue the second seeing as she is an artist and the great piece of art she has created is proof of that. But because of her mule story, the power of her language, it is hard to believe otherwise. But the ambiguities surrounding her character which are the few gaps of sane moments she has makes it arguable.

In the earlier parts of Professor Amy Hungerford’s lecture she talks about how weak the form or writing is and this is strongly embodied in the scene wherein Harvey Travis eats Augustus Townsend’s free papers. Though Augustus Townsend had memorized every word of his free papers, the moment the actual paper is lost, his freedom is taken away and this is seen when he was sold back into slavery. This weakness is again seen when Mildred was talking to Augustus about how William Robbins was taking Henry around a lot. “Them free papers he carry with him all over the place don’t carry anough freedom.” (113). In the case with writing, as Professor Amy Hungerford had mentioned, there was the need first to be literate. The case she presented was the bookshelf that Augustus Townsend ended up selling for $15 because he could not read, and neither can his wife and son. Later on that book shelf was sold again to John Skiffington for $5 because the man who originally bought it went blind. So in this case alone, there were two problems presented and that is illiteracy and blindness.

Alice didn’t need free papers to walk around. She just had to act the way she was, being who she was and the patrollers would let her be. She can sing all she wanted, lift her skirt up and grab people’s crotches and still be free. This was how she saw all of Manchester, memorized every chicken, every cabin, every person even the dead and all these were manifested in her art. Though you probably can’t eat her art work, I mean without having to visit the hospital a few times, it is still fragile in some sense – much like the free papers. But it was portrayed as something stronger, something more durable. But in Alice’s art, she has unified “… part tapestry, part painting, and part clay structure…” to create “…what God sees when He looks down on Manchester…” (384). Her art isn’t bound by literacy. But still her art has a blue rope of hemp to protect it suggesting fragility but also value. This yet again reflects her sanity. She seems to be insane but one can see that she has value – in the way she works the fields and in her art.

Professor Amy Hungerford had mentioned that it was important that Alice was not a writer. I’ve thought about it and wondered why not? Even if writing is seen as a weak form in the novel, Alice’s art form was not all that much better in my opinion. Jebediah when he wrote his own free papers was able to walk around freely and this shows the power of writing. When Victoria, a slave was caught reading a book, her owners had her whipped and was told to forget everything she knew. This shows that literacy, reading and writing had enough power to instil fear in her masters. So why shouldn’t Alice be a writer? Because slaves were illiterate. Writing was bound by literacy and this was a formidable enemy in those times. In the hotel where Alice was, they opened it up for black people and her art work was displayed in the Eastern hall where people ate. This opened it to a larger audience where people can access it freely. Though it is still closed off by that blue rope – a physical barrier, it was no longer closed off by an intellectual barrier.

To conclude, Alice may not be insane and her art reflects much of her character. Because of her mule story, people have believed she was insane. It was the power of her language that encased her into that label, both her story and her chants. Second, her art work is much like her. Though it may be argued that she is only imaginative, she may still be to some extent insane. Like her artwork may unify tapestry, paint and clay, it is still fragile like paper and writing, and this is seen in how the blue rope of hemp is put around it to protect it. Lastly, it is important that Alice is not a writer. During the times Alice must have existed, times when slavery was present, literacy among slaves was illegal. Though at some points one could see the power of words in the novel embodied by both Jebediah and Victoria, one could also see the weakness of writing in how Harvey Travis simply ate away at Augustus Townsend’s free papers and sold him away back to slavery. Though Alice’s art is still closed off by a physical barrier, it was no longer closed off by an intellectual barrier and this means it is open to all the slaves who could see it.

In the end, it seems that Alice, the insane woman was the only one who knew the known world. Her art, the map of life of Manchester included everyone down to the last chicken.

Works Cited

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. HarperCollins: New York, 2003.

Hungerford, Amy. The American Novel Since 1945: Lecture 22. Yale University. April 2008.

3) By Katrina Marie M. Concepcion

Word Count: 1,559 CONLITE

The Known World: History and the Twentieth Century

“The land of the free,” and “the land of promise and hope,” are only two of the many phrases people use to describe America. For years people have believed these, most especially those who do not come from America. This false appraisal is but a mere façade America herself created. However, many are not fooled anymore by this false image today. And in relation to America’s history of slave-owning, many are already familiar with discrimination and black slaves; however, many from these people do not know the extent of America’s history. The Known World digs deeper than ever and shows the readers, not the typical white master who abuses the black slave, but one of the rare black masters who enslaves those of his same skin color.

This paper aims to show how America’s false façade is all the more broken down through the discussion of the character, Moses, and its themes such as freedom, slavery, kindness and cruelty. And in relation to these themes, this paper discusses how the novel crosses time and geographical boundaries and how (depending on perspective) it is ultimately relevant to the world today as a piece of contemporary literature.

The novel opens with Moses, Henry Townsend’s first slave. In this first part, the passage which stands out the most is wherein he eats dirt: “he ate it not only to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the field, but because the eating of it tied him to the only thing in his small world that meant almost as much as his own life.” (2). This passage, as early as the beginning, is a foreshadowing of Moses’ tragic life. The dirt (along with its negative connotations), which is not meant to be eaten in the first place, shows the status of Moses as slave, and the eating of it, not only ties him to it, but to his fate.

Moses’ tragedy shows one of the effects of what slavery can do. His relationship with Caldonia, the widow of Townsend plantation, also highlights this tragedy. He grows closer to her and makes love to her. But when he asks her when she plans to free him, she is reluctant about the idea and frustrates Moses. This cruelty to Moses unsettles him and is, in a way, passed to him and he embodies this cruely. This is evident when he forces six-month pregnant Celeste to work and stops Elias from doing her share. As much as his own kind is cruel to him, he eventually also becomes cruel to his own. Moses is already not himself in this part of the novel because of his desperation and anger. Furthermore, Moses’ actions lead to: “‘Henry’s death,’ she said finally, “has unsettled all of us.” (330). The chaos in Manchester County can be summarized in Caldonia’s words. This chaos shows that this cruelty does not only have a personal and individual effect on the one being enslaved, but is amplified.

Moses, being owned by a black master, Henry, is what stands out in the novel. It is one thing to be enslaved by someone different from you, for differences create tension. However, it is another thing altogether to become a slave by someone of your own kind. It is equal to maltreating a family member. This is the extent of cruelty to others, when it is towards your own. However, in the novel, not only does a black master own a black slave, it is interesting that Henry is even darker than Moses (the black race, being discriminated for their color). There is so much irony in the situation which enables the reader to become aware of how slavery is but something unnatural. However, it is not the physical slavery per se that binds. It is, in a way, also psychological. When Henry is finally freed by his father Augustus, he admits that it does not exactly feel different from having a master. Furthermore, this also apparent in Minerva’s case wherein she is already free, but the remembrance of the name “Minnie” still disturbs her, her past haunting her. This, yet again, shows another facet of the effects of slavery.

These different facets combined together try to break the said false image America presents. These facets show an in-depth perspective and view on the extent of the cruelty and slavery in America’s history.

Furthermore, it is important to mention the relationship of Moses to the Moses of Exodus in the Bible. The Israelites, the Chosen Race, are enslaved by the Egyptians and it is Moses who leads them out of Egypt and into the Promise Land. In page 332, a woman sings, “Come on outa here, Mr. Moses man / Come on out and lead us to the Promise Land.” Moses’s journey in the novel can be related to Moses that of the Bible. They are similar in different ways. One is that both held certain power. Moses of the Bible is royalty because of the princess who discovers him in the river and Moses of the novel is overseer of the plantation. Both try to be free, and both die before they enter the “Promise Land.” In the novel, the reader is not shown the Promise Land, in a sense that the black slaves are freed, but being published in the twentieth century, the reader is aware that slavery of the blacks is yet a passing in history.

However, there is still a difference between the two Moses in relation to saving their people. Moses of the Bible succeeded, with the grace and mercy of God. However, the Moses in the novel does not have this role and frees his people. This could mean that either it is not meant for them to be freed yet or that the novel’s stand on the faith in God is that He is not in favor of the black race. The question “Was God even up there attending to business anymore?” (9) highlights this, in a way. However, at the end of the novel, when Calvin speaks to Alice, she responds with, “I been good as God keeps me.” (386). This is paradoxical to what the novel first seems to say, but this paradox buttresses the fact that you reap what you sow. Moses does not transcend the challenges of his slavery, thus ending his life in tragedy. Alice, however, “redeems” herself through art and is in good condition.

The novel ends with Celeste’s concerned doubt, “I wonder if Moses done ate yet.” This can be related to the very first part wherein Moses eats dirt and it leaves the reader to think if Moses has eaten and what exactly he eats, if it is dirt which ultimately bonds him to slavery. The novel ends as an open question, whether they have achieved freedom or not.

In relation to today, the good image America has tried to show for centuries is crumbling. America is falling. Her economy is down. Her people’s jobs are being passed to China and India. The world which she used to know has changed in the past decade. However, how is a novel set in 1855 relevant to all this change? It lies on the most general themes the novel holds: kindness and cruelty. In a fast changing world, where skin color is an issue that is becoming smaller due to technology and globalization, The Known World reminds not to forget the self and others who are all born equal who have the same five litres of blood in the body.

Through the novel’s destruction of America’s false image and exposure of the cruel truth, ultimately, the issues in humanity are raised. It is despicable for one to be cruel to another, in the first place, but it is unforgivable to be cruel to another of the same race. The Known World shows the consequences of this kind of cruelty and also, hopefully, enables the readers to be reminded of humanity and kindness, lest they want tragic fates similar to that of Moses.

As a Filipino, this cruelty is unfortunately familiar to me. More than the history of slavery in the boundaries of America, I saw the Filipino in the black race, how today, they are looked down upon and are “modern slaves” scattered around the globe. There are, of course, honorable ones similar to Fern Elston and Celeste, whether free or not, but honorable ones nonetheless. However, the fact that millions of Filipino workers overseas are crawling on their knees just to provide for their family and live a promising life, ultimately has more weight.

Furthermore, I can also see the same cruelty of one to the same race in the Filipino. In fact, it is evident everywhere in every race as well. Murder, theft, sex trafficking, rape, and etc. prove this. Whether or not people say we live in a modern and civilized world which has law, still justice is not met, and we are bound to repeat history over and over again. Maybe our generation have not reached the Promise Land yet and maybe we would have to die like Moses before seeing that day when kindness and benevolence is central to our lives. These reminders and eye-openers are what make The Known World relevant despite the content and setting, because it shows the reader truth in history and truth in the present.

Work Cited

Jones, Edward P., The Known World. HarperCollins: New York, 2003.

4) By Denise Nicole N. Copon

10915958

The Known World Paper

A part of the collective consciousness (or common knowledge) of the world is the word slavery, specifically whites and the blacks and the remnants of the ideas of Martin Luther King and as an afterthought of Barrack Obama today (coming from that kind of heritage). So common the knowledge is that whenever a comedian refers to something vaguely close to it, everyone in the room would know what the comedian is referring to.

The novel The Known World is very timely (being in a time of contemporary literature) because in this day and age the concept of histories are being challenged, open mindedness is in the culture together with the production of new knowledge.The Known World is changing what we know (there were actually black slave owners) but I’m not entirely sure how an American audience would take the novel. Instead, my paper will do a reading of the novel (exploring themes such as law and religion) through the lens of an outsider, a Filipino (pseudo sharing an American past) living in a post colonial time exploring the binaries in the novel.

The Known World was the world of the south that free and slave alike only knew and were familiar with and that going out of it or into becomes bewildering. “‘I had almost forgotten where I was.’ Winifred said, meaning the South, meaning the world of human property” (34) or Counsel’s journey on his way to Texas where things seemed almost surreal, like working on a farm where free Negroes worked and left as they pleased and the traveling group of colored people who came from Texas. Though in some ways that title may also work as a pun because to a lot of people the world isn’t that “known” in the sense of familiarity.

