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The Role Of Racial Prejudice In Desiree's Baby By Kate Chopin

1472 Words6 Pages

Racial prejudice reveals pride and destroys even the closest relationships. It can tear apart families, ruin futures and even bring death. Kate Chopin takes the reader on a wonderfully crafted journey, showing the distinction between prejudiced and unprejudiced characters and connects the story to her own life experiences. Through many symbols, she masterfully leads the reader through the lives of many distinct characters in the South. With these many tools, Chopin conveys the truth about racial prejudice through her short story Desiree’s Baby. Desiree’s Baby is a story of the racial prejudice that runs deep in the South. It is a story of how something that starts as a fairytale can quickly descend into a horror story. Beginning in the mind of a Madame Valmonde as she drives to visit her adopted daughter and new baby, she remembers the sweet times eighteen years ago when her husband found the abandoned baby Desiree. Seeming very shocked when Madame Valmonde sees Desiree’s baby, it pique’s some curiosity from the audience …show more content…

It conveys in a superb way the horrid things that even a touch of deep rooted racism can do. It can wreck a life, but most often wrecks a series of lives. Every single character was effected in a negative way because of how Armand dealt with the realization that he may have married a women of a different ethnicity. The slaves, who had been treated much kinder when Armand was loving Desiree were treated horribly again, the Valmondes lost their baby and grandchild, and Armand suffered the biggest loss of all. He lost his innocence. And that is what racism does to whoever it attacks. This is the crucial story that Chopin conveys through distinction, symbols and relation. The reader will hopefully come away from reading this story feeling convicted to do something against the problem of racism that still resides in the hearts of many men and women

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