Indledning
Living as a black person in Mississippi in the early 1960s was extremely difficult. Although slavery ended a long time ago, it has still left its marks on the society.
Accordingly, there was a huge difference between the black and the white people. Laws enforced racial segregation, whereas the white people had all the power, and the black people were suppressed.
Furthermore, this time is reflected in the short story “The death of Tommy Grimes” which takes place in Mississippi.
The story was written by R. J. Meaddough III in 1962. We hear about Tommy and his father going hunting with a group of grown men.
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Uddrag
The short story has a non-chronological structure, in which 3 flashbacks occurs. The story extends over a year, from he is 11 years old to 12 years old.
Tommy’s progress appears in the flashbacks. For each flashback, he become better and braver. That is why the flashbacks are important to the story, because otherwise the reader would not see his development, which is the whole point.
The ending of the story has an enormous twist. Firstly, Tommy thinks he accidentally shot his father. We breathe a sigh of relief afterwards when we found out that was not true.
As the audience, we think the story ends here happily. However, to the reader’s big surprise, he has shot his first black man.
The writer got us to think they were hunting after bocks, but the whole time they have been hunting for a black slave, who was escaped from the farm.
This changes the whole story totally. Especially, our opinion about Tommy. Instead of feeling sorry for him, we now almost feel the opposite.
Now the reader sees him as a cruel young boy. Looking at it with other eyes, this was the reality in the 1960s. The black people were almost seen as animals, not humans.
In this quote the father is talking about the blacks: “But there’s some varmints that do damage and just plain got to be killed. Understand?”
This is an excellent example of how blacks were seen at that time. White people almost seen then as objects not humans. In conclusion, the view of humanity was totally distorted at that time.
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