In a particularly searing passage in The Fire Next Time Baldwin accuses his country and his fellow countrymen of the crime of having destroyed, and continuing to destroy, hundreds of thousands of lives without knowing it or wanting to know it. For Baldwin, this is such a serious crime that neither he nor time nor history will ever forgive them for it.
For the victims of racism across the globe, it is necessary to be tough and philosophical about death and destruction. But for those responsible for such utter devastation, it is the very innocence they display—they do not know what they are doing or care to know—that, for Baldwin, constitutes the crime. It is simply not permissible for the authors of global death and destruction to hide behind their innocence to escape moral culpability for their actions.
Friday, May 18, 2012
Of what crime does Baldwin accuse his countrymen in The Fire Next Time?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment