Fluent Essays

Assignment 1:  1 page paper , please see attachment. Assignment 2: Discussion post only , 200 words MAX .    Discussion 7. Questions/Commentary: You may comment on one or both discussions. A) In “The Wife of His Youth” by Charles W. Chesnutt, Mr. Ryder makes a statement about identity. He notes that “Self-preservation is the first law of nature.” Discuss what you think Mr. Ryder means. B) In African American literary traditions, the trickster is a figure who can also act dim-witted, docile, and ignorant but in actuality is just the opposite– sharp, shrewd, and quick-witted. How does Grandison, of Charles W. Chesnutts The Passing of Grandison, fit into this tradition? DRAW SPECIFICALLY FROM THE TEXTS. DO NOT PLAGIARIZE. DO NOT REFERENCE OUTSIDE SOURCES (Google, Wikipedia, student guides, encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.).  Please be sure to post at least 200 words in your response. You must respond to at least two of your peers to receive full credit, and you must post before we move on to the next week.Chesnutt, “The Wife of His Youth” 1 The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line: Electronic Edition. Chesnutt, Charles W. (Charles Waddell), 1858-1932 Illustrated by Clyde O. De Land MLA (8 th Edition) CITATION AT END Source Description: The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line by Charles W. Chesnutt Boston and New York, Houghton, Mifflin and Company 1901 The electronic edition is a part of the UNC-Chapel Hill digitization project Documenting the American South Any hyphens occurring in line breaks have been removed, and the trailing part of a word has been joined to the preceding line. All quotation marks and ampersand have been transcribed as entity references. All double right and left quotation marks are encoded as and respectively. All single right and left quotation marks are encoded as and respectively. Indentation in lines has not been preserved. Running titles have not been preserved. Spell-check and verification made against printed text using Author/Editor (SoftQuad) and Microsoft Word spell checkers. THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH AND OTHER STORIES OF THE COLOR LINE BY CHARLES W. CHESNUTT WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLYDE O. DE LAND BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY The University Press, Cambridge 1901 http://docsouth.unc.edu/index.html Chesnutt, “The Wife of His Youth” 2 Page 1 THE WIFE OF HIS YOUTH I MR. RYDER was going to give a ball. There were several reasons why this was an opportune time for such an event. Mr. Ryder might aptly be called the dean of the Blue Veins. The original Blue Veins were a little society of colored persons organized in a certain Northern city shortly after the war. Its purpose was to establish and maintain correct social standards among a people whose social condition presented almost unlimited room for improvement. By accident, combined perhaps with some natural affinity, the society consisted of individuals who were, generally speaking, more white than black. Some envious outsider made the suggestion that no one was eligible for membership who was not white enough to show blue veins. The suggestion was readily adopted by those who were not of the favored few, Page 2 and since that time the society, though possessing a longer and more pretentious name, had been known far and wide as the Blue Vein Society and its members as the Blue Veins. The Blue Veins did not allow that any such requirement existed for admission to their circle, but