As an outsider looking into the world of novel, some of it does feel something sort of fantastical this “known world” with Alice who wanders around at night and sings her strange songs, lightning bending, escaping to New York in a box, a cow that flows with milk, a man who eats dirt to taste it (and isn’t it also strange for black men being slaves to white men or black men being slaves to black men as well?) and outside of it things seem relatively normal but strange to those who ventured outside their comfort place (as seen in Counsel’s travels or in glimpses of the future of characters). Reading all the way through the back of the novel there is an interview with the author where he explains these almost magical elements where he says something along the lines of it is not magical in any way but rather it was just a natural occurrence in consideration to the beliefs he was raised on.

The concept of knowledge is presented in the way of how knowledge is received and distributed, take the map in the jailhouse where John recalls that the man who sold him the map said that was the first time America was put on a map, then there is the pamphlets of Anderson Frazier where he reports on peculiarities one being slave owning Negroes, it was cited he got rich off the business that meant there was a market. A market in the sense that people like those in the South were living secluded lives within their own little “known worlds” and “new” things piqued their interest in things they never knew before.

We live in a world of dualities, bad guys and good guys, white and black or masters and slaves but in the novel it is able to blur the distinction between them. Something interesting in the narrative is that at times the skin color is only a smaller note in the details for example I always assumed that Caldonia was white but it was in a later detail that mentions her skin color. The general impression of the master is the white man and the slave is the black man becomes shaken all throughout the novel for example when Moses was bought by Henry “Moses had thought it was already a strange world that made him a slave to a white man, but God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind” (9) however it becomes more than that as the story progresses to explore human relationships.

When human relationships are portrayed (telling large chunks or whole lives of the characters) in the novel in some way it shows the narrator’s objectivity and the emotional involvement is then up to the reader, for example after following the story of Augustus Townsend one can empathize with the injustice of his free papers being stolen and being sold as a slave and worse still only to end up dead when he was trying to assert his rights.

There are also the relationships of blacks and whites whether free or slave that can be called a minority and challenging the idea of the strict slave and master relationship. For example the relationship of John’s family with Minerva who was given to them as a wedding present, in the long run she was not called slave but daughter, or Henry and William if William never helped Henry along the boy wouldn’t have come to the status and wealth he did when he died and the others where its commonplace that one slave frees himself and “buys” his relatives and friends so they can stay in the state “Robbins was one of the few white men who would not suffer from sitting across a black man” (139).

Another example is the relationship of Caldonia and Moses or Philomena and Williams both sharing love that could potentially be held against them in law and society (such as the stories Caldonia recalls about the slave and master who were hanged for their relationship). There is no tokenism involved but genuine bonds amongst human beings that transcends the social constrictions of the “known world”.

There is a comment on religion (common ground of colonization with Filipinos, being tamed by the cross) and law as well. Take the characters of the Skiffingtons, both upholders of the law and yet both with completely different views. John is a firm believer of God and the law where he believes the law is fair in terms of it doesn’t take favor on any white or black man. Counsel however “this is what happens when you give niggers the same rights as a white man” (13) and further pushes a belief that the white man is superior when he takes Augustus’ free papers and when he raids and murders the Townsend household and blames it on Moses. For religion and gaining so to speak the status of white man as master “the few black slave owners had begun to believe that their own salvation would flow down to their slave: if they themselves went to church and led exemplary lives, then God would bless them and what they owned. And one day they would go to heave and so would their slaves” (88) and the belief speaks of the kind of take of religion that they were being taught, the Jesus loves you and love your enemies of the New Testament. The characters in the novel refer to God many times whether in prayer or for comfort and as a reader that makes me think back on the force that lets other people be dominated by another (colonialism, slavery etc) is supported by the dogma of a Catheticsm that tells someone that to suffer in this life is to be awarded in the next.

William also has a view on the law which he teaches Henry when he sees Henry and Moses romping around on the ground for the law to protect rights “but the law expects you to what is master and what is slave” (123) but also he stands with the belief that law only has value if there are people who uphold it “… paper meant nothing, that it had only the power that he, Robbins, would give it” (144). That statement becomes a general comment on the law in general that says (human) slaves are property that it will only be so if there are people who treat other as property. Law is created by man and man can change it as seen in the novel where the difference of North and South is the South is where one can own human property. Underlying that is the idea of freedom “them free papers he carry with him all over the place don’t carry anough freedom” (113) supports the concept of law, freedom isn’t supposed to exist merely on paper as if rights of human being were selective depending on the color of your skin. In that kind of a world would it(slavery) even be possible for it to not exist? Take Henry for example “he did not understand that the kind of world he wanted to create was doomed before he had even spoken the first syllable of the word ‘master’” (64) to connect that to the title of The Known World where only the familiar was able to survive, like Henry Townsend died but his ‘legacy’ was taken control of again by the system that was working through Maude and Caldonia amongst other that sustained the abusive system of familiarity.

It can be said that the narrator is in a future time that knows the plight of nameless Henrys, Augustuses or Williams of history and recreates them in the narrative with the knowledge of both the ruthlessness of slavery, the movement to abolish it and how in present times that is all but a past in the history books (hello Barrack Obama). But I myself as a reader can empathize with the kinds of lives the characters went through (racial discrimination for one or the PhilAm or Expat sentiments) but at the same times going through a change in the sense of perception of the history that is generally history that is being perceived.

History isn’t a truly objective account rather like a piece of fiction it is a selection of details formed to say a certain narrative or advocate a certain belief that what gives the text’s premise (a black slave owner) a challenging notion of what has been generally believed previously. In the same way of sharing a colonial history (in the sense of course of being dominated by the white man) the novel gives the impression that it is trying to create a space for these black slave owners, blacks that were more white than the whites and the white people who saw black men on equal ground by introducing it into the consciousness of the reader together with elements that a reader can easily get involved or immersed in (love, injustice etc).

At the end of the novel then where does that leave the reader? It has addressed the general assumption most people have about the slavery of the blacks some time ago in American history but the narrative returns a person to the human level of experiencing lives of characters and not historical statistics. It creates empathy or understanding for the characters, though given names in the novel could just as well been historical people way back when that died quietly such as Augustus or were like Moses and wrongly accused. By blurring the duality there is no more “bad” or “good” guy being divided by skin color but rather just people. The strength of the novel then lies in the style of the narrative which as it presented the lives of these people in their Known World blurred binaries, questioned a reader’s historical impression of slavery and created space for these blacks and their quest for identity and freedom.

4) By Lica B. Valdez Section: A51

The Direction of the Hypothetical Novel

Among the supplementary readings given to us to accompany the reading of The Known World is an excerpt from James Baldwin’s More Notes of a Native Son, more specifically the “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel: An Address.” From this address, two things Baldwin said struck me most. The first of two is: “…[I]n the beginning I thought that the white world was very different from the world I was moving out of and I turned out to be entirely wrong. It seemed different. It seemed safer, at least the white people seemed safer. It seemed cleaner, it seemed more polite, and, of course it seemed much richer from the material point of view. But I didn’t meet anyone in that world who didn’t suffer from the very same affliction that all the people I had fled from suffered from and that was that they didn’t know who they were… In short, I had become an American. I had stepped into… as I inevitably had to do, the bottomless confusion which is both public and private, of the American Republic” (149-158).

I was struck by this because the notion of the American identity seemed to be so clear cut and well-defined before. In one of Amy Hungerford’s lectures on The Known World she says that the novel puts knowledge into question. But more specifically or rather than just historically, I think the novel also puts the American identity into question by “exposing” the existence of black slave owners. Rather, the common notion that only the whites owned slaves puts all other African-American Literature under speculation. To elaborate more on that I would say that the second thing that Baldwin said, and that I believe is relevant to The Known World is: “If I were writing hypothetically about a Frenchman I would have in a way a frame of reference and a point of view and in fact it is easier to write about Frenchmen, comparatively speaking… But to try to deal with the American experience, that is to say to deal with the enormous incoherence, these enormous puddings, this shapeless thing, to try and make an American, well listen to them, and try to put that on a page” (151).

This second notion is heavier and will take the bulk of this paper. During the lectures, when our class discussed the context of The Known World one of the questions that was raised was “Who is the narrator and/or author addressing?” Many of the literature before the novel in question is no doubt addressed to the “white”. In Frederick Douglas’ Independence Day Speech in 1841 at Rochester he berated his entire audience for inviting him to give a speech on a day he did not believe in—because all the African Americans of his time could not enjoy the same taste of freedom. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” addresses the “white moderates” and forces that to choose a side and take action rather than just wait. Even James Baldwin’s “Notes for a Hypothetical Novel: An Address” speaks to the people of the academe, of criticism, of readers—who were all predominantly white.

But I believe The Known World is different from this tradition because even if it is similar to Baldwin’s address to the scholars, this novel has in mind that the audience is no longer predominantly white but more likely those who have constructed what history was really like and may have their foundations shaken. Moreover, it is written in fragments rather than linear. What I will talk about in this paper is that in the ways mentioned above, Edward P. Jones’s novel not only provides something new to his tradition of literature by providing his own “Hypothetical novel” but also provides cracks on the surface of the known world.

I am not going to say I know much about America. Although I am a dual citizen (Filipino-American, to be more specific), I’ve only managed to get a citizenship only because my mother is also dual and to be American (in paper) is easier than not. In fact, it seems to be anything that is not third world is just easier. The Philippines has always looked up to America as the “ideal nation”—and this is most evident in politics and popular culture. All the technology, clothes, movies and other modes of entertainment are all overtly influenced by the West. Most days, I do not really notice it or particularly care. All these things that our country gets bombarded with from American become associated with our notion of what it means to be “American”. Of course, not all of them are very accurate and most of them are romanticized. However, even if we do not get it right in our end, one would think that it should be pretty clear to an actual American what it means to be “American.”

And so The Known World puts America’s “Exceptionalism” to the test by re-writing history. And in order to demonstrate that, I believe that characters illustrates the shortcomings and fixations of the so-called ideals that “Exceptionalism” has to offer. To be more specific, how the influences of Protestantism and Individualism can be contradictory. An example of the failure of such traits is seen in the character of John Skiffington, among others, who is the Sheriff of Manchester County. Although he’s mentioned early in the story, his formal introduction really begins in chapter two that starts with:

“In the Bible, God commanded men to take wives and John Skiffington obeyed. He tried to always live humbly and obediently in the shadow of God, but he was afraid that at twenty-six years old he was falling short. He yearned for earthly things, to begin with, and he rendered far more unto Ceasar than he knew God would have liked” (Jones 29).

The final sentence of the quotation above was a prelude to what he would feel for his adoptive daughter, Minerva. “But he saw himself living in the company of God, who had married him to Winifred, and he believed God would abandon him if he took Minerva. And Winifred would discover what he had done, even if Minerva never said a word” (Jones 308). In a positive light, his own beliefs prevented him from doing anything to Minerva, however, the idea did always tempt him because slave owners have also taken black women and he would merely be seen as normal (Jones 308). John Skiffington is also the perfect example of how someone does not only have to be a literal slave to be trapped. He is caught between his morals and his desires, and in the end it is never resolved because his companion murdered him. He knows how the slaves may have lived in constant limbo: whether to endure their slavery to keep the order or to aspire and obtain freedom. John’s desires for Minerva would be what the slaves would equate with their want for freedom. This, however, is a mistaken comparison that has been brought upon them by their own belief system. Of course, there are characters who are free of the obligations of being a slave. For example, Fern Elston who is a tutor of free negroes and is one herself is free not only as one of her race but, she frees herself from the duties of a wife. Another example is Alice, who was thought of as insane, has been allowed to wander outside of her master’s property. But I say that Skiffington is likened to slaves because of his contemplation and revision of a crime. On page 171 he writes, “Now he would have to start all over again. Nature of the Alleged Crime. Are there any witnesses? Can such witnesses be believed?” This contemplation continues in the succeeding page with the rest of the details being written down but, the striking thing about what he wrote on page 171, was that the idea of multiple witnesses was one that according to Emmanuel Yewah in his reading of Le Proces d’un Prix Nobel was that multiple witnesses used in storytelling can be used to not only introduce the “judging process such as elements as politics, society, and economics and religion that have be repressed by rule-oriented legal system bent on preserving its autonomy but also he quotes from “in the words of Standford Levinson and Steven Mailloux. [it] ‘challenge[s] the established boundaries and disciplinary demarcations’” (65).

