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Affirmation of Humanity in 3 Books

The Affirmation of Humanity in The Man Who Killed The Deer,

Number Our Days, and The Slave Community

Rodolfo Byers, the white trader in the Pueblo community, realizes at the end of Frank Waters' The Man Who Killed The Deer that "[t]he brotherhood of man! It will always be a dreary phrase, a futile hope, until each man, all men, realize that they themselves are but different reflections and insubstantial images of a greater invisible whole" (Waters 199). Martiniano, the moral center of The Man Who Killed The Deer, only comes to this realization after being continually pulled between adherence to tribal and traditional rituals and beliefs, and the lure of his "away-school" training and the emphasis on individuality recognized by the European Romantic tradition he learned at the away-school.

In Number Our Days, Shmuel acts largely as this moral center. He also is somewhat of an outcast from the group with which he is affiliated because he questions the morality of Zionism. The Slave Community follows no particular person, and therefore has no real moral center per se, other than the current repugnance toward slavery. Nonetheless, even here, despite the obvious dehumanization and demoralization of the slaves in the furtherance of slavery, Blassingame observes moments of the slaves' tenacity in affirming their humanity.

The issues of individuality, humanity and the group subculture raised in the fictional The Man Who Killed The Deer and Barbara Myerhoff's anthropological study Number Our Days are similar. Martiniano grew up in the ways of the Pueblo Indians but was removed against his will in the interest of "progress." As a result of his Western-based training, Martiniano becomes an outcast of both societies; outcast from the Western tradition because he never really fit in in the first instance, and outcast from his heritage, the Pueblo Indians, because he cannot accept their beliefs without question after having le...

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Affirmation of Humanity in 3 Books. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:32, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1692741.html