Washington and Du Bois Bois Bois

First of all I didn't really agree with what Washington had to say in his address. The whole "Cast down your bucket where you are..." thing...kinda weird. I understand what he's saying but it seems like he's cool with the treatment of negroes in this time. He says, "...in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized." and, "...you will find that they (fellow negros) will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. It seems like he's telling the whites to "lay back and relax, we got er' from here." Granted slavery is over but still even today racism is still running strong and I don't really see how it should be up to the negroes to help boost the Southern economy.

Du Bois Bois basically calls Washington on what he says and acknowledges that his whole address was economic. Du Bois is official though..I mean he has lists....ooooo. He shows that Washington wanted blacks to give up political power, forget about civil rights, and higher education. The third one i don't really agree with but he can have his opinion. However Du Bois is speaking around Jim Crowe Times and that could very easily be affecting what he is writing.

The Art of Belated Souls

Henry James equals confusing person. He is kind of long winded at times and hard to understand. I think he summarizes best in his article “The Art of Fiction” when states, “Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.” And later on he says, “The only reason for the existence of a novel that it does attempt to represent life.

I think it is interesting that the story, “Belated souls” was written by a female and if the only reason for a novel according to James is to represent life I think Edith Wharton did it. She makes you feel awkward and scandalous right along with her characters. I actually wished the story would have been longer and had a bit more character development.

For example I would have liked to know how Lydia’s husband felt from his perspective and known more about Gannett’s background. However, what Wharton does is bring the reader in at the middle of the story, which represents life perfectly because how many of us know each other’s life story besides perhaps our family and close personal friends, and even then we all still have secrets. Lydia’s “predicament” is a more romantic version of things we see on Jerry Springer these days.

The story portrays the classic soap opera story of an affair and a women’s struggle to feel independent, and not assimilate into the social, upper-class circle of gossiping women. I think what James is saying about discussion and suggestion being fertilizing when it’s frank and sincere is that society has to recognize these life representations to better understand life. Like Walt Whitman was all about being philosophical and trying to answer the big questions in life, fiction is still a way of representing life. Most fiction is based on some fact.

James discusses this in his own awkward way. First he relates a picture to reality in that a painter is inspired by reality and so history also represents life. If we understand history so we don’t repeat it then we can still see the representation of life in works of fiction in order to understand it.

A lot of what I’ve just said probably makes sense and sounded a lot better in my head and if that’s the case then I’m embodying Henry James an