What Skiffington writes is one of the many examples of commentary of the writing of fiction. This specific example not only comments on the aforementioned but makes us aware that this novel can be seen as a fragmented “multiple witness” story that exposes the shortcomings of America and its “crime of slavery” (according to Hungerford). But it takes it a step further by being self-aware that as literature, it comments on how it is written and why it is being writ. In this way, Jones not only addresses all readers but also the writers who have come before him—all those who think they know the world.

In Amy Hungerford’s Yale lecture of the novel, she picks up other examples of the commentary of fiction writing in The Known World. For example, in page 192, Stamford tries to remember the names of his parents where “… he put his father in his left hand and put his mother in his right hand, and that felt better.” Hungerford argues that this is the first instance of tension, where Edward P. Jones invokes how his mother is a strong figure in life and writing—though, she is an illiterate woman. His mother is his “source of inspiration” and thus, she had to go to the right hand which is seen as the dominant hand for writing, regardless of whether Jones was left or right handed.

Another example from Hungerford’s lecture takes from page 192, where Henry talks to Caldonia and how he tries to tell her how she is “missing something by not looking up.” He moves the pepper shaker from left to right with his left hand as the pepper falls on the white table cloth. According to Hungerford, this is a comment on writing and reading—he uses his left hand because Henry is not good at speaking. But furthermore, the image of the pepper falling on the table cloth is that it is an image of words on paper. However, it is not “redemptive” and it will “never cohere” because the writing is likened to dust.

To return to Baldwin, he talks about the function of the writer as special (153). Furthermore, that there is a duty for a writer and (more specifically, an American writer) is to discover America. Baldwin says: “There is an illusion about America, a myth about America to which we are clinging which has nothing to do with the lives we lead and I don’t believe that anybody in this country who has really thought about it or really almost anybody who has been brought up against it… this collision between one’s image of oneself and what one actually is always very painful and there are two things you can do about it, you can meet the collision head-on and try to become what you really are or you can retreat and try to remain what you thought you were, which is fantasy, in which you will certainly perish (153).”

It is the perfect irony that Edward P. Jones novel, where all historical facts were practically made up, can be seen as an imagination that unsettles the definition of America and makes a myth out of it. The Known World is actually a contribution and yet a dismantling of all the notions of the novels before it by giving us a different perspective of what it was like (or could have been like) back then. It raises questions of what is known (or what should be known) in about history and about American identity. From here, I can say that a power house like America seems to have its own problems, contrary to what is largely believed here in the Philippines, even though America tries to hide behind its concept of being “exceptional”.

Works Cited

Baldwin, James. More Notes of a Native Son. New York: Vintage, 1954. Print.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: Amistad, 2003. Print.

Hungerford, Amy. Yale University. Literature Class. n.d. Lecture.

Yewah, Emmanuel. “Multiple Witnesses, Multiple Stories: Subversion of the Story-telling Interpretation in Court Trials.”Critical Theory and African Literature Today. Ed. Eldred

Durosimi Jones, Eustace Palmer and Marjorie Jones. New Jersey: Africa World Press, 1994.

5) By Beatrice Cassandra A. Carag

Word Count: 2,356 CONLITE A51

Beyond Stereotypes is Irony: The Paradox of The Known World

The novel generally is subversive, portraying the cruelty of an unjust world of racial and class discrimination which indeed is “The Known World” itself. From this, the novel implies an ideal of equality and freedom of the author’s noble vision. However, what the novel is subversive to may be in question as far as it allows the reader to comprehend the complexity of all its ideas. Thus to simplify, it mainly aims to question (or rather be subversive to) the world, the society, the structure itself—based on what happened then in Manchester, Virginia and hence it can be said that everyone is victim to this social structure or this Known World. In this manner, the novel rejects, basically, the aesthetics—of rich and poor; man and woman; black and white; north and south; and good and bad. Accordingly, these aesthetics and labels of society—The Known World—are the true oppressors of mankind.

The notion of “equality” then presented in the novel is seen through this oppression particularly of the characters by the social structure in which slavery and social injustice is prevalent. This paper aims to assert this idea in view of the characters of Henry Townsend, Mr. Robbins, and John Skiffington. Though they may be “imperfect” characters (susceptible to flaws in a way that none of them is purely virtuous nor purely evil) they represent the people most victimized (ironically) by (1) their own stereotypes and (2) by The Known World.

The Victimized Hero: Henry Townsend

Ultimately, the cohesive element in the novel is Henry Townsend, as the story and characters circulate around him and are consequently affected greatly also by his death. However, Henry is not the typical “black” person, and in fact resists this image mainly by (1) being a slave himself who has come out of freedom yet owned slaves as well; (2) having been mentored by a white man—Mr. Robbins; and (3) by being rich and intelligent. He may be regarded as the “hero”, the “ideal”, the “dream”, or even the “possibility” of the “black” man. Foremost though, he is the Victimized Hero and in fact is the most oppressed character in the novel.

The novel says so itself that it is an odd world where even a black man owns a black slave. To some extent, it can be said of Henry that he had lost his genuine vision of freedom and equality and had been corrupted by power, money, and his “belongingness” (to the white community) by this very gesture (and the following acts in his rule e.g. the cutting of Elias’ ear). Nevertheless, through this very sentiment, Henry is victimized as well.

The subjugation of society is then present as Henry simply wanting to achieve more in life is suppressed very evidently by his own stereotype of a “black slave”. In page 138, he says “Papa, I ain’t done nothing I ain’t a right to. I ain’t done nothing no white man wouldn’t do. Papa, wait.” This restricts Henry’s growth primarily since the dichotomy between “black” and “white” is further intensified—such that black slaves should help other slaves—in an empathic obligation—to “their” freedom.

On the other hand, Henry, quite revolutionary in his thinking, has a more possible and realistic view of freedom (given that point in time)—that by owning slaves he also sets them and himself, free. As in p. 113, “Mildred made him see that the bigger Henry could make the world he lived in, the freer he would be.”, Henry’s motivation is seen and his attachment to his race; where his buying of slaves is warranted to a familial bond likened to how fathers then would buy their family members in order to be with them as free men as well.

Thus, he was in turn looked down upon for this, not to mention to his conquest to equal the white man. As in Henry’s father states: “Of all the human beins on God’s earth I never once thought the first slaveowner I would tell to leave my place would be my own child. I never thought it would be you. Why did we ever buy you offa Robbins if you gon do this? Why trouble ourselves with you bein free, Henry?...” (138).

In addition to this, another stereotype being rejected by Henry’s victimization is between that of master and slave. In p. 138, a scene occurs where Augustus Townsend drives a stick at Henry and says “Thas how a slave feel”, in turn, Henry takes the stick from his father and breaks it and says “Thas how a master feels”. This strengthens that both are connected akin to each other and both are victims of the social structure where slave and master is both persecuted for what they believe in; freedom and power, respectively.

Hence, Henry’s views (though it might have been flawed in some aspects) were oppressed by the societal norms presented in the novel, because he had a different idea of freedom and equality in contrast to the traditional “black” man’s beliefs. His ideas are however logically acceptable since as the aesthetics of good or bad are suspended in The Known World, there is only “necessity”. This is evident in a conversation between Augustus and Henry in p. 137 “Don’t you know the wrong of that, Henry?” Augustus said. / “Nobody never told me the wrong of that.” / ...Mildred said, “why do things the same old way?”...

On the other hand, the ending says that Henry “stands by his grave, but that grave is covered with flowers as though he still inhabits it.” (386) This implies that Henry in one way or another has not gone to rest and thus pursues to be manifested as the oppressed hero in this way.

Another character with a similar dilemma such as Henry’s is Maude in her ambition to keep a legacy for Caldonia. Her reasons and actions are genuinely justifiable as “right” though it is looked at as improper since it doesn’t stick to the code of the “society”. This code can also be the root of the falling apart of Henry’s plantation after his death as the cell of Caldonia’s naivety and idealism in contrast to Maude’s (oppressed) realistic and more grounded assertions.

The True Just Man: Mr. Robbins

Mr. Robbins primarily represents the typical white slave owner in the story, and thus should be the antagonist, from context. On the most basic level he is the harsh master and dominator—greedy for money and power. Yet, as a victim of The Known World, Bill Robbins exists as the most just and passionate person in the novel.

This is so through pointing his most vulnerable moments in the novel. Though he is the supposedly richest man in Manchester which entitles him to be characteristically the “whitest” man in terms of goals of land and power. In this sense, his actions especially those that defy the norms of The Known World are impressed with far greater impact and graveness. For instance, he had loved Philomena Cartwright, a black woman, like no other, and had even two children with her—Dora and Louis. This ultimately is unacceptable in The Known World, and much more since Robbins had a family. From this, it is seen how Robbins is torn between his own passions and being a “white master” that is, to have a vast plantation, many slaves, and a “good” family life. He then lives two lives—a manifestation of the vastness of his power yet also the source of his weakness.

In his other life as a “white man”, undeniably Robbins shows a perfect image where (needless to say) he is a just master. For example, when Fern Elston came to him instead of John Skiffington whenever she encountered problems with the patrollers he made sure to see to it and when Henry was disrespected by a white man when he went to make his shoes, he talked to the man and he became more agreeable. Aside from this, he gives what is due to those who are deserving and have done their work well (among his slaves). Furthermore, in extreme terms, he is just with regard to the reinforcement of the law especially with regard to his property. In p. 123 he teaches Henry: “the law will protect you as a master to your slave, and it will not flinch when it protects you. That protection lasts from here”...”all the way to the death of that property...But the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave.” In being a “master”—he is without a doubt impartial and fully rational.

However, from his weak moments, we see a greater side to the “white master”—where in the sentiments of the novel, a dichotomy arises where as the blacks are uplifted as their equals, Robbins is shown as but human as well, susceptible to pain no matter what facade or egotistic show he may put on. This is seen in the episodes of the “storms” he gets in his mind and how hard he tries to deny this weakness.

Thus it is seen particularly that a deeper part of this justice is his love and care for his family, which coincidentally or non-coincidentally comprises of black people. In p. 121 he relates “Looking at the back of Henry absorbed in his work, it came to him like something he had long been avoiding, that the world would not be very good to the children he had had with Philomena, but whatever world it would be, he wanted Henry in it for them.” His justice seeps not only to a cognitive standard then but now to a moral core. His oppression by The Known World as the just man then exists in the fact that such a man cares for “colored” people like that—more so to a slave. Robbins swallowed a great deal of his pride in the process and even admits in p. 119 that “what he felt for Philomena might well doom him”. Needless to say, he cannot show this love or care in public and continues to be trapped in two worlds by The Known World.

The Tragic Spectator: John Skiffington

Skiffington is the sheriff of the town and primarily represents the authorities or the government in the social system. In p. 43, the novel encapsulates the essence of the rule of John Skiffington: “Despite vowing never to own a slave, Skiffington had no trouble doing his job to keep the institution of slavery going, an institution even God himself had sanctioned throughout the Bible. Skiffington had learned from his father how much solace there was in separating God’s law from Caesar’s law.” (note: this is regardless of the religious implications; though God’s law in the statement may be interpreted as an ideal law of man or of moral values).

