01.05.09
More Musings and Uncle Tom’s Cabin
So five days into the new year, and I still feel like I’m scrambling to get organized. . . Hence no blog entries, heheh. Maybe part of it has to do with my urge to rearrange some of the furniture in the house. While shuffling furniture can be time consuming, and it does tend to make a mess for a while, it also ends up quite nice as all the dust bunnies get uncovered and swept away and lost things end up un-lost. Ah, and isn’t that a refreshing feeling to sit in a freshly cleaned room? Tomorrow I think I’ll work on getting the Christmas lights down. But I digress. . . There were several things I thought to blog about, but never got around to doing it. We did some movie marathons, so I could have played Siskel and Ebert for several movies. We watched Kung Fu Panda, Hancock, Get Smart, The Happening just to name a few. As the new year rolled in, I thought of my friend’s hometown tradition of jumping into their bay on the first of the year, so that reminded me of more of the pictures I took at the Isle of Man and London that I still haven’t finished posting up, and we’re supposed to be taking a trip in a couple weeks. With all the turmoil going on in Gaza and other parts of the world, I certainly had some thoughts on those, too. But then the boys and I just finished reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and I really appreciated her insight to the nature of man and the structure of our society. In particular, American society and Christian values. I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin in high school, but re-read it again with the boys recently. Yes they are old enough to read on their own, but I like to read as a family sometimes, and it also helps to stir up more thought and discussion about things like morality, customs and values, history, etc.
I’m assuming everyone is familiar with Uncle Tom’s Cabin as I believe it is considered one of the American Classics we all were required to read in high school. If not, very briefly, the story was written in 1852 when slavery in the United States was still legal in the south. The star of the story is Uncle Tom, but through his travails, we see the lives of those around him and how slavery affected them all; slaves, slave masters, and non-slave owners alike. Stowe gives insight to the viewpoints of each character. At the very end of the book Chapter 45 titled “Concluding Remarks” deals with the veracity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Apparently, after it was written, Stowe received many letters inquiring as to whether the story of Uncle Tom was real. The answer to that was,
“The separate incidents that compose the narrative are, to a very great extent, authentic, occurring, many of them, either under her [Stowe's] own observation, or that of her personal friends. She or her friends have observed characters the counterpart of almost all that are here introduced; and many of the sayings are word for word as heard herself, or reported to her.”
Being that the most prominent way slaves were treated in “my” mind were images taken from the movie “Roots,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed a bit of the different ways slaves were “managed” than I had realized as well as philosophical views from those who approved of slavery vs. those who did not approve of slavery. I particularly appreciated the views of Augustine St. Clare and his cousin Miss Ophelia. While I don’t want to spend too much time on the various view points, one discussion did interest me. In the story St. Clare is a southerner who owned many slaves, while his cousin Miss Ophelia was a northerner who did not agree with slavery. She came to live with him to help manage his estate, and while there her interactions with St. Clare expose one of the troubles of the aboliting slavery. In particular, now that slavery was legal and fully established into society, what was to be done now? It’s easy to just complain that certain things are wrong and look down on those perpetrating the acts. But it’s generally not as easy to “fix” as one might think. St. Clare fully saw the injustice and cruelty of slavery, but he pointed out that just abolishing slavery would not solve the huge problem that the slave trade produced, that is, if all the slaves were freed, who would help them get on their feet? How would they live and get education? Many of them were kept low and uneducated for the very purpose of dominating over them. Even the Christians, according to St. Clare, were not willing to take up the cross to help these slaves themselves. Sure they were willing to send off a few missionaries to convert the heathen Africans, but were they willing to take in and help a slave in their own home? As it turned out, Miss Ophelia was just the type of person St. Clare was alluding to of those who speak out against injustices such as slavery, yet did not want to get their hands dirty with the work required to fix the problem. She later changes from that position and succeeds in helping Topsy. It’s easier to send out a missionary or two to do the work that most people are unwilling or even detest doing. As history has shown us, St. Clare was right to the degree that even after slavery was abolished in the United States, prejudice made it very difficult for the negro to succeed in American society. Many schools did not allow black students, various employers did not hire black employees, even the various associations did not allow blacks such as the American Medical Association. I’ve seen pictures of separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. Different restrooms were built for black and whites, and even designated seats at the back of the buses for blacks. Rosa Parks went down in history books as she broke the rules by defying the rule for a black woman such as she to sit in the back of the bus, which helped shape the future of blacks in America. Even 50 years after the abolition of slavery, blood banks kept black blood separated from white blood, and it even became an issue in the military for blood transfusions for the soldiers on the battlefields. It was a long hard road taken by America that resulted from their early acceptance of the slave trade. And today, about 150 years after the abolition of slavery through the 13th Amendment, the first black President was finally elected. (Course I realize there are those who think that Obama isn’t even black, but rather Arab; but for all practical purposes, he is accepted as a half black man from a white mother and a Kenyan father, which would commonly be known as mulatto). By the way, I do find it odd how if a person has any percentage of black, they are generally considered black rather than their white bloodline. I guess it must have something to do with “purity.” A bit of an arrogant concept, but there you have it. I found recently that there’s a term called “blasian.” I found it while looking up “quadroon,” which is the term for a mixed black and Latin American. Apparently, the name for a mixed Afro-Asian is called a blasian. Took me 44 years to learn that, ha!
Okay, well I better wrap this up soon as I still need to finish knitting Matty’s blanket. . . but I had to mention something else I learned just recently, and that is regarding Alex Haley’s story Roots. Since the boys and I were reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, I thought they might be interested to watch the movie “Roots” with the all-famous Kunta Kinte and the Lord Legioner. Brian reminded me that books are better to read as movies always adulterate the stories. So I did a Google online, and what did I find? A link to an article called, “The Celebrated ‘Roots’ of a Lie.” It turns out that Alex Haley’s book Roots was a fraud! Oh my! And all these years I thought it was based on fact! Apparently, Haley “plagiarized” from a “white” author named Hal Courlander. Courlander’s book was called, “The African” published in 1967. I checked my library catalog and now have it on hold, heheheh. Anyway, it is said that Courlander took Haley to court over the matter, and Haley admitted he plagiarized from Courlander’s book. The case was settled out of court with a hefty settlement given to Courlander. What gets me is that this apparently was done quietly, and people like me never heard that Roots was all bogus! Well, I guess it’s a good way to start the year. . . be cautious of what you believe. Search it out if you really want to know the truth of things.
Happy New Year!
Marlakins
Follow Up April 29, 2009:
I have since read Hal Courlander’s book, The African, and I’m currently reading Alex Haley’s, Roots. My original intent was to find out if Haley really did plagiarized from Courlander. While I’m still not finished reading Roots, I am currently at chapter 105, page 495. The book is 587 pages long. So far, I find that Haley’s book, Roots, is quite different from Courlander’s, The African. I don’t see much if any out right plagiarizism so far. If anything, the closest to plagiarism might be the portion of the ship ride from Africa to America. There were “similar” scenarios like how the Africans were communicating with one another as they lay chained next to one another in the cargo hold. Other than the ship transport portion, which is really a very small portion of the whole book of Roots, I am really reluctant to say that Haley “plagiarized” from Courlander. I suppose I could re-check out Courlander’s book and read them side by side at those sections, but really both books are very different. When I finish reading the whole of Roots, I think I will make another post in case there are any other areas of the book that seem similar to Courlander’s. But again, these books are pretty different, and to call Roots a “fraud” based on the idea that Haley plagiarized is out of line as far as I’m concerned. I would definitely say that a lot of it may have been embellished as I don’t think it’s likely that all the details of Kunta’s “thoughts” and feelings as well as all the other characters thoughts and feelings were likely conveyed through the two hundred years. So, my opinion is that Roots could be classified as a historical fiction. The characters may have really existed, but I’m not sure all the small details are true to life.
