I personally found George Fitzhugh's piece of writing to be both really frustrating, yet very well substantiated at the same time. It was so frustrating because I constantly wanted to argue with his oppinions and point of views, yet found that I could not. Every time that he made some outlandish or out of the ordinary statement, he would back it up and support it. I felt that he was constantly three steps ahead, while I was two steps behind.
Fitzhugh’s writing irritated me because I feel that he only makes some of the statements in his piece in order to cover his behind. He says things that he does not believe, nor support himself, in order to manipulate others into supporting slavery. For example, when he says that he supports slavery, yet he does not support racism, I do not thoroughly believe him. Especially after reading the background on him and the fact that he defends slavery in all of his writings, I personally feel that he made this statement in order to be politically correct. I believe that he also made this statement knowing that whites would never be enslaved in America because we were the majority. In the same way, I feel that he does not truly believe that women should be educated. The way that it came across as I was reading this passage, was that Fitzhugh simply did not want women to go to the North and become educated, for he did not women to take on or adopt those thoughts or views. I feel that Fitzhugh knew that women would become educated, just like he knew that the civil war was coming. As a result, he pretended to support women becoming educated by stating that “it is the mother who first affects opinions.” By doing so, people could not argue with his writing, and therefore start to agree with Fitzhugh’s claims about slavery helping all Americans, as well as the economy.
Although I feel that Fitzhugh was an extremely strong argumentative writer, I feel that he was too cowardly to just come out and stand up for what he believed in. He was too ashamed and tried too hard to be politically correct, to take the wrath for his own viewpoints. Instead of causing a stir with his writings, Fitzhugh just tried to please everyone and raise the moral of Southerners by submissively supporting their way of life and slavery. The only thing that stood out to me as I was reading his piece, and still does now as I am writing this, is the question that I will leave you with to answer: Is Fitzhugh a coward that just hides behind his writing or an extremely smart man to remain both neutral and politically correct?
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Just testing the waters and trying to express my response to John Smith as a person
Well having never posted a blog before in my life, I am a little nervous about this type of writing style. Being that I am used to formal essays normally for english classes and occassionally journal entries, I am going to approach this as if it were a journal and hope that I can truly express my feelings about the readings through it.
Even though I did not contribute much during class on Friday, I found the two readings to be very intriguing considering we do not truly know what John Smith was like as a person, and that the only thing we have to judge him by now are these types of writings which he created. This fact alone leads me to question many different aspects regarding him and when he first started out in Virginia. For example: "Was John Smith truly as self-centered or as egotistical as he portrayed himself to be in his writings?" or "Did John Smith try to be something that he wasn't in order to get more people to colonize this new-found world?" or lastly "Did John Smith write his works of literature as if he were truly the person of his dreams or the type of person that he had always wanted to become?". These questions seemed to jump out at me after reading his works, especially after trying to compare him to the "John Smith" that the Disney movie Pocahontas portays him as. Who is to say that the real John Smith was not similar in some ways to this character? I am sure that he is romanticized quite a bit in order to grab the publics attention and that Pocahontas was clearly not as mature in real life as in the movie, however he could have just been a man who was struggling to start out a new life in a place that was foreign to him. He could have just been finding his way.
I feel that the type of experience that John Smith had gone through is not really and truly comprehendibe to us unless we all of a sudden were thrown into an uncivilized environment that was unfamiliar to us all. How would we react to this situation? Would we try to harden ourselves a bit in order to toughen up and make it through the cold hard winters and different new situations which they were faced with here? When reading the passages, I could not help to notice the types of words that John Smith used to describe the African Americans. For example, he called them salvages and barbarians. I feel that this could have just been due to the fact that they were different from him and that he knew nothing about them. I paralleled this to our discussion in class about the South. For those who knew very little about the South, their impressions were very different from those who knew a lot about it, or had even lived there. Many stereotypes that we often hear came to light and were proven to be false, but only by those who were familiar with the South themselves. I find this to be similar to John Smith's situation, only no one was familiar with the African Americans or their types of lifestyle and therefore no one was able to prove his stereotypes of them to be false. Overall, I feel that judging John Smith on his two pieces of writing alone is just unfair and not completely reliable.
Even though I did not contribute much during class on Friday, I found the two readings to be very intriguing considering we do not truly know what John Smith was like as a person, and that the only thing we have to judge him by now are these types of writings which he created. This fact alone leads me to question many different aspects regarding him and when he first started out in Virginia. For example: "Was John Smith truly as self-centered or as egotistical as he portrayed himself to be in his writings?" or "Did John Smith try to be something that he wasn't in order to get more people to colonize this new-found world?" or lastly "Did John Smith write his works of literature as if he were truly the person of his dreams or the type of person that he had always wanted to become?". These questions seemed to jump out at me after reading his works, especially after trying to compare him to the "John Smith" that the Disney movie Pocahontas portays him as. Who is to say that the real John Smith was not similar in some ways to this character? I am sure that he is romanticized quite a bit in order to grab the publics attention and that Pocahontas was clearly not as mature in real life as in the movie, however he could have just been a man who was struggling to start out a new life in a place that was foreign to him. He could have just been finding his way.
I feel that the type of experience that John Smith had gone through is not really and truly comprehendibe to us unless we all of a sudden were thrown into an uncivilized environment that was unfamiliar to us all. How would we react to this situation? Would we try to harden ourselves a bit in order to toughen up and make it through the cold hard winters and different new situations which they were faced with here? When reading the passages, I could not help to notice the types of words that John Smith used to describe the African Americans. For example, he called them salvages and barbarians. I feel that this could have just been due to the fact that they were different from him and that he knew nothing about them. I paralleled this to our discussion in class about the South. For those who knew very little about the South, their impressions were very different from those who knew a lot about it, or had even lived there. Many stereotypes that we often hear came to light and were proven to be false, but only by those who were familiar with the South themselves. I find this to be similar to John Smith's situation, only no one was familiar with the African Americans or their types of lifestyle and therefore no one was able to prove his stereotypes of them to be false. Overall, I feel that judging John Smith on his two pieces of writing alone is just unfair and not completely reliable.
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