His persona therefore is not necessarily at fault as protested by his alliance to the government/reinforcement given that the system is generally flawed by the very existence of slavery. In this manner, Skiffington is oppressed by this particular sector—he is voiced down by the dominant rule of law, notwithstanding his belief in not owning slaves, his good moral ethics and also, his love for Minerva. However, his tragedy lies ultimately, though oppressed as he is, in how he has become but merely a spectator, who, truthfully didn’t make much of a big difference in the story aside from his services as sheriff. Furthermore, he is controlled and overpowered by the richer men of the area, and hence limiting his power to only the deputy, the patrollers, etc. However, from all that he knows, he is purged, in a catharsis of his tragedy and simply becomes indifferent to everything.

Similarly, his patroller, Barnum Kinsey, the poorest white man in the county experiences the same thing as Skiffington. In p. 217 Travis says to him that night he sold Augustus (though he was already free) “It is not why he and I are doin it, but why you aren’t doin it. That is the question for all time. Why a man, even somethin worthless like you, sees what is right and still refuses to do it.” This speaks of the clash between his beliefs and what The Known World imposes. Evidently, Barnum wasn’t able to do anything, and Augustus remained sold.

These characters show the tragic apathy of what “the spectator” has become. In a way, the spectator lies in each one of the characters as well, existing in a premeditatedly unjust world—dreaming only to dream, and living in contented discontent.

Hence, the paradox in The Known World lies within the problem of man and society—basically, a “whodunit”. There have been so much said about the lives of slaves and masters yet consequently the novel resists “moving on”—the ending shows Caldonia waiting for another letter from Calvin, and Celeste in a nostalgia about Moses. This is Jones’sform of not only drawing out but also immortalizing the cruelty, the ironies, ambiguities and hardships of a life of slavery and discrimination in general (as seen in the novel that it could happen to anyone).

Though it shows that some of the slaves had created a better life away from Virginia—the ultimatum sticks that the novel’s essence is in constantly questioning the paradox of this society. Though more questions and answers come and go (and slavery has simmered down), people continue to become victims of the very same corruption to this day and thus the wrath of this Known World as seen in p. 216, when Darcy questions, “why are we threatened on all sides by the incorrigible? Why do they threaten us every which way we turn? Have we displeased our God in some fashion?”

Nevertheless, ultimately, no matter how this Known World oppresses mankind, truth remains that it has oppressed, and no matter how it is read, the painting of Virginia in the end—as it encapsulates nothing but the truth—“is what God sees when He looks down.” (385)—a dramatic irony in itself as we know the Known World of injustice, inequality and social discrimination.

Work Cited

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. United States of America: Amistad, 2003. Print.

6) By Sharmaigne Gayle Cantos

CONLITE

The Known World: Characters and Religion

I. Introduction

The Known World written by Edward P. Jones is a work of fiction but can also be considered as a historical novel. It was published in 2003 and won some awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004.

The novel narrates several events that occurred when the United States of America still foster slave ownership base on the person’s skin color. These events usually tell stories on characters who are either the master or the slave, or they could also be perhaps a slave-turned-free-man. The novel begins with the death of Henry Townsend, a former slave that becomes a free man when his father (Augustus Townsend) buys him out of slavery and who eventually becomes a master with the help of his former owner, William Robbins. The book then goes back to the time when Henry Townsend is still alive (it even goes back narrating events when he is a young boy). Not only that, the book also narrates the lives and/or experiences of other characters such as Augustus Townsend and his wife Mildred, William Robbins including his family, Caldonia (Henry’s widow), Fern Elston and her husband, Elias and Celeste (both slaves), John Skiffington (the town’s sheriff) and his cousin Counsel, Moses (Henry’s overseer), along many others.

It is known that the United States of America’s prominent religion is Protestantism, which is quite evident in the novel,The Known World. One can see that most of the masters/owners’ ideals is actually base on this religion. Some of the slaves also have their ideals coming from the said religion. John Skiffington is a character that would be the perfect example for these characters that base his ideals on his religion, on his God; however, there are some characters like Counsel Skiffington that does otherwise; instead of religion imposing on them, it is they that impose their ideals on their religion. In other words, they try to shape religion that would best suit them and their ideals.

This paper would like to discuss how the characters in the novel, The Known World, views religion; whether it is the religion that is afflicting its ideals to them or as stated above, is it they who really are afflicting their own ideals on religion. Given that argument, this paper would be using mostly the characters of John and Counsel Skiffington. John being the representation that religion is the one imposing its ideals while Counsel represents otherwise. Furthermore, this paper would also like to comment on this novel’s standing in comparison with other novels. For instance, how is it different from the previous novels and what changes did the writer of the novel made in this particular book.

II. Views on Religion

Jakle and Wilson in the book entitled Derelict Landscapes, under the chapter “Underlying Cultural Values,” discuss America then and America now, along with why they act or think that way. In that chapter, they tackle Protestantism and how it affects the American ways of thinking. They wrote that, “Protestantism taught self worth through humility, abstinence, frugality, thrift, and industry. It was an ethic of asceticism and hard work as oppose to idleness and indulgence. Indeed, luxury, greed, and avarice were condemned. Built in was an apathy toward the aristocracy, viewed as nonproductive and superfluous, and disdain for the poor, considered lazy and corrupt in their deprivation” (43-44). In that passage, it is clearly written that Protestantism values hard work and frowns upon those who chooses and remains idle. It is also suggested in the quotation that the poor is to be blamed because they are not hard working. One sentence also says that Protestants should not indulge themselves with luxury, greed, etc. and this actually is what John Skiffington shows the readers of the novel. During his wedding with Winifred, a guest (Belle, Counsel’s wife) gives them a special present in the form of Minerva, a young slave girl. The guest boasts of Minerva’s skill and other guests recognize that indeed she would be a good slave. Winifred and John are hesitant to accept her because it’s against their ideals to own a slave; but because they were also against being rude to their guests, they have accepted her however, they did not keep her to be their slave but they keep her to be their “daughter.” In this kind of circumstance, John and his wife have refused to live in luxury (in the form of not owning people). John Skiffington and his wife are one of the few people who do not own slaves; as oppose to Henry & his wife, Caldonia and Fern Elson & her husband who practically owns people in which race they also belong to. John Skiffington also shows hard work by working as the sheriff of the town however, this is what actually questions his ideals. It is quite an irony that he objects to the idea of owning slaves and yet he works for people like William Robbins to make sure that none of his slaves get away. In actuality, John Skiffington does nothing in order to impose his ideals to other people; he just keeps them to himself. Nonetheless, this does not make him any less of a protestant than he is. Protestantism is more concerned on the individual rather than the collective. It is how Jakle and Wilson wrote it, “Protestantism stressed on the individual’s responsibility to achieve personal salvation” (44).

John Skiffington has taken his ideals from Protestantism. It has taught him that he ought not to have any slaves of his own, ought to work hard as the town’s sheriff, and ought to survive and mind his own business apart from anybody else’s.

There is however another Skiffington in the novel; and this is Counsel Skiffington, cousin of John Skiffington. He has a vast land in North Carolina; it was very productive until a time when all the slaves seemed to get sick and die one by one. His family gets affected eventually. All of them died except for him; and he burned his house down. Due to the epidemic that broke out in his land, no one wants to buy it, resulting that Counsel gets no money for his land. He then travels around until he gets to Virginia and to his cousin’s house. He is later then made Deputy by his cousin; little that cousin know, Counsel would be the one to kill him out of greed. He kills his cousin after he finds gold in the house of Augustus and Mildred Townsend, Henry’s parents. They have gone there in order to retrieve Moses, Henry and Caldonia’s overseer who fled away. He finds the gold while looking for Moses and because he wants to keep them and he knows that his cousin will definitely object to this, he decides that he should kill him. After killing him, Counsel reflects on his past (the hardships he went through and the losses he had encountered) and compare it to his present to where he is right then and there, discovering gold and keeping them to himself, he comes up with this realization: “Was there a prayer Job had offered to God after he put his servant back a million times better than Job had been before the devastation? Thank you, O Lord. I cannot forget what I once had, but I will not resent you so much when I think of those old days and my dead loved ones” (Jones 371). That passage implies that Counsel has imposed his own ideals on his religion. It is him who is thinking that God had finally bless him, had finally give him gold after his devastation, had finally rewarded him after taking from somebody else and killing his own cousin. He was therefore, forcing his own thought (at that moment) into religion, into God.

Aside from Counsel Skiffington, there are other characters, together with their group and/or race, that impose their ideals on religion particularly Protestantism. Protestantism may be the major religion in the United States of America, and it is the major religion in this novel; however, one could see that there are two kinds of Protestantism that is evident in the text. These kinds of Protestantism can be distinguished by race and class; for the masters and for their slaves.

Protestantism appears to have offered different things to different people. For the master, it offers what is already stated above. For them they think they are bless because of their hard work that eventually paid off and that is why they are now living it off by owning lands and owning people who are “below” them; perfect example for that is Henry Townsend. On the other hand, the slaves see their religion differently. They might believe in the value of hard work that someday they would also be like their master; to be free from the hard labor they’ve been doing all their lives or simply just to be free. They believe that God has a waiting promise land for them; just like how He prepared a promise land before for his people, the Israelites, and drive them away from their masters, the Egyptians. They are hoping that someday, someone would eventually help them to be free from their masters and towards their own promise land although their masters believe other wise. They believe that it is enough that they, themselves, are saved for they believe that if they are saved all their possessions would also follow, would also be saved.

Martin Luther King Jr. addresses this issue about distinctions of Protestantism in his letter entitled Letter from a Birmingham Jail. The “white” church would be accepting of people owning slaves; whereas he believes together with his church of otherwise. They believe that no one should be enslaved especially because of their skin color; that no one should be discriminated by it. Luther, in his letter, writes about how different these two kinds of Protestantism in America. He clearly voices out his objections on how the “white” church preach to their people. He hopes that the “white” church would also see this issue in their point of view.

III. The Known World as a Novel

If one is starting to read this novel, one would probably make an assumption that the main character or protagonist in this novel is Moses, the overseer. The book actually starts narrating the “present” time in the novel with Moses’ actions however as he/she goes on, the main character seems to shift to Henry Townsend instead; as the novel starts to narrate his life and death. The novel does not stop shifting into characters nevertheless; it keeps moving from one character into another and goes back to the previous characters it was narrating. By the end, readers would get the idea that this novel is unlike most novels which have a protagonist. Everybody can be consider as the protagonist in this novel, not only that, but at one point in the narration, these characters could also be consider as antagonist or the villain in the story. This novel clearly experiments on its characters. It plays on how they are viewed by the readers in a given episode. Aside from the characters, time is also experimented in the novel. The narrator of the novel seems to shift from present to past, vise-versa, and even ventures into the near and far future.

IV. Conclusion

In summary, this paper has discussed the points on whether the characters in The Known World is the one being dictated by their religion or is it really them who is the one dictating their ideals, their needs in their religion. At this point, this paper would like to conclude based on what was discussed above, that it is not religion that is playing as the dictator but it is really the characters that is playing that part. As already suggested above, the characters are the ones that put their ideals in their religion so that they could accept it and live with it. It is really religion who has been keeping up with them and not the other way around. In fact, both races had built their own different church in order to suit their own different ideals.

This paper also commented on how the novel stand amongst most novels by discussing how the novel experiments and plays with its characters and its concept of time.

Works Cited

Jakle, John and David Wilson. Derelict Landscapes. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: Maryland, 1992. PDF File

Jones, Edward. The Known World. HarperCollins Publisher: New York, 2004. Paperback.

