AJ passes (some wisdom)

AJ’s Blog

“the Yankee man went down south and took a slave to Canada to free him. Little did he know he sacrificed his own freedom for someone else's freedom. After taking the negro slave to Canada he was placed into a penitentiary and died later on. So in freeing one man he was then without freedom.”

Is this more a what the classic Greeks would call “tragedy”? or is it the same thing? Hero sets out to accomplish something, but he missteps and suffers a similar fate from the one he is avoiding? The poor soul’s irony doesn’t end with his imprisonment/lack of freedom, but as Aj points out “His death, after the expiration of only a small part of the sentence, from cholera contracted while nursing stricken fellow prisoners.” `          

This fellow from Ohio must have really pissed Karma off. It is either that, of Chesnutt is using a literary club to drive home a point. No good deed goes unpunished. Is the message directed towards the Abolitionist theory that the black man needs saving? By white men, that by associated racial guilt, needs to do something? The fun underlying thought being conveyed by Chesnutt is, that ultimately, the slaves will need to free themselves if necessary.

One last item from the story, that I have never read before, it was a term applied near the end regarding Grandison and his family,   “Sable humanity”    racial term of color “sable” applied to a person “humanity” basically saying       black man.

Color, color color.

Interesting side note, I once dated a girl, whom called me in tears when she asked her folks when they would like to meet her new boyfriend “Decker”, they declined since they were under the assumption that “Decker” was a black man’s name. I never did meet them.

Decker