The Ways of White Folks Literary Elements

Collection of short stories

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

No parallelism ca be found.

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

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