What troubling times!

 

The story “Going to Meet the Man” was very interesting and troubling for me. I have read over this story several times which is more than I usually do. I am troubled by the way people were treated during this time period. Although I must have known in the back of my mind that this kind of cruelty happened, I never put much thought to it. Not only the extreme cruelty to the black man but the mental cruelty that parents exposed their children to both in the black families and the white. I suppose this is all an attempt to teach them that if they do something bad that there will be punishment for it. I am not really clear as to what he actually did do, was it that he raped Miss Standish or simply knocked her down? Wow, how far we have come since then. Now you can murder someone and the punishment may be that you are put in prison for life, but not strung up and tortured.  Mr. Jesse actually seems to get excited physically at the thought of inflicting pain on another human being. Did Jesse get the idea from his father that desire and pleasure for your spouse must come with the thought of cruelty to others? I guess in his masculine dominating thought process he enjoyed seeing the pain of others. How sad for him!