How would you explain Celeste being so kind to Moses after he treated her so badly and caused her to miscarry?
Did Moses become increasingly unsympathetic to you? He did to me. Was it just understandable bottled-up rage seeping out in dark ways?
One of the things I kept thinking when I'd conclude that someone was really being a bastard was how nearly impossible it would have been to NOT be a bastard in those circumstances. I think we have a tendency to expect a kind of saintliness from downtrodden people — we expect them to be better than their oppressors because we expect them to have a kind of empathy and awareness, and we less often think about how it's perfectly understandable in many instances that they would become as ugly as the system that shaped them.
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Oh, I didn't see this post before I wrote my Celeste answer to the women question!
I think you're exactly right, and I think that was Jones' intention. Moses definitely did become less sympathetic throughout the story. He became a huge asshole, in fact, after Henry died and he began his odd tryst with Caldonia.
I think Celeste understood what you're saying here: that oppressed people are unbearably frustrated and may lash out at times. And when it's not possible to lash out at the oppressors, they may direct it at their fellow slaves. I think maybe Celeste felt sorry for Moses after it turned out he had hurt himself as much as anyone else.
And wasn't Moses present when the other slave said she should be killed because of her handicap? Maybe she had a lifelong need to prove to Moses how wrong that slave was, that she could be counted on.
Yeah, that's right. That seemed to be a defining moment in her life. It probably was significant to her that Moses witnessed that.
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