Luther, Martin. Letter from a Birmingham Jail. PDF File.

7) By Eliza Bridget L. Tan

Word Count: 2359 CONLITE November 3, 2011

The Existence of Freedom in Slavery

The institution of slavery in the Unites States has always been an issue in American history. People may view it in unpleasant way, like how inhumane its practice is, or in a more positive way, like how it is a necessity for the development of the economy. Many scholars have sought to describe the different notions of slavery, uncovering not just the bitter episode of American history, but also realizing new truths on the issue. Edward P. Jones’saward-winning novel, The Known World, focuses on the human nature of desire for power and reign over one's possessions, in the context of America in decades before the civil war. It tackles the unusual case wherein an African American / black owns another African American, as well as the friendship or bond between an African American and a European American / white, blurring the boundaries between what is then perceived as moral, immoral, family, foe, master, or slave. In this paper, I will be discussing the binary of freedom and slavery, relating them to the novel's take on these concepts, how the American people developed since then, and ultimately lead to what we have in the present time.

The novel began with introducing the characters one by one, from Moses working at the plantation, Alice wandering in the woods, the death of Henry set in 1855, jumping to another time frame, and telling the story of another character. This style of narrative helps the readers get a glimpse of what would happen in the future, the individual struggles of the slaves and the masters all connected in some way, and later revealing the whole story as the novel progresses. It is a historical novel based on a plantation owned by a freed black slave in Manchester County, Virginia. At the very start, the novel already points out the question of black slave ownership, particularly Henry Townsend's ownership of 33 slaves and a good amount of land – a rarity in not just the slave-holding community in Manchester County, but even beyond Virginia. The character of Henry is ironic in the sense that he was bought out of slavery, and yet with freedom, he chose to practice slavery himself, enslaving people of the same ethnicity or color. This is compelling because the common notion would be, as Augustus Townsend, Henry's father, had done, to buy the person out of slavery and let him live freely. Several other ironies appeared in the story, unfolding the complications that come with the practice of slavery. In page 138 of the novel, Augustus was telling his son how disappointed they were after hearing the news that Henry bought a man, saying “Of all the human beins on God's earth I never once thought the first slaveowner I would tell to leave my place would be my own child... Why did we ever buy you offa Robbins if you gon do this? Why trouble ourselves with you bein free, Henry?” while Henry, on the other hand, tried defending himself by saying that he “ain't done nothin I ain't a right to. I ain't done nothing no white man wouldn't do...” Mentioning the tern 'white man' shows how this clear distinction between colored people and the Caucasians, and it is repeatedly emphasized in other parts of the novel. What happened in this particular scene was Augustus, as a carpenter / furniture maker, hit his son with one of the walking sticks he made. The walking stick had the image of squirrels chasing each other, from head to toe, all going around to reach the top of the stick, which is an acorn. This can be interpreted in different ways, depending on how one views the acorn. It can be an illustration of how a lot of African Americans work hard to buy themselves out of slavery; the acorn would symbolize freedom, or it could also show how people, in general, want the same thing – power. Though community is important, Americans also view self-fulfillment as a way to success, that improving oneself “has been a primary motivating force in American history” (Jackle & Wilson 34). The squirrels represent the men who fail to see that there may be other acorns or forms of happiness found elsewhere, they run around to get that one acorn on top, and doing that, inevitably, the squirrels would have to step on their fellow squirrels to attain power and survive. In the same way that Henry had to be a master to a slave, to get what he want and establish a prosperous life with his wife, Caldonia. Augustus later slams this stick on Henry's shoulder, which would be bothersome to him later on.

Another irony would be the sheriff, John Skiffington, despite saying that he and his wife are unhappy with the concept of slavery, he tries to keep his job of protecting the very law that upholds slavery. There is a clear division between 'what is Caesar's and what is God's,' which becomes Skiffington's excuse for what he does and protects, and though the couple may have Minerva, they treat her like a daughter. When Minerva first appeared in the story, Belle presented her and had her “festooned with a blue ribbon, stand and then twirl about for Winifred” (31). This image shows how the people, not just women, are treated like possessions, items that can be casually given as wedding presents, used or commanded to do what one wants, and legacies that can be passed down to the next generation. This is further developed when even some of the colored people themselves, think low of their own people. An example would be in the case of Fern Elston's family: In four generations, Fern's family had managed to produce people who could easily pass for white. “Marry nothing beneath you,” her mother always said, meaning no one darker than herself, and Fern had not... “Human beings should never go back. They should always go forward.” Some of Fern's people had gone white, disappearing across the color line and never looking back. (74)

Also, Caldonia's mother, Maude, constantly reminds her daughter that “the Legacy is your future” and that Caldonia must take care of them and not let grief make her let go of them. The legacy “meant slaves and land, the foundation of wealth” (180).

John and Winifred's stand on slavery is similar to that of John Skiffington's father and Tilmon Newman. John's mother died and his father “dreamed that God told him he did not want him and his son having dominion over slaves” (30) while the death of Tilmon's youngest child made him “believe God wanted him to free his slaves” (181). It seems that the practice of slavery has something to do with the misfortunes happening with the characters – Henry's death and the plague that swept Counsel Skiffington's plantation and family. This leads to the biblical allusions found in the novel, in relation to the concept of slavery. For example, there is irony in the name of Moses, the overseer. He is in charge of managing the slaves as ordered by Henry, but in the Christian Bible, Moses was commanded by God to lead the people out of Egypt, but he was not able to really get the people out of slavery and to the Promise Land. Counsel Skiffington's experience with the plague or small pox that killed his slaves and family is similar to the story of Job in the Bible, where in God was testing Job by taking everything he had to see if he would remain faithful or not. Incidents and challenges like those could make a person reflect upon his/her life and realize how God must have wanted the world to be, free of slavery and the inhumane conditions put on people.

Also, in page 25, it was explained that the 'storms' that William Robbins experiences were “the price to be paid for Philomena and their children” (25). The clear difference in the treatment and perception of the two races are distinct, and yet Robbins, despite being a slave-owner himself, chooses to be with Philomena, their children, and finds favor in his former groom, Henry. This frowned upon by some people, but in the novel, it showed the start of the blurring between slave and master, black and white.

As previously pointed out, the African American slaves were viewed more as a property than people. When Henry first started out in the slave-owning business, he was close to Moses that he wrestled with him in the mud. Robbins, seeing this, later teaches him that “the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave” (123) and that playing with one's slaves going beyond that line. The treatment of the slaves can be compared to the incident in chapter 6, where Harvey Travis orders his horse to bob its head once, twice, or take him home at his command. In the end, “...the animal, exhausted, confused, lowered its head and did not respond anymore” (219) because it shows that horses, although tied to serve its master, have limitations. In the same way, slaves get tired and suffer like any other human being. Though it is true that slave labor provides economic progress to plantations, humans must be treated like humans. An example of this point in the novel would be with what happened to the child Luke, who died from working too much in the field.

When Rita, the one who escaped from Robbins' estate and was a second mother to Henry, was sent in a box to New York, she was holding on to a walking stick made by Augustus. Augustus, sending her to away, became a tool to her freedom. She reached out the box and gave the walking stick to a boy, and the stick, with the cared image of Adam holding Eve, all the way up to the presidents of the United States, symbolizes how Rita is holding on to her ancestors, her history, and future, taking them all to a better place, to freedom.

When the black slaves get their freedom, as represented in a piece of paper, they get to do whatever they want with no master stopping them. What is sad though, is that the 'free papers' of the slaves, something gained through hard work, could be taken from you so easily. The slaves, though free, were deprived from education and so only a few know how to read or write. They believe in what other people tell them so easily because they do not know much about the world outside of what is known, or what they are used to in the plantation – like Philomena, from when she was a young girl, she always believed what Sophie tells her. She dreams of going to Richmond, a place of excess, to experience the good life.

When the African Americans get abused because of the color of their skin, they could not fight back. In the case of Augustus Townsend, even though he memorized everything in his free paper, when Harvey Travis ate it up, his freedom was taken from him too, which let Travis sell him back to slavery. Freedom, in that sense, is short-lived and the state of being your own person can change depending on the situation dictated by the white men. Even after the emancipation, the slaves were not really free. “With freedom they [the slaves] suddenly found themselves in a position where they had to supply their own needs. All were willing and able to do so, but to do so they required land of their own... To be really free, it was necessary that they be able to make a living by themselves...” (Lester 144). People back then would already assume that an African American is a slave. To be really free in that society, it seemed that they had to change to color of their skin.

At present time, slavery has finally been abolished and is no longer legal. Still, though, the footprints that it left in the history of America cannot be erased, and the values and lessons learned will continue to live with the people. Though in some countries today, people still practice a form of human trafficking in one way or another, and households would have servants working for them, slavery is a different issue. The civil wars, resistance to slavery, emancipation, and everything after that all lead to the development of America and its people as a whole. Now, the law is behind the people, and though some might be racist in their actions, colored people are less subjected to the cruelty and discrimination that had happened years ago. To answer the question of whether freedom exists for a slave, it does, but it only begins when the society learns to accept and understand them completely. To reiterate what Fern said in the novel, “The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn” (181).

Slavery can do a lot to a person; it can change them for the better or worse, make them stronger or weaker, as illustrated in the characters of Moses, Celeste, and the other slaves. The way that the story is presented is interesting and it shows bits of the story, giving the readers a good grasp of American history itself. The form allowed the readers to explore the 'known' world in much detail of the characters' lives, the world that the slaves like Moses knew, and the freedom that existed for them at that time. This book is a good read for everyone as it becomes an eye-opener to the lesson that all of us should treat every person of whatever color or religion as fellow human beings, and to really understand freedom in the sense of a black American slave. From this lesson, we can hope that something as horrible as slavery will never happen again and that no other human being should suffer the same conditions as suffered by the slaves represented in the characters of the novel.

Works Cited

Jakle, John A., & Wilson, David. Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America's Built Environment. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992. PDF File.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. New York: Amistad, 2006. Print.

Lester, Julius. To Be A Slave. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1968. Print.

8) By Stephanie Gonzaga

10634053 CONLITE A51 Word count: 2,120

The Known World: Is Freedom from Slavery For Real?

After reading Edward P. Jones’s The Known World, and after going through each sub-plot, memory, flashback, and foreshadow, one question prevails above all other questions: Is freedom from slavery for real? And I am not simply referring to slavery per se. I am also referring to slavery and in which the master of the house is discrimination.

Throughout my reading of the text, I could not help but wonder if the "free Negroes" really did consider themselves free citizens of Manchester County, Virginia (or all over the United States, for that matter). Even John Skiffington, the county sheriff who made it his life goal to stand up for the law for both sides, wondered to himself if there really was such a thing as freedom for the slaves: "Could the cord of a man born into slavery ever be cut forever and completely, even if he had been free for some years? Was he doomed by virtue of the color of his skin?" (Jones 311). This was right after he found out that Augustus Townsend, a man who strove to buy himself out of slavery, was stolen and sold back into it. And really, did people like Augustus Townsend or Fern Elston really believe that they were fully granted freedom by their masters and the society? The fact that they need to have their free papers with them each time they rode out of their homes or plantations and on their way back from the city shows how restraining the "freedom" given to them still is.

This distorted concept of freedom and the obvious lack of equality between the whites and the blacks contradict in many ways the prevailing notion that America is a country where every citizen is granted freedom, equality, and liberty (Jakle and Wilson 38). Moreover, several American cultural values mentioned in the article "Derelict Landscapes", such as the utilitarian attitudes (36) and the morals and ethics of the people (37), are looked upon in sarcasm and irony. But two things in particular strike me the most about the situation of American society (in relation to The Known World), and these two things are the points of discussion for this paper: First, freedom for the slaves is really just a half-cooked freedom wherein the law can only do so much for them. Second, even with all these slaves doing everything they could to get out of slavery, they are still slaves to discrimination, to injustice imposed by the white-skinned oppressors, and that discrimination continues to fester and extend itself to the world, to the known world that we are conscious of.

