“When all forty-six were standing in a line in the trench, another rifle shot signaled the climb out and up to the ground above, where one thousand feet of the best hand-forged chain in Georgia stretched. Each man bent and waited. The first man picked up the end and threaded it through the loop on his leg iron. He stood up then, and, shuffled a little, brought the chain tip to the next prisoner, who did likewise. As the chain was passed on and each man stood in the other’s place, the line of men turned around, facing the boxes they had come out of” (Morrison 126).
Toni Morrison’s critically acclaimed novel Beloved brings up the issues of African-American lives during their life of slavery and post slavery. Some of the talked about events are difficult to digest because they bring to attention the brutality many faced during that era, many of which modern day students have never heard about because the stories are never taught in order to maintain America’s history in a positive light. The passage above is an excerpt of Paul D’s flashback to the time that he spent in a prison camp’s chain gang in the South that was used to further punish misbehaved slaves.
In the passage, Paul D starts to describe the day in the life of a chain gang, revealing his difficult and brutal past by using vivid diction. The diction of the passage allows the readers to get a sense of how inhumane the conditions were as he uses words such as “bent”, “waited”, “threaded”, and “shuffled”. These words reveal how inhuman it was because of how physically tiring the connotation of the words give off. Then the phrase, “one thousand feet of the best hand-forged chain in Georgia stretched” further broadens this feeling and gives the first context to the reader that they are being brought to the attention of chain gang life in the South.
As a blogger looking through the new historical lens, I was shocked when reading this passage considering I thought I had been taught about every aspect of slavery in school, however I had never learned about prison chain gangs. This caused me to investigate whether Morrison’s/Paul D’s depiction of time spent in a chain gang was accurate, and unfortunately, it is very accurate.
Chain gangs were used in the Southern states to remind African-Americans slaves who they were and where they came from. They used the same chains as they did on the slave ships that transported them from Africa to the United States. Every day they would line up before the officers and call out role then get to work. The work would be very similar to plantation work and public service work such as fixing roads and building railroads, however they worked under more cruel conditions, subjected to beatings and whippings, occasionally forced to perform oral sex on the white officers, as they were already chained. These prison camps lasted during slavery and even after slavery “officially ended” still being used today in modern prisons under less brutal conditions.
As a result Paul D’s flashback of using vivid diction and syntax reveal the horrors of these chain gangs. It brings up a topic that is usually forbidden, however must be discussed, and the way he explains his past allows us, as the readers, to get insight and feel sympathy.
I thought it was really cool how you brought up the censorship in the American education system, in order to try and maintain America's actions in a positive light. This was a really interesting read, especially since I hadn't known what chain gangs were. Thanks for writing this!
ReplyDeleteThis blog post is well written. I appreciate your curiosity in the process of reading this book. It has made me want to do the same and look up more things about slavery not just what were taught in American history.
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