Uncle Remus

Description

Mark Twain wrote about Joel Chandler Harris: “He visited us in our home in Hartford and was reverently devoured by the big eyes of Susy and Clara, — for I made a deep and awful impression upon the little creatures, who knew his book by heart through my nightly declamation of its tales to them — by revealing to them privately that he was the real Uncle Remus whitewashed so that he could come into people’s houses the front way.” – Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 2 (2013), p. 260. Dictated 16 October 1906. We are in the US post-Civil War. The slaves are freed and the white owners who tortured and used them for decades are now scared they will retaliate. Chandler Harris grew up in the South. He set out to preserve the rich cultural traditions he was introduced to through the slaves he knew as a child. What he basically started with Uncle Remus was an anthropological project we are indebted to because without his efforts all these stories would have been lost.  What is most interesting about the Uncle Remus stories is their structure revealed in “Uncle Remus Initiated the Boy.” You can picture it as three circles. The inner most circle has Uncle Remus and the boy in it. It is a safe environment. Uncle Remus is old and non-threatening. The boy’s mother, who is in the middle circle, sees them. The fact that she sees them and does not interrupt and then report what she heard to the narrator is further proof that this is a safe environment. The outer most circle is that of the white male narrator, who relates the stories to the mainly white audience. The fact that Chandler was a white male is meant to give further reassurance to the scared white south that the boy, and they, are safe. They are safe because freed slaves are not vengeful, bloodthirsty animals. They are gentle and literary with a wealth of imagination and beautiful stories. With Uncle Remus, Harris tried to save not only their literary tradition, but also their actual lives.   But, this narrative structure is deceiving. Brier Rabbit, who is the trickster model for, you guessed it, Bugs Bunny, is not a cute little white domesticated rabbit. He is a wild, brown rabbit that outfoxs the Fox every time! It is a very subversive narrative that slaves told their children at night and in secret because they needed to use coded language that would not get them in trouble. And isn’t that what Children Literature does best? The animals represent the black people (Rabbit) beating the southern whites out to get them (Fox and other animals) at their own game. These are stories of resistance and rebellion.  In your comments, pick one of the tales. I know they are hard to read because of the dialect (which should remind you of the way Jim spoke in Tom Sawyer and will come up again in Langston Hughes’s poetry). Read them aloud. Try to figure out where the resistance and rebellion are in the tale.   ********************************* Your Comments should do 4 things: 1. use specific references to ALL the materials in the daily unit 2. Show your understanding of my own post above by applying its ideas to unit materials 3. clearly state your personal take referring to your own knowledge and experience and ask questions!  4.  comment on 2 other students’ posts (do not just agree with them, react and reflect on what they are saying). Student response  After reading the selections from “Uncle Remus”, I choose to write about, “The Wonderful Tar Baby Story”. Keeping in mind that we are in the US post-civil war and the slaves are freed, I felt like there were some sort of resistance in this story. In the begining of the story Ber Fox doesn’t even want to acknowledge Ber Rabbit. The author states,”’I’m gwine ter larn you how ter talk ter ‘spectubble folks ef hit’s de las’ ack,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee. ‘Ef you don’t take off dat hat en tell me howdy, I’m gwine ter bus’ you wide open,’ sezee”. Here, we can see Ber Rabbit become frustrated for not being greeted back. In the story a lot of the times the Ber Fox “laid low”, but I feel like that was his way of ignoring the Rabbit, almost as if he was beneath him. I get the idea that Ber Fox is having a hard time accepting the fact that Ber Rabbit is out and about, as he is (freed). At the end, I feel like all the fussing and fighting that Ber Rabbit was doing to get Ber Fox’s attention was making trouble for him. Harris states, “Brer Rabbit keep on axin’ ‘im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin’ nothin’, twel present’y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis’, he did, en blip he tuck ‘er side er de head. Right dar’s whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis’ stuck, en he can’t pull loose. De tar hilt ‘im. But Tar-Baby, she stay still, en Brer Fox, he lay low.” Looking at the characters as a white and black person, I feel like Ber Rabbit’s attempt to try to get Ber Fox to greet him back, represents the lack of acceptance black people had after being freed . All of the readings required to read were quite difficult to understand, even with the links to the audio. But I seem to get some sort of understanding from “Why the negro is black”. Uncle Remus talks about the unity of the “negroes”. Uncle Remus says in the text, “Way back yander. In dem times we ‘uz all un us black; we ‘uz all niggers tergedder,..” Basically voicing that back in the day that everyone was black and all “niggers” together. Hence, the unity discussed in my prior sentence. I also feel that this is where the resistance tends to surface in this chapter. But then Uncle Remus says, “But atter ‘w’ile de news come dat dere wuz a pon’ er water some’rs in de naberhood, w’ich ef dey’d git inter dey’d be wash off nice en w’ite..” Basically insinuated that there was a pond that will make you so clean as white. But then he says, “Dem wuz de niggers, en down ter dis day dey ain’t no w’ite ’bout a nigger ‘ceppin de pa’ms er der han’s en de soles er der foot.” I wasnt to sure if Uncle Remus was trying to argue the differences between his kind and the other people, I feel that he was connecting the unfairness or to go back to the title “Why is the Negro Black”. I believe that the title has such a stronger meaning behind it, although I cant quite solve this. However I feel this is where the rebellion starts to surface too. I also like how Uncle Remus serves as a humble man who passes down so much wisdom and experience to the little boy.