A Half-Cooked Freedom

Let's look at the kind of freedom given to the slaves the moment they are able to pay their way out of slavery. In the case of the slaves of Edward P. Jones’snovel, they needed to keep their free papers in their pockets at all times. These papers kept them from being accused by the authorities as runaways, and so protected them from being sold back into slavery.

But as it turned out, these free papers were to be depended on so much, for even though the patrollers knew who the free slaves Fern Elston, Augustus and Henry Townsend were (and for many years at that), they would still demand to see these free papers and the bills of sale of the slaves that accompanied them. In the case of Fern Elston, she was well aware of her vulnerability despite her being free: "In the early days of the patrollers, the first thing out of her mouth when they stopped her was 'I will not abuse you in word or deed and I do not expect you to abuse me in word or deed. And I do not want my servant abused'" (Jones 130). It is ironic how these papers are labeled as free, when in fact the recipients depended their freedom and independence on what the words on these papers had to say.

A more unusual behavior towards freedom would be the return of Henry Townsend to the world of slavery. It is clear that his parents, Augustus and Mildred, have done everything to buy their son, Henry, from Mr. Robbins. It is clear that they are now a family of free Negroes that can finally live in peace on their own accord. But Henry chooses to turn back and create a "legacy" of his own, as his mother-in-law Maude would call it. When he told his father about him buying his first slave, he argued that he only did what any white man could and that he did not break the law (138). What's more, his support from William Robbins fuels his need to defend his decision, and so went on to become one of the most popular black slaveowners in Manchester, Virginia.

In a county driven by slavery, it is certainly not against the law for a black man to own slaves. But it is an unusual phenomenon in the community and more unusual for the slaves. I quote from an interview in which Edward P. Jones explains the unusual phenomenon of black slaveowners: “The fact that many people — even many black people — didn't know such people existed is perhaps proof of how few they were. In addition, as I note in the novel, husbands purchased wives and parents purchased children, and so their neighbors may have come to know the people purchased not as slaves, as property, but as family members. Finally, owning a slave was not a cheap proposition, and the economic status of most blacks back then didn't lend itself to owning a human being” (The Known World 6).

Thinking about this return to slavery, I realized that this is a phenomenon that, though not as cruel and harsh as how slavery was before, is happening today. Take the Filipino culture, for instance. It is now common practice for a family (usually of middle to high social standing) to hire a maid, a cook, or a worker (or all three) to do several jobs around the house. In the case of immigrants, Filipinas would fly across the world in order to work under foreign employers as domestic helpers, cultural dancers, factory workers, and the like (Cruz 68).

If the nature of the work is solely considered, the slave and the hired help are no different from each other. They work for a master/employer, and a foreign one at that. The only difference is that today, the term "slave" or "slavery" is no longer used. The employed are termed as "hired help", are paid once or twice a month depending on the verbal agreement, and have the choice to stop working and return home to the family as he or she sees fit.

Going back, the concept of freedom in The Known World is not the kind of freedom people in today's United States are relishing today. Though they were free to earn a living, build a home, and go about the county as they pleased, the blacks of Manchester County Virginia were still vulnerable to the abuse and unjustice of those higher in class and race. And sometimes, that abuse can go as far as leading to a free and innocent man's death.

Slavery: Discrimination as the Master of the House

Throughout the novel, my eyes would spot instances of racial, gender, and social discrimination. The derogatory word "nigger" is a clear example. The segregation in house and lodging is another, with the white masters living under a strong home and the slaves in their cabins. Then there are the combination of these discriminations, such as when William Robbins visited the boarding house his black wife, Philomena, stayed in after running away to Richmond: "He [owner of the house] knew Robbins well enough to let him keep three Negroes in the room next to Robbins and didn't charge him extra for having Negroes in the place and not in the barn" (Jones 121).

In terms of racial discrimination, it is not only the Negroes who suffer from it. The Cherokee, Oden Peoples, is very much subject to it, though he is more fortunate due to his being one of the patrollers in Manchester, the brother-in-law to Harvey Travis, and his cynical reputation of being hired to cut off body parts as slave punishment (93-94). There is also the discrimination against the Frenchman, Jean Broussard. He believed himself to be an American citizen, loved the country well enough to proclaim that he is "America now," and that he raises the flag high over his head and that of all the others (167). And yet, the trial ended with his hanging. But it was not merely the fact that he was convicted of first-degree murder that brought the jury to this decision: “It was not this so much, this repetition of who he was, that hurt his case…It was not that the defense attorney from Culpeper kept telling the jurors Broussard's Scandinavian partner was not an actual American citizen, though that did not help his case either. It was the accent. The accent gave him ‘the stench of a dissembler.’ Everything Broussard said came out warped because of the accent… The jurors…would have been able to accept why the partner was killed if Broussard had sat on the stand and told his whole story without an accent. (177)”

Looking now at the context of the present time, there is still discrimination among races, gender, and social class in many parts of the world. In the Philippines, the dark-skinned are nothing out of the ordinary, disliked even by others. But if one is to spot a fair-skinned or white Caucasian woman with straight blonde or auburn hair, or tall, muscular, and long-nosed for the men, the treatment is completely positive and, at times, alluring.

As for gender discrimination, this is easy to spot as well in the text. For instance, pricing was more often higher for male slaves than that for females, and this can be attributed to the Americal ideals of usefulness (Jakle and Wilson 36) in that the slaves who looked and proved to be useful and experienced in labor are always the more expensive ones in the market. The discrimination is especially evident when Henry Townsend died and his wife, Caldonia, took on the responsibility of managing the plantation. First, Moses aggressively demands his freedom from Caldonia after many nights of making love (330), thinking that his power as overseer and now his influence over her could win him that. Second, the disappearances of several slaves from the plantation gave the impression on the patrollers that "…A man dies and a woman runs his place into the ground" (311).

All in all, the freedom to live without depending on a master does not guarantee freedom from a higher master, discrimination. The blacks, the Cherokees, the Asians, and all other races and minorities are still subject to discrimination, one way or another. It can be said though that the severity of discrimination has lessened over the years, but it still exists.

In the case of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the "Letter from Birmingham Jail", he had supporters willing fight against the injustice that is prevalent in Birmingham, Alabama. They laid out the foundation for their non-violent campaign: sufficient facts that pinpoint the injustice, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action. But he was fed up with all their delays and their appeals to soften the protests and to stick with negotiation, so much so that he went ahead and did what he had to do: direct action against Birmingham. And yet, despite the fact that he only acted according to the purpose at Birmingham, he was arrested and put into jail for "parading without a permit."

Slavery and discrimination have tainted the American ideals of freedom, equality, and liberty. Although one can say he is free to do what he wants in his life, he is still bound by the discriminations, conformities, and cultural values that shape the society he is living in.

But despite all that, America upholds its reputation as the country that values patriotism, individualism, and freedom. It continues to fascinate the world, so much so that even foreigners would come to America just to understand and live in its peculiarities. In the novel, this is Canadian journalist Anderson Frazier, Frenchman Jean Broussard, and the Polish poet whose publisher assured him that even though he would not get any profit from his books of poetry, "there was a promise of glory and remembrance and the adoration of a public hungry for the real truth of America" (357).

Works Cited

Cruz, Jhoanna. Marginality and Subversion in Ruth Elynia Mabanglo’s Mga Liham ni Pinay. Diss. De La Salle University-Manila, 1990. Print.

Jakle, John A. and David Wilson. Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America’s Built Environment. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992. 36-38. Print.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. 1st ed. New York: Amistad, 2003. Print.

Jones, Edward P. Interview. “The Known World by Edward P. Jones.” Contemporary Authors Online, 2006. 6. Thomson Gale. Web. 3 Nov. 2011.

King, Martin Luther Jr. “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” n.p. n.pag. 16 April 1963. Print.

9) By Clarice Quismorio, Word Count: 1,910

10832912 CONLITE A51

The Known World by Edward P. Jones: Black Experience and Slavery

The world has been and still is seemingly revolving under the spell of the American notion of superiority wherein the whites assume the position of the dominators while the blacks or the colored people remain inferior to them. Thus, this leads to the common conception that any topic that does not pertain to the whites is different and is subject to discussion.

Garnering the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2004, Edward P. Jones recapitulates themes such as slavery, religion, community, and history into his novel, The Known World. This paper aims to discuss some of the elements and writing techniques utilized in the novel particularly its structure, evident themes, character profiling, context, irony, and the importance of the narrator in relation to the central aspect of the novel – black experience and slavery.

Set in Manchester County, Virginia, the plot focuses on the life of Henry Townsend, a black farmer who was once a slave but then became a slave-owner. He managed to free himself from his earnings under the authority of William Robbins, a powerful and wealthy white aristocrat. The novel opens with Henry’s death. Due to this unfortunate event, the responsibilities to govern the estate and maintain its peace fell into the hands of Caldonia, Henry’s wife. However, she could not manage the slaves that resulted to chaos. When initially, they found love and compassion despite the confinement in slavery, the slaves began escaping the borders of their owners and as well as betraying each other. Passively allowing all of these to happen, everything in the plantation went unstable, in danger of falling apart at any given moment.

By opening a novel with a conflict, it forebodes the reader that the course of the novel would be heavy and shall contain its complexities. The dark tone of the narrator plays an important role in making the reader expect what might happen next. However, in this novel, the most important task of the narrator is to maintain the central intelligence about every event that transpires. The narrator seems to be either a cosmic being on the one hand, but on the other it also possesses humanized traits. It seems to be a cosmic being for it is omniscient. The narrator hovers through the physical world as the incidents occur and onto the interiority of the characters as he/she investigates their thoughts and perspectives. The persona also has an inclination towards making conclusions about the characters as if deeming these pronouncements as truths. On the contrary, the narrator could be merely human for there are tendencies wherein the story seems to be rambles from his/her human mind as if a memory. This is recollection of a memory wherein the details are sometimes obsessed into a very exhaustive explanation and description, while mentioning every aspect possible. Sometimes, it could be considered as a compilation of distorted images, and memory of the persona, those that comprise a human mind’s stream of consciousness. It ties up with how a memory of a person would look like if it was to be illustrated, something that starts from being scattered and disorganized, then maintains coherence only to lose track again.

Another important element of any novel is its characters. In this novel, each character is given importance as Jones arms them with exceptionally detailed profiling, particularly during the early part of the novel. Even the minor characters’ identities are dug, deep enough to illustrate their backgrounds and histories in relation to the other characters. The novel uses these characters as tools for directing the course of the story through their perspectives. There are different points-of-view, coming from Henry, Caldonia, some of the slaves, and Skiffington. Hence, this technique allows the readers to understand where each character is coming from and how his/her traits function in the novel. Furthermore, he weaves the lives of the characters in his novel of intersecting plots using a certain time frame regardless of the shifts from past and present.

On the background of the novel, it is founded on historical events that shaped the lives of people, particularly of those who lived during the era wherein slavery was rampant, since the story transpires twenty years prior to the Civil War. America had two divisions with regards to slavery before the Civil War, the Slave State and the Free State. The first one has a legalized system of slavery, while the latter aimed to abolish it. Jones seemingly poses in a neutral position, wherein in his characterization, there is neither bad nor good characters. He is inclining towards a more democratic sense with regards to explaining the difference of races. He carefully adjusts their identities in a way that neither of the races becomes diabolical. Through the shifting allusions to historical backgrounds and events, Jones offers the readers a close representation of what is really happening in the novel’s idea of the present America.

The reader is positioned in a way that they have a clear view of the black experience. This awareness on American history, particularly about the Civil War, opens the critical eye of the reader to merge the details, issues, and events presented by the novel. The American Civil War, dated 1861 – 1865, was an important tool for a context that supports the novel because slavery was one of the reasons that brought about its commencement. According to historian Eric Foner’s Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War Slavery and The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, both books discussing the anti-slavery movement and slavery as a crucial subject matter, slavery became a very controversial issue that gave rise to political tension since abolishing it was added to the objectives of Abraham Lincoln when he won the presidential seat, besides preserving the Union.

Jones attempted to veer away from the general effects that are brought about by slavery while focusing on its narrowed and individualistic effects. The stereotypical images marked by slavery are defied. The superior/inferior binary opposition is reconstructed in a sense that the binary is blurred. This is achieved by challenging the conventional writing, inked with corresponding stereotypes. Jones inches much closer to reality and the truths conjoined to it.

According to the novel, slavery has its own functions. To own slaves means having high status and wealth. Jones reveals the other cheek of slavery, the one that people have not known yet. By doing so, it serves as subversion against misconceptions about slavery, its historical origins and development. In connection with slavery, God is consistently referenced by the characters, forming the religious aspect of the novel. Slavery is supposedly authorized by God (43). The people shared the same belief that it was completely legal and that there is nothing faulty about it. They attributed this belief in God, thus explaining the idea of “the known world” in the novel wherein God fixated things in order, all according to His will. By God’s virtue, Henry wanted a God-follower relationship between him and his slaves: “…he would be a master different from any other, the kind of shepherd master God had intended. He had been vague, talking of good food for his slaves, no whippings, short and happy days in the fields. A master looking down on them all like God on his throne looked down on him” (180). Basically, he wanted to prove something for himself, particularly tapping in his faith. It was mentioned how he always ''wanted to be a better master than any white man he had ever known” (64).

According to Macmillan Information Now Encyclopedia’s The Confederacy, the Christianization of the slaves served to be as an “uplifting from their barbarous past.” Moreover, the slaves turned to Christianity as a source of hope and liberation. It is also mentioned that the slaves have a different version of Christianity wherein Christ and Moses were attributed with the same roles that were responsible for the freedom of the black people. If there is one irony in the novel that relates to this historical account of slavery and religion, it is the character of Moses and his confusion and thought about having to be owned by a black slave-holder. He already found it a bit odd to be owned by a white man, to begin with. This makes him question God, to whether he is responsible for these kinds of situations wherein people buy their slaves off from the same race as theirs (9). This is one major aspect of the novel as well, for it emphasizes the common conception that only the whites can own black slaves. Another concept parallel to this is the slaves’ conception of the devil and committing sin. They believed that the devil was just the same as God, who was a powerful being, but one who possesses vicious characteristics. On their notion of sin, one example is that they believed that it was a sin to steal from their fellow slave, but not when stealing from their masters.

On the novel’s writing technique, it can be associated with James Baldwin’s concept of incoherence, mentioned on page 144 of Notes for a Hypothetical Novel: An Address. Baldwin states that in order to fully understand a person’s identity, one must go beyond the physical self. There are risks that should be taken in order to establish a “real relationship” with one another. He stated that “the country's image of the Negro, which hasn't very much to do with the Negro, has never failed to reflect with a kind of frightening accuracy the state of mind of the country.” There are misconceptions that control the stereotypical mind, and these myths just add up to the confusion about real definitions of the identity of the Negro. Baldwin also talks about the freedom of the country being a disastrous illusion. This is where the role of the writers sets in. They are important in the society because they have the ability to explain the minute details that busy people tend to forego. The writer has a keen eye to explicate the simplest of things through a very intricate description. Until then, it is the role of the individual to transform the illusion of freedom, in a way that it drags the whole world into the change that it aspires to achieve.

Moreover, another concept in relation to this is the word “progress,” discussed on page 53 of John A. Jakle and David Wilson’s Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America’s Built Environment, is of American origin, and that could purge out multiple definitions through the evolution of language. It could refer to incremental change, a diversion from the past, or embracing new things. Racial discrimination has always been evident in American history and the only way to progression depends on the hands of their own people. They must be able to accept their roots, culture and background in order to promote peace and equality amongst communities.

Encapsulating the points of this paper, with slavery being the heightened issue in Edward Jones’snovel, it just goes to show how history shapes the mindset of the people involved, may he/she belongs to the whites or the blacks/colored. This shared experience is passed on to its readers, as well. Thus, The Known World remains to be a vehicle of subversion against slavery and its reality, regardless if its mark in American history remains to be seemingly indelible.

References

Baldwin, James. Notes for a Hypothetical Novel: An Address. New York: Vintage Books: A Division of Random House, Inc., 1954. Print.

Bloomstran, Shannon. The Known World Review. 29 Dec. 2003. 27 Oct. 2011. Web.

Current, Richard. The Confederacy: Macmillan Information Now Encyclopedia. NY: Macmillan Library Reference, 1998. Print.

DeMichele, Lynne. Book Review: The Known World. n.d. 26 Oct. 2011 . Web.

Foner, Eric. Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War. USA: Oxford University Press, 1981. Print.

Foner, Eric. The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011. Print.

Jakle, John, and David Wilson. Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America’s Built Environment. USA: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992. Print.

Jones, Edward. The Known World. NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. Print.

Vernon, John. People Who Owned People. 31 Aug. 2003. 26 Oct. 2011 Web.

Deusner, Stephen. The Known World by Edward P. Jones. 5 Jan. 2004. 27 Oct. 2011. Web.

10) By April Anne Villena

Word Count: 2,491

10923527 CONLITE A51

A Changed Perspective: Knowing the World of Freedom, Justice and Religion in America

The popularity of the American nation today and its power to make almost all things known and famous intrigues many. We have films, songs and popular media storming around the globe and most of them come from this great continent. Seems like the world is now focused on what is here “today” and there is now room to think of what was America back in the days? – The history behind all this sparkle and fame around the world. Edward Jones’s The Known World gives the reader the life of people amidst the era of slavery in America. Set in Manchester County, Virginia, the novel tells of the life of slaves and slave owners particularly the life of Henry Townsend, a Negro slave owner before and after his death. Before America could ever be the power country people know of today, it had to face an era of slavery and discrimination – a time dedicated to fighting freedom and justice.

This paper basically focuses on these three themes, freedom, justice and religion and how these three become areas that affect the reader’s view of America as well as how they function as foundations to building the great nation that America is today.. Freedom as connected to the context of slavery has always been a big issue and the novel, in many ways shares the sentiments of slaves who crave for freedom and how the free Negroes value it. Justice which in the novel is the struggle to balance the views towards black and white people, in this paper, there will be explanations as to what the law does to limit this justice and somehow becomes a way to prevent the change that these people who yearn for freedom want to attain. Religion which is, aside from the law, is the constant grasp people, white or black, have towards God. Their belief also becomes a medium of acceptance to the injustice of the law and the situation and what drives them to do decide not for themselves but according to what God rightfully demands.

reedom from slavery was the cry of people owned or sold by white men during the early 1800’s but only during the eve or period before and after the civil war was this view on freedom partially changed when not only white men owned slaves but black men as well. This is the different take on the novel of Edward Jones. The reader is introduced to Henry Townsend who is a Negro slave-owner. Edward Jones mentioned in an interview “…the number of black slave owners was quite small in relation to white slave owners.” (Jones 2) This perhaps could explain why not many of us know that such a person exist and this alone changes the perspective towards the discrimination of races, black and white. What are black masters like? How different are they from the white? How is the black master’s relation with his/her slave? Perhaps these questions come into mind once introduced to Henry Townsend.

The biography of Henry somehow is being built with the narration of the novel, the further you read into it, the more you know of the character of Henry. After being freed from William Robbins and left to live with his parents Augustus and Mildred, Henry builds a life of his own. In chapter 4 of the novel, the teenage years of Henry Townsend is revealed and there is a line that mentions of the freedom that Henry ought to experience and how he should be able to control and use it to the fullest, “The bigger Henry could make the world he lived in, the freer he would be” (Jones 113) These are the words of Henry’s mother, Mildred as she tries to explain the life Henry should be living as a free man. This line actually says a lot about the boundaries of freedom. The free man should not only rejoice of the fact that he is free but also explore the limits of his freedom by going out into the world and expanding it. This is precisely what Henry does as he confronts to his parents that he is building a house and bought a slave entirely on his own. Here in this part of the novel the issue of freedom in the Townsend family becomes an issue that is discussed with such gravity. Augustus Townsend is disappointed by the fact that their son bought a slave when in fact he should be sharing the wonders of freedom rather than being one like the white master who owns. Freedom to Augustus and Mildred Townsend is something that is granted to Negros and should be what they should show unto neighboring black men as well. But for Henry Townsend, the concept of freedom is being able to do beyond a black man’s duty and that is to not just succumb to liberation and rights but to also cross the borderline of being black, to be able to do what a white man can do could possibly be what freedom meant to Henry.

Wilson and Jackle mentions in their book Derelict Landscapes: The wasting of America’s Built Government about the traditional American Values and in this portion of the book the importance of self-improvement in the context of freedom is explained. “The primary impulse is to achieve success through one’s own initiative and competence. Aside from the institution of black slavery, America was developed by people who were dissatisfied with life as they had known it elsewhere, and who, by moving, sought to improve life in a new place… Freedom of action is seen as necessary to self-improvement, the individual requiring scope whereby expectations can be set and fulfilled.” (Jackle & Wilson 34)

Self- improvement as seen in the character of Henry Townsend would mean that his character is someone who seeks to improve and attain the privilege once deprived and that this freedom for Henry Townsend is one way of living life to the broadest level and expanding capabilities, in his case, that is to build a house a big as a white man’s house and to be a master to 33 slaves in total. and all other characters, mention also Calvin as seen in his letter to his sister Caldonia.

Not only Henry inhibits this trait of self-improvement. Even Calvin, Caldonia’s twin and Henry’s brother-in-law shows that there is the need to achieve freedom and experience a sense of fulfillment and change compared to the life of slavery. In his letter to his sister, Caldonia in the end of the novel he mentions the life of freedom, yet he adds that he is still “laboring” he describes the lifestyle of someone free as if telling the reader of a living that is different from what has been read and what used to be a life contained in slavery. That is the life that makes someone like Calvin say, “I am happy when I get up in the morning and I am happy when I lay my head down at night.” – Life without worries, a life that is free.

One more aspect of freedom that the novel shows is that of the yearning that the women characters have. The female characters in Jones’snovel are strong and capable of measuring up to the likes of men. Freedom in a sense that they want to be considered as an equal to men and that is to be free to do what men can do aside from being owned by a master who is both a male and a negro. Caldonia is seen as a widow who takes on the responsibility of being a master to the slaves that Henry left as he died. The death of Henry acts as a freedom from the male race and the woman takes on the challenge to run and manage properties left just as her husband did. She is now made to be an equal of man. Free and at the same time capable of attaining self-improvement on her own, this can be called as some sort of individual freedom wherein the individual realizes freedom on her own, with herself.

Calvin also mentions in his letter what has become of these female characters. Alice Night in her career in painting, Prescilla who also owns some of the properties where Calvin stays and then there is the character of Mrs. Fern Elston who is the teacher of those black people who wished to be educated. Education as a primary need for men and women to uplift their status in society and this is what the novel shows again in the character of Henry Townsend. This topic on education now then becomes a way for people, black people to be specific, to know and become aware of the bigger and more pressing issue in society. Henry, being the best black student of Fern comes to know of more than just alphabets and numbers but also gains an understanding of terms such as freedom, as well as justice.

Along with the issue of freedom is also the wish to be equal and just. Obviously, the discrimination of black people and their comparison to white men has been a huge issue and in the novel, the justice does not only confine itself to being treated as an equal without the attachment of the term “slavery”. But the novel goes beyond the definition of equal and goes on to describing equal not just in terms of freedom but also in terms of responsibility. What white men can do, black men can too. The law which is also often mentioned in the novel, can sometimes restrain people from doing what they want to do and often times, this equality that black people aim for are restricted or prevented by the law. Because the Law says so, that is often what people reason out when something is delayed or when something is not granted and similar to the novel, slavery has been at some point embedded in the law. The relationship between master and slave is then given distinct. A quote from the book, “But the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave. And it does not matter if you are not much more darker than your slave. The law is blind to that.” (123) This is what Robbins said to Henry when he caught him joking around with Moses who is one of the slaves in the area. Justice here is quite obstructed in which the law is what sets the boundary between slave and master. Giving more strength and weight t the issue of who is greater therefore lessening the chance of attaining equality and also in turn postponing freedom in such a way that the law gives importance to drawing a line between master and slave.

The novel also changes our view of what we know in order to lean more of what we didn’t know. Slavery has always been familiar to many and the mechanics of this concept is fairly simple, there is the master that owns a slave. People are treated as property and these people are called slaves. Common image of this concept is a white man owning a Negro slave. The novel differs in this matter since, Henry is black. This opens new ways to approaching the term “slavery”. No longer is justice weighed by color but by power and number of slaves. There is that clamor for freedom not just from a white man but from a black man as well. Elias and his encounter with Robbins can perfectly describe this point. There is still, in the novel, that distinction between white and black which is the slave and which is the master. In Robbins’ line, “Come out if you’re nigger, and if you are white, tell me your name and I’ll leave you to it.” (Jones 81). Here there is the reality that the black and white difference has not been forgotten or is still present but then again, what the novel adds is the idea that it is not only up to this, that there is a possibility that the master-slave dichotomy goes beyond color or race and that is where the character of Henry Townsend comes in.

The novel at some point focuses on explaining to the reader how Henry is building his reputation as a black master. As the novel is actually building the character of Henry Townsend, the readers realize more of the capacity and “power” given to the Negroes in the novel and the blinded truth about them which is the changed perspective. Blacks are not what they used to be and thee have become more than just slaves, now, masters.

Aside from the written law created and implemented by human beings, there is the law of God or religion that both white and black people hold on to. In the case of John Skiffington, what drove him out of Philadelphia is the belief that God had instructed him and his father to do so. In here the reader sees the driving force of religion.

In Anderson Frazier’s interview with Fern Elston, she tells him a line that might as well describe the relation of God, man and how religion functions in the novel’s context, “All of us do only what the law and God tell us what we can do. No one of us who believes in the law and God does more than that” (Jones 109) Fern Elston cites and very well explains how man is inclined to follow both the law and God and at the same time going against the call to freedom. The capability of man is measured, weighed and tested in the area of religion. Freedom and slavery can be, at most of the times, in conflict with the law and religion. People believe them (law and God) to be true and just otherwise.

Freedom, Justice and Religion in America are not as sparkly and glamorous as people think they are. America has undergone a lot of challenges to get to where it is today. The image of today’s America is brought about by the sufferings and sacrifices of people in its history. The novel is a call to notice these people and of course for the readers to be aware of the modern forms of slavery and the individual’s search for freedom within the self, the community and in the nation.

Their rich history unravels the nitty gritty struggles that people had to face and moreover, the discrimination among colors does not stop with the freedom of the Negroes but also in their ways of owning something. The black people take on the duties and activities placed upon back people becomes an issue.

America isn’t what it seemed to be – it’s not so great after all but still we appreciate that this rugged history may be part of why the nation strives to be strong and complete.

Works Cited

Jones, Edward. The Known World. New York: Amistad Publishers, 2003. Print.

__________. “An Interview with Edward P. Jones”. The Known World. New York: Amistad Publishers, 2003. Print.

Jackle, John and Wilson, David. Derelict Landscapes: The Wasting of America’s Built Environment. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1992. Print

11) By Mikhail Roldan

10801677 Conlite A51

November 3, 2011 Mid Term Paper: The Known World

Hello White America, Assassinate My Character

The title of this paper was taken from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s song “Gotta have It” off of their album Watch The Throne. Although it has nothing to due with the novel it just really seems like the lyrics fit into what was happening in the novel. African-Americans owning other African-Americans and not in the way one owns someone in a game of basketball or a video game. They literally owned them, well in this case Henry Townsend owned black slaves, which really showed how off character some of the African Americans were during those times which this student believes is because of the influence of the whites. According to the novel this wasn’t a very peculiar thing during those times because there were other black slave owners. The line between black and white begins to fade because of this, Henry is in some ways an “Uncle Tom” not because he is subservient to the white man but because he tries to be the white man. The novel does not follow a single plot structure, instead the narrator tells different stories that involve characters related to Henry Townsend or the slave trade in some way. Given the amount of space there is to write, this paper will focus on the relationship between two characters, Henry Townsend and William Robbins. This paper will analyze the two and how they both go against how a normal black and white man would act during those time, and how their father-son relationship is the product of the way they are. The paper will also analyze the use of the word “nigger” in the novel and how the word is a sort of character that an African American is forced to play.

William Robbins may seem like your typical slave owner: he’s tall, has a wife and daughter, rides a horse, and he’s white. He also believes that there are limits to the relationship a master can have with his slave. “But the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave…” (123). He tells Henry after seeing him wrestling with Moses while the both of them are working on building Henry’s house. There is a standard that’s expected in Manchester County from its slave owners and William Robbins made sure that Henry was aware of that. The contradictory thing about Robbins is the relationship he has with Henry, even when Henry was still his slave he took a liking to the boy that clearly went against his beliefs. Since he was aware of this “code” he had a better way of hiding it or from showing too much affection. The extent of his liking for the boy is shown in the chapter where he brings Henry to fetch his black wife Philomena who brought their two children, Dora and Louis to Richmond. This is the point where Robbins decided that he wanted Henry to be a part of his children’s lives. “…the world would not be very good to the children he had with Philomena, but whatever world it would be, he wanted Henry in it for them.” (121) Robbins saw Henry as a son and his children saw him as a big brother someone to look up to. The relationship between the two still kept its strength even after Henry’s father Augustus was able to buy his freedom from Robbins. Henry would still spend his time at Robbins plantation learning the trade until he was finally able to buy land and a slave of his own.

Henry was born into slavery and he was freed from it by his father who taught him that he should not own a slave himself. “Don’t go back to Egypt after God done took you outta there” (137) is what his parents told him. Henry had other plans though, he decided to break away from what they taught him he bought a slave and land of his own from Robbins. But Henry of course did this with good intentions in mind, however it is well known that a lot of bad things start out with good intentions. He wanted to be the best slaver there was around, he wanted to give African Americans that were slaves better conditions of living. Henry wanted to do this because those sort of conditions were given to him as a slave by Robbins. So seeing that life can be good as a slave, he wanted to give that to his fellow brothers and sisters of color. From his first few days as Moses’ master Henry was starting to build a very close master to slave bond, however as mentioned above Robbins immediately told him to stop that. The events that occurred after were very intriguing and mostly because Henry Townsend’s use of the word “nigger”. The derogatory word nigger isn’t as bad as it used to be, in fact one can claim that the African Americans have made it their own, African American comedians, actors, and rappers use it all the time with no harm done. However when a white man says the word then that’s when everybody starts to panic its just not allowed perhaps that’s their punishment for enslaving African Americans for all those years, they can’t use the derogatory term that they themselves coined. If not mistaken that is one of the few times if not the only time nigger is used in the book. Funny enough given that the novel was set during a time where white people can say it just as freely as black people can now. In the novel it’s a black man who says it to another black man namely Henry says it to Moses in order to break him down and make him obedient. This part of the book is where we see Henry’s transformation from “black slave” to “black slave owner” finally come into full circle ending with the confrontation he had with his father where he constantly told him that he wasn’t doing anything a white man wouldn’t do. That was his defense for his actions that it’s not illegal that it’s ok because he didn’t do anything that wasn’t within his rights. He did not see anything wrong with what he was doing, didn’t see the irony in a black man owning a black slave, he was adding to the problem. But was he really? An argument can be given that Henry knew that African Americans can own slaves and saw it as the only way free African Americans can help the slaves who did not have the same luck as he did. He did want to become a kind, gentle, and caring master one who would feed his slaves adequately and made sure their living conditions were okay. All of that is very honorable but also very ideal, especially in the county he lived in where there’s a certain boundary to how close a master can be to his slave. He couldn’t completely be the master that he wanted to be, because that kind of master could not exist. There always has to be that little bit of fear to go along with admiration in order to be a fit leader or master. An example in the novel that saw Henry stray from the path of caring master was the incident with Elias where he had a part of his ear cut off. Obviously those aren’t the living conditions that Henry wanted for his slaves, but that comes with the job, when one slave gives a master trouble the master must use him as an example to show the other slaves that he is not to be trifled with.

The thing that sets this novel apart from other master-slave novels is that there are no racial differences in the relation between Henry Townsend and his slaves in fact as Moses said early on in the book Henry was “two shades darker” than him. So the issue’s in the book aren’t just about racial differences anymore power takes center stage this time. Some white slave owners can make the defense that the only reason why they own slaves is because you know they’re black, we’re white that’s just how things are supposed to be. What excuse does a black man have when he owns a slave of his own race? Henry wanted to make it seem like it was because he wanted to be the best shepherd there is to God’s people but one can always sense this mans ambition for power throughout the novel. He spent his entire life admiring this man in power (Robbins) so he wanted to be like that man. What Henry maybe did not realize though is how William Robbins went against his own beliefs and teachings. Robbins had an affair with his own slave Philomena and had two children with her. Robbins did the complete opposite of what he told Henry, but then again maybe Robbins just wants Henry to learn from his own mistakes. Mistakes that he himself is actually not sorry for, Robbins loves his children Dora and Louis and can not see himself living without them.

The Known World opens the reader's eyes to something that we all have to realize, slavery isn’t bad because it happened to Africans, slavery is just bad in general. It doesn’t matter what color skin the owner is, nothing good can come of slavery. It’s like the same with genocide, its not bad because it happens to a certain group of people, its just bad. The novel breaks down that image of slavery being mainly associated with white and black people and alludes it to the Jewish and the Egyptians in the Bible. There wasn’t much of a color difference between those two and God was against it, in fact its probably because they were practically the same race and color that made God against the Egyptians. Henry Townsend couldn’t see that the day he bought Moses from William Robbins, to him since he was free he was as good as any white man, the color of his skin didn’t matter to him anymore. Because of that he broke character, he went against his race and even used the same derogatory term that white people would use against his fellow black brothers and sisters. No, he didn’t use it in an affectionate way, he used it to bring a brother down and that’s not good. The late great comedian Richard Pryor said in one of his stand up acts that there are no niggers. After building his career on making that word his own and using it in such a way that people weren’t offended they actually laughed about it he claimed that the word did not exist. He made that claim after making a trip to Africa where after looking around and seeing the sights he claimed that he didn’t see a single nigger there.

Perhaps it dawned upon Richard Pryor’s mind that the word nigger or negro is something that the oppressive white man of the 1800’s came up with to classify African Americans. It’s a character a role that all black people must perform, because it is expected of them. Not many people have seen the true role or character of black people, a character that has not been influenced by a white dominated America. That is because in this west dominated world or at least from a Philippine perspective we see what the west wants us to see. This novel shows us something different, it shows the reader something that seems impossible but then that’s the extent of white America’s influence there need to be different and special its like they’re “look at us we can take a whole race from another country and completely change and effect the way they think and talk.” The slave trade has had an effect on African Americans that can not be undone it stalks over them like an eagle. Funny thing is the novel shows us that maybe they were capable of doing the same thing, or is it once again because of the influence of white America?

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