Let me start with the obvious question. What is it? I'm going to go through a logical progression: head to toe. The first factor I saw on the head is the mask. Coated in gold and silver surrounded by pearls it displays affluence in a way no jewelry ever could. It's grafted to the face in a way that replaces its personality- aka the mouth- with money. While the mask is the clearest feature on the head, the most interesting thing to me is the nose and mouth region. It is, quite simply, human. A human nose on the face of something that is simply not human. The ears as well upon closer inspection look more like a deer than the dog like attributes the rest of the face has.
I then examined the body. This one is easy. It's a dog
The legs and feet are equally as easy to discern. They're deer body parts.
Now let us put this together in the form of a riddle. What has the legs and ears of a deer, the body and head of a dog, and the mouth and nose of a human? My answer? This book. The picture is symbolic for the entire book, a hodge-podge collection that alone makes no one look and lies underneath the surface of our collective mind, but when put together stands out enough to draw a response and even perhaps contemplation.
Yes, if we want to get very surface level the picture is a direct textual reference, but that's fun for no one.
Interesting take, though I saw the entire body as a deer. I didn't understand the picture until I read up to page 60, when Rankin says, "What else can you liken yourself to but an animal, the ruminant kind?"
ReplyDeleteThe speaker (or audience's?) continual sighing personifies the oppression they face. Yet, because they even get condemned just for sighing ("Moaning elicits laughter, sighing upsets" (59).), they are trapped, like an animal in a cage. What you say are pearls on the mask I see as stitches- American society has placed a black face on an animal, treats blacks as a lower species. I think maybe that could represent the book, but mostly because both the book and the picture represent a black person's experience.
The poetic story Rankine tells right before this image is when a white (assuming) woman treats a black person like a savage animal, therefore dehumanizing her and perceiving her as a threat, dangerous, non-human, not a peer. Therefore the next page has an image of a wounded deer with a black person edited onto the animal's face. She is no longer recognized as a fellow human in Rankine's story, she's looked down upon as an animal.
ReplyDeleteIt could kind of be a combination of all three ideas. I think the picture is representing how black people were treated like animals. However, the the hodge-podge collection of animal parts could also relate to the treatment of black people. It could represent how black people are not only seen as animals, but also incomplete and stitched up. I agree with Julie that this picture relates to the book because it has to do with treatment of black people, as does the book. The book also has this incomplete, seemingly random collection, because thats how blacks are made to feel.
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