When we look closely at the way the story is told, we see that the narrator is biased against the black population on Haiti. The narrator describes the "innumerable favours and kindnesses" of Guillaume de Villeneuve. Congo Hoango, however, is described as being frenzied. There is no explanation that this is a slave revolt. The narrator notes that the violence is caused by the freeing of the slaves, which he calls reckless. Hoango is represented as cruel, treacherous and violent. De Villeneuve is represented as generous loyal honest. It is unclear based on this evidence alone whether the narrator is to be taken seriously or ironically.
Dr. Pan is convinced that the narrator is to be taken seriously and that he represents a view similar to Gustav. Gustav seems to be racist against black people, even if he is unwilling to admit it. Rather than making explicitly racist claims, he gives a series of instances that are meant to support his opinion. Gustav thinks in gross generalities based on stories about individuals of each race. He clearly thinks that even if there has been tyranny against black people in Haiti, the whites are still in the moral right. Dr. Pan thinks this echoes an opinion that was popular among French people at the time. Specifically, this is similar to the idea that slavery is preferable to freeing the slaves because there is somehow something essentially dangerous about black people being free.
So Gustav himself is a narrator of stories within Kleist's fictional realm. Remember Gustav's story about "faithful Marianne", a woman who sacrificed herself for him. This story seems to be an attempt to convince Toni to be loyal to him (just like Marianne had been). Gustav seems to put forward the value of loyalty as being key for a moral person. After telling this story, he later promises to marry Toni. Toni then defends Gustav against Babekan. She is impressed with his honor and nobility and she takes on his perspective on the conflict. This set of values is also familiar within the genre of bourgeois tragic drama. Bourgeois qualities include honestly, loyalty and pity. Blacks, however, seem to have "aristocratic" values, such as treachery, deceit and cruelty. Another similarity between Kleist's story and bourgeois tragic drama is that the bond to which the female ultimately is loyal is the bond of love to a man of another class.
Another story told is Babekan's story about Toni's father, who abandoned Babekan and his baby. Also, Babekan notes that Villeneuve is rather cruel at times, having been responsible for ordering sixty lashes for Babekan. This perspective is in tension with the narrator. Another reason why there is tension between Babekan's perspective and Gustav's is that Babekan notes that Komor, who is not related to Toni, was willing to adopt her. It seems that whites favor biological bonds more than the blacks, who value the maintenance of a household regardless of biological heritage. We also find out that Hoango is very loyal to his sons and that his soldiers are loyal to Hoango such that they will fight to the death in his name. Here we see that the "bad" "aristocratic" values can also be found in white people and that the positive values can be found in black people. So from this perspective, we can criticize both the narrator and Gustav.
We should also note that at the end of the story, Toni claims that she is not a traitor because she is white and so she is on their side of the conflict.
In this story, we have three different ways to interpret the conflict. First, we have Gustav's attempt to make claims based on the individual traits of some members of a community. On this interpretation, the conflict is between humans and "inhuman" or immoral people. Second, Babekan seems to think that the community is the marker of whether someone is on the right side of a conflict. On this interpretation, one should be loyal to community rather than to blood or to individual people and this is the perspective through which we should judge parties in a conflict. Third, Toni seems to represent a commitment to a political alliance based on racial divisions. On this interpretation, conflict is between communities with relatively homogenous racial composition.
Within this story, then, the "objectivity" of events lies in the specific interpretation of the individual. Society is thus a product of interpretation. "Objective" facts about a community or about a society depend on the interpretations of specific individuals.
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