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The House Behind the Cedars

In: Novels

Submitted By restlessmema
Words 2759
Pages 12
Tammy Carnell
English 3410-01
Dec. 3, 2012
"The House Behind the Cedars" by Charles W. Chesnutt Charles Waddell Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, Ohio. His parents were both free African
Americans who moved to Cleveland from Fayetteville, North Carolina in 1856. Chesnutt was of mixed race -- both of his grandmothers were African American while both of his grandfathers were white. Though he self identified as African American, he often referred to an extensive white ancestry and claimed that the issues of his mixed race had a profound impact on him as a young man. Themes of complex heritage and racial identity would be characteristic of Chesnutt's writing in his novel, "The House Behind the Cedars", as well as his other work. The overriding theme in "The House Behind the Cedars", written by Charles W. Chesnutt, is the problem or deception that comes with "passing" or posing as a white person and its consequences on both African Americans and whites in the South. The book places a strong emphasis on color, class, and alienation. Lost and recovered identity are also present in this book as I believe a type of double-consciousness. Each character in "The House Behind the
Cedars" seems to have a "sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." (Du Bois 694) As a child, the light-skinned John decides that he is more white than black and, therefore, has the right to enjoy all of the privileges of a white man. When John Walden was just a boy he had a conversation with a prominent Judge that had an office in

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