Multifaceted “Human” Ideas: Redefining How We Perceive Humanity
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April 11, 2022 / Lydia Finch / Rethinking Early Am. Lit. / Anthology Preface
What is humanity? Well, that depends on who you’re asking and in what context you’re using the word. Are we debating the humanity of people? Are we talking about something being inhumane and therefore lacking humanity? If something is inhumane, it is typically thought to be immoral. If that’s the case, however, then not being human must be an immoral act. Take, for instance, Jeremy MacFarlane’s essay on cannibalism in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. He mentions multiple times that cannibalism is taboo, yet the characters partake in this taboo anyway, thus making them less than human. In other words, being less than human is immoral (MacFarlane). However, in order for humanity to mean that, then humanity must be the core of humans. This is simply untrue - humanity is not the essence of human nature. I’m not saying morality is a synonym for humanity, but I am saying that they’re similar. “What the heck does this have to do with American Literature?” you might be asking. After all, you picked up an American Literature Anthology, not an essay on humanity. But what if I told you that humanity is an essential part of American Literature? When humanity is seen in American Literature, it can be given by people who aren’t seen as human. Likewise, people who are seen as humans can exhibit a lack of humanity. A good example of this is in Benito Cereno, when Captain Delano refers to the African crew members as different animals, thus dehumanizing them. This immoral act comes from someone who is allegedly a compassionate, moral person, as pointed out by my good colleagues in their essay The Pursuit of Personal Freedom from Normative Labeling (Rose Paulin, et al). This is why I say humanity is more akin to morality if anything. Scholarly works analyzing humanity in American Literature seem severely lacking. Knowing this has inspired me to show people how important this kind of analysis can be. I’m going to use multiple texts in this anthology to show you how American Literature, read through a lens of humanity, can help us learn new things about ourselves and the human race as a whole.
Humans are not made up of human-exclusive materials. We’re made from the same materials animals, and, to an extent, plants, are made of. We are made of matter, of cells, lifeblood, etc. We live and breathe exactly like the rest of the entities on this planet. Likewise, American Literature is made up of many elements that can be found in other canons of literature. The biggest difference is how these elements are used or brought together. Perhaps we have to draw a line somewhere with American Literature and what that means. What does it mean to have an anthology be “Pan-American,” as Frederick Smock put it in The American Voice Anthology of Poetry? Perhaps, as Smock alludes to in his anthology preface, American Literature doesn’t have to be by an American. American Literature is a tricky beast that tends to have more than one of what I’ll refer to as “essentials.” These “essentials” are: imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, uniqueness, freedom, “American values,” dreams of travel, themes of exploration, and revolution. Almost all “the essentials” can be found in every piece of American Literature inside and outside of the canon. “The essentials” helped to dictate what texts I included in this anthology.
I have tried to include a variety of different authors and stories to give a wide range of how humans think of humanity. I believe the inclusion of authors who are a variety of races and genders is crucial to understanding this idea. Non-canonical texts are important because we need to see how texts outside of the canon differ from those inside of it and how they can be explored, which is a point stressed by my colleagues who taught The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo as an American Literature text (Chretien, Pogue). Because American Literature texts, non-canonical or otherwise, can be hard to decipher, I’ve added some historical contexts in their appropriate places to give the reader an idea of important historical events that pertain to the texts. Frankly, I find what we know as American Literature hard to read, and I hope that the historical accounts will make for less confusing readings than my original readings. The texts I’ve chosen to include in this anthology have been separated into three main categories: “Scratching the Surface,” “Pressure and Morality,” and “A Deeper Look.” While the texts can be put into more than one of these categories, I’ve tried, to the best of my ability, to put them in the category that corresponds the most.
In “Scratching the Surface,” I’ve included The Heroic Slave, and Benito Cereno. “Scratching the Surface” is exactly what it says on the tin. In this section, we dip our toes into the metaphorical ocean of humanity. The texts I’ve included in this section help us to jog our memories on the topics of humanity, morality, and personhood. To supplement these texts, I have included background information for the Creole Rebellion of 1841, of which both of the previously mentioned texts took inspiration from. The Heroic Slave follows the story of two men - a runaway slave, Madison Washington, and a hardcore abolitionist, Mr. Listwell. The dynamic between the two men, as well as their monologues about slavery, reveal a common definition of humanity, giving us a simple perspective of one side of this multifaceted idea. Benito Cereno, on the other hand, is a long-winded mystery that takes even more inspiration from the Creole Rebellion than The Heroic Slave does. The main character, Captain Delano, helps a ship called the San Dominick off the harbor. While aboard the San Dominick, he notices small details about the ship’s crew, objectifying them, talking about them as if they were non-human entities, and in general being very skeptical of the entire crew’s people of color. This portrayal of human beings lets us ponder how morality ties in with humanity.
The second category, “Pressure and Morality,” includes texts such as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and The Female American. This section pushes the reader to explore how morality and pressure from outside forces affect humanity. It shows the reader that humanity is not an innate code which humans are born with, but rather a learned experience that can change depending on the situation. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl follows the journey of Jacobs’ life, where we see all the hardships she faces. From abuse to having her children ripped away to freedom, we can examine how the humanity of each person she encounters changes. Many people throughout the text are viewed as subhuman or non-human, shifting our lens of what exactly humanity means in the face of adversity due to race. Jacobs seemed to use “sound, moral reasoning” for her actions, but for Unca Eliza there’s a moral ambiguity to her actions throughout the text. She shows the Native people kindness yet constantly refers to them as “savages” despite being Native American herself. She repeatedly takes morally “wrong” actions but arguably does so for survival. This explores how humanity is changed when pressured by our instinctual need to survive and cope with the world around us. This look into the more complicated sides of humanity leads us into the last section.
The third and final category, “A Deeper Look,” includes the texts Song of Myself, The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo, and The Narrative of Gordon Arthur Pym of Nantucket. This section helps the reader dive into the previously mentioned “ocean of humanity.” The reader can explore complicated texts (which isn’t to say the other texts aren’t complicated) that incorporate many themes, some of which make the texts seem like more than one genre. In Song of Myself, Whitman delves deep into what makes us human. He describes his surroundings in detail and watches the people around him with a keen eye. The way he describes people, places, and things, as well as the way he melds them together, redefines what we think of humanity. This melding of human beings is also, in a sense, dehumanizing. In knowing this, readers can discuss how Whitman’s portrayal of humans affects humanity. Similarly, in The Black Vampyre, characters are literally “dehumanized” as some are turned into vampyres and other non-human beings. No matter their race - people of color, white people, human, or non-human - the characters in this text show a lot of immoral and inhuman(e) behaviors. This divide, or lack thereof, creates confusion on what exactly the author wanted us to think of so-called “humanity.” He comes to the conclusion that everyone is a vampyre in their own way, inferring that all humans lack humanity or that humanity encompasses a lack of morality. While The Black Vampyre has characters who commit obviously inhuman(e) acts, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket has characters who commit morally gray inhuman acts. Through dreamscapes, nightmares, and horrific events, Pym calls into question each character’s human status. Poe accomplishes this in a myriad of ways, but one scene that sticks out is the cannibalism scene. A cannibal, as said by Roger Davis in his essay on Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, is “removed by space [and] time” meaning they are not of this world. Cannibals are inhuman, thus lacking humanity (Davis). Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket not only explores how food consumption affects our humanity, but also how race, gender, and sexuality do.
Keeping all these ideas in mind, we can read American Literature in a brand-new way. The idea of humanity seems to be sorely unexplored in American Literature. This also begs the question of how much we’ve really explored humanity in other genres. Perhaps we would benefit from exploring humanity in literature from other countries as well. Through doing this, we could have a better understanding of each other. Perhaps the world would be a better place. So, I invite you, dear reader, to read on and open your mind to this vast concept we call “humanity.”
Works Cited
Chretien, Jessica, and Sydney Pogue. “Rethinking Early American Literature: An Unconventional Literature Course at PSU.” Rethinking Early American Literature: An Unconventional Literature Course at PSU, Wordpress, 5 Dec. 2019, https://rethinkingeal19.art.blog/2019/12/05/the-black-vampyre-anthology-contribution/.
D’Arcy, Uriah Dereck. The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo. 1819.
Davis, Roger. "Food for Thoughts: Thinking through Cannibals and Plagiarists." university of toronto quarterly, vol. 87, no. 1, Winter 2018, pp. 176-95. Academic Search Premier.
Douglass, Frederick. The Heroic Slave: A Cultural and Critical Edition. Yale University Press, 2015.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Dover Publications, Inc., 2001.
MacFarlane, Jeremy. "Eating Like an Animal: Cannibalism as Animalism in Poe's Pym." Interdisciplinary Humanities, vol. 32, no. 2, Summer 2015, pp. 27-39. Academic Search Premier.
Melville, Herman. Benito Cereno. 1855.
Paulin, Rose. “Rethinking Early American Literature: An Unconventional American Literature Course at PSU.” Rethinking Early American Literature: An Unconventional American Literature Course at PSU, Wordpress, 2 Dec. 2019, https://rethinkingeal19.art.blog/2019/12/02/the-pursuit-of-personal-freedom-from-normative-labeling/.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Dover Publications, Inc, 2005.
Smock, Frederick. The American Voice Anthology of Poetry.
Whitman, Walt. Song of Myself. Dover Publications Inc., 2001.