Some Questions About Shame // Fleishman


Some Questions About Shame

Maxfield Fleishman


 In "The Fire and the Hearth," young Henry Beauchamp and Carothers Edmonds are something like brothers. They were inseperable from birth. They sucked together as babies, played together as children, slept together even, in the same bed. When Lucas demands that Molly come back home to his fire and hearth, she brings Henry and Roth with her. 

When Carothers is seven years old, he changes in relation to his foster-brother. "Then one day the old curse of his fathers, the old haught ancestral pride based not on any value but on an accident of geography, stemmed not from courage and honor but wrong and shame, descended to him." (107) Roth says he wants to go home. Lucas follows him there. They lie in separate beds now, for the first time. Henry falls asleep. "But [Roth] didn't sleep, long after Henry's quiet and untroubled breathing had begun, lying in a rigid fury of the grief he could not explain, the shame he would not admit...They never slept in the same room again and never again ate at the same table because he admitted to himself it was shame now and he did not go to Henry's house...Then one day he knew it was grief and was ready to admit it was shame also, wanted to admit it only it was too late then, forever and forever too late." (108-9)

Roth's shame and grief seem to stem from his knowledge that his ancestors owned Henry's. He is becoming conscious of his history, of his historical and societal relationship to Henry, as a white man to a black man. He may also know that he and Henry are kin. He may even know the unsavory character of their familial ties. Still, this moment is strange to me. Why does this moment of revelation come here so abruptly? If Roth cannot recognize his shame and grief, what does he consciously feel that triggers his severe reaction? What sort of shame does the white young heir to a plantation feel when he begins to understand the history between his own family and his black neighbors? Henry sleeps soundly on his pallet. Is he aware of Roth's shame? Is Lucas? 

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshMay 2, 2021 at 9:46 PM

    Great questions. Oddly, I think such moments do come suddenly, even as the realizations may ferment for years. Is it perhaps a triple shame? -- both from conventional understanding of the mandatory separation of white and black (hence, shame for his own affection), together with shame for a tainted family history and shame for his own unmanly weakness?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some ramblings on the poetic -- Miz Eustice Poetry seems to be borne of and to live more in the realm of imagination than reason if the mind can be so generally categorized. Or perhaps it should be said that it is some mixture of heart and brain. I’m not sure. Sometimes I think it's divine.   I’m not sure where else its strange greatness could come from. I’m not even sure how to describe what poetry is. It is not just its form, its sounds, it is more than the sum of its parts. I read somewhere once that poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.   Poetry is not like reason, it is not a power exercised by the will. Perhaps one can will oneself to write poetry, but not great poetry. It is more within the general grasp to reason correctly than to make something beautiful. I can only imagine what it is like to do such a thing. Creation seems mysterious, and there is something almost seraphic in it—something invisible and intangible and temperamental that rises from within in an o...
Read more

Some Post-Discussion Reflections on Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death –” by Ms. Bucher

Image
   Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality. We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility – We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun – Or rather – He passed Us – The Dews drew quivering and Chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle – We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground – Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity – Photo: “Because I could not stop for Death –” fanart found on Etsy   Some music that may set the mood: Igor Stravinsky's Elegy for Solo Viola .
Read more

Genealogy Reflections in “The Bear" (Bucher)

  Gen ealogy Reflections in “The Bear” by Ms. Bucher   We have spent much time in class stumbling over the genealogy in Go Down, Moses . When trying hard to follow the twisted, obscure genealogy, it is clear that the McClaslin family tree is a complicated double helix of both white and black branches. But the power of the family dynamic becomes even more powerful the moment that Issac McClaslin, grandson of patriarch Lucius Quintus Carothers McClaslin, pushes away his inheritance of the plantation. The question brought up in class many times still plagues me: Why does he reject his rightful ownership of the family land? Possible reasons come to mind easily: He may not want the responsibility for the care and support of all the people, both black and white, that live and work the land. He has been raised in large part by Sam Fathers who taught him to love nature, the wild, and the liberty of a life unfettered by any interest in social or economic expectations. And he needs to b...
Read more