Race of the American Novel: Critical Commentary

I choose the commentary from James Baldwin and his main argument is that Stowe didn't represent as well for a protest novel the realism of being human. He goes onto saying that "The failure of the protest novel lies in the rejection of life, the human being, the denial of his beauty, dread, power, in its insistence that it is his categorization alone which is real and which can not be transcended." What I think he means here is that the harsh realities that would of come out of the real world cannot be translated into a book. Yet I think its a good representation of what it might be like to be a slave, I don't think its as realistic as it truly was. I think that in order to truly write the horrors or tragic events you need to be in that situation and fell those emotions, you can never really know what that's truly like unless you experience it yourself and I think that's what James is trying to get at here is that when Stowe writes this novel, its not as realistic as it could be because she truly wasn't in those situations so she wouldn't know as much. You cant really imagine how these things could be unless you experience it yourself. As going back to my theme I think it helps me understand that its hard to write those emotions you would feel being torn apart from your loved ones and I think Stowe does a very good job of doing this but when I read this review I still feel this way however its true that you cant truly know what their feeling unless you're in the situation itself. I have to agree with him on this I do think that's its hard to write the harsh realities of the human nature and emotion and put it into pages. However, I do feel like Stowe does a good job with this even though its hard to do. So I would have to disagree with him on Stowe didn't do this completely.