The Ways of White Folks Literary Elements

The Ways of White Folks Literary Elements

Genre

Collection of short stories

Setting and Context

It is hard to determine the place where each story took place. However, most stories take place in the 19th century in the South.

Narrator and Point of View

Each story is told from the first-person perspective of the main character in the story who recalls the events from a subjective point of view.

Tone and Mood

The tone and mood in the stories is a violent one.

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonists are the black characters and the antagonists are the white suppressors who abuse the black men, women and children they own.

Major Conflict

The major conflict is between the desire the African-American characters have to be free and the efforts put by the white owners to keep them enslaved.

Climax

Each story has a different climax because it represents a complete narrative on its own. In most stories, however, the climax is reached when the black slaves rise against their white owners and take control over their lives.

Foreshadowing

The general violence which takes place in the stories is foreshadowed by the cruelty with which the white owners treat those who they deemed as being inferior to them.

Understatement

In many stories, the white oppressors claim that the idea that the white man is superior to the black man is written down in the Bible. This is later proven to be an understatement when it is revealed that the Bible stated that all men are equal in front of God.

Allusions

One of the main allusions found in the stories is that there is a big connection between the idea of owning land and personal freedom.

Imagery

One of the most important imageries in the stories is that of the scars on the bodies of the black slaves. This image is important because it transmits the idea that the black slaves were treated cruelly and with extreme savagery.

Paradox

One of the most paradoxical ideas found in the stories is the way in which many black characters refused to run away even when they were offered the possibility or when they had the chance to do it.

Parallelism

No parallelism ca be found.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

The term "earth" is often used in the stories as a general term to make reference to death and to freedom.

Personification

We have a personification in the story "Home" in the sentence "and here, the dirt was welcoming to everyone and treated everyone the same".

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