Chapter 16

At the end of Chapter 16, I started to wonder how Joe's life would've been different if he would have lived with the Hines'. Would his experiences have been more drastic, less drastic, or equally drastic? I see that Mr.Hines is a violent, religious mam in a similar way that Mr.McEachern was. I'm just curious to know your opinions on how Joe's life would've been different if he would have stayed in the Hines household as opposed to living in the McEachern household.

Chapter 15 is interesting. We find out that eupheus Himes has a caring for Christmases. Mrs Himes asks eupheus about mills baby. It's been 30years since eupheus got rid of millys baby. Mrs.himes thinks that Millys baby is Christmas because Christmas is 30  years old. I also think that Christmas is Millys baby. 

       By: Jesus navarrete

The Lingering Past

"Though during the last seven days he has had no paved street, yet he has travelled further than in all the thirty years before. And yet he is still inside the circle. ‘And yet I have been further in these seven days than in all the thirty years" 
These roads that Christmas is traveling on seems to be endless and continues to keep going anyways. While on the run, the day's become endless as well. The further he keeps running, the more the past lingers onto him. Although, during this experience, he is reborn and is no longer haunted by his identity of a biracial man. I feel that his epiphany saved him from having a troubling future. I can finally start to see a brighter future for Christmas.

Christmas on the run

      I feel like all the running Christmas is doing, in chapter 14,  is peeling away sheets of protection from society, he seems to forget how important race is to the society he belongs to, for example when he walks into an all black restaurant expecting to be served without second guessing from the severs. He even seems a little more peaceful by himself in nature than in towns where he is forced to obey laws of society. However i'm not sure if this time alone is truly helping Christmas, because the chapter ends with this ere sentence, "mark on his ankles the gauge definite and ineradicable of the black tide creeping up his legs, moving from his feet upward as death moves.". I suppose I am a bit torn between what Christmas is truly feeling while on the run... 

Letting go of th past

" Letting go isn't about having the courage to release the past; it's about having the wisdom to embrace the present"- Steven Maraboli

One of the many qualities that stood out to me was Joe Christmas's denial to move on from the past. It can be argued that Christmas's  abusive behavior is due to the mistreatment he had as a child being brought up by religious parents and his father making his entire childhood complete misery.I think that since his father tried to bring him up a certain way, Christmas in now struggling to truly find his identity: however, to me it seems like Christmas is inheriting some of his foster father's abusive traits.

Anyway, i feel like all of the problems Christmas has encountered are due to him not being able to confront his past. Christmas looks back upon his past and is completely over taken with pure anger. He doesn't have the capacity to over look his past or even try to learn from it and become a better person. I know many people may claim that it can be very difficult  to overcome your past but there's always that sense of at least trying. Do you think at any point Christmas will overcome his past and move on? 

A Sense of Nothingness

"When he thinks about time, it seems to him now that for thirty years he has lived inside an orderly parade of named and numbered days like picket fences..."

At the end of Chapter 14, we can start to see how Joe Christmas has started to lose track of any time and is pretty much unaware of his surroundings or what he is doing. In my opinion, I see this as a sign that Joe has sort of slid further and further from his own existence and has fallen out of time itself. I think he feels as if he is not one amongst the living and is but a mere ghost roaming around in isolation. This event once again clearly shows us the lonesome state that Joe has remained in since he was just a teenager. As Joe travels more and more into the wilderness, you can notice how he has lost pretty much any contact with the ordered society that he grew up with. This seems to always happen  when Joe goes into the nature to isolate himself from all his struggles and hardships. I also think that Joe's slippage from time can also mirror or be compared to the personal journey of Hightower because his exile from the community slowly causes him to lose a sense of time as well. Overall, Joe Christmas still can't seem to find any form of acceptance, salvation, or belonging in his life.

Time Flies

"Time flies over us, but leaves its shadows behind" - Nathaniel Hawthorne.

This quote relates to the experience Christmas has gone through. Christmas runs from the authorities and has no sense of time passing. However he still wonders how much has passed. He still wonders because of his "shadows" (his past and his reasons for running). Even after so much time passes it does not mean that our past goes away. It just means it will haunt us like it has for Christmas. He has been running for about two weeks and his past has yet to stop following him.  Do you think our past continues to haunt us or does it eventually stop ?

Joe Christmas' Identity Crisis

First, I would like to apologize for the late nature of this post, which was meant to be done last Thursday, but was delayed due to technical difficulties. 

Throughout the last few chapters we are given a look back into the life of Joe Christmas. All of his faults, his flaws, and his shortcomings in his former life are explored. It can be argued, while not justified, that many of Joe Christmas' terrible circumstances and life decisions have stemmed from his treatment pertaining to him being biracial by others, as well as himself. Joe Christmas is forced to wander "like a phantom", from both racial districts with no place to belong to. I can relate this to my own life since I am biracial, although the repercussions don't go to such an extent. I have been labeled an "uncle tom" by my African American family, and "one of the good ones" by my Caucasian family. It's laughable to think that ostricism still exists for those who are mixed race, but it does on a certain level. Because of my experience, I can relate closely with Joe Christmas, minus the racism and hate for women, and I can imagine the loneliness he felt growing up. He is traumatized to such a point, that he is unable to react correctly to acceptance when it finally presents itself. In my opinion, the only way for him to find true peace is through isolation, because the time period he lives in does not allow for him to be welcomed by both races.

-Michael Ollis

The Meaning of Burden

So, I didn't have to post. But it's gonna drive me nuts if I see much more speculation about what Miss Burden's name means. It's a reference (and an obvious one at that; I really should have noticed sooner than just a few days ago) to "The White Man's Burden," a poem by Rudyard Kipling. The Poem is about Imperialism, broadly speaking, but specifically addresses the desire to "save," or "civilize," people who are "savage." It's a somewhat subtle critique of those who would consider another way of life worse because it's different; and Kipling (likely) hoped to point out that just because your particular lifestyle of first world privilege has been good to you; does not make it necessarily desirable to others. The poem is as follows:

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--

In patience to abide,

To veil the threat of terror

And check the show of pride;

By open speech and simple,

An hundred times made plain

To seek another's profit,

And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--

Fill full the mouth of Famine

And bid the sickness cease;

And when your goal is nearest

The end for others sought,

Watch sloth and heathen Folly

Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No tawdry rule of kings,

But toil of serf and sweeper--

The tale of common things.

The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread,

Go mark them with your living,

And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--

And reap his old reward:

The blame of those ye better,

The hate of those ye guard--

The cry of hosts ye humour

(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--

"Why brought he us from bondage,

Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less--

Nor call too loud on Freedom

To cloke your weariness;

By all ye cry or whisper,

By all ye leave or do,

The silent, sullen peoples

Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--

Have done with childish days--

The lightly proferred laurel,

The easy, ungrudged praise.

Comes now, to search your manhood

Through all the thankless years

Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,

The judgment of your peers!

(source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/Kipling.asp )

In this poem, one sees many aspects of Burden herself, and of her family. A resentment for other religions (and an insistence that non-Christian's be saved- see Ms. Burden "praying over" Christmas); a belief that it is their responsibility to uplift "lesser," races (the Burden family saw blackness as "a stain," and believed that by helping the blacks they could uplift them into whiteness- a misguided "altruism," that cements racist thought); and especially the last stanza of the poem reminds one of the Burdens- "Comes now...through all the thankless years...cold...the judgement of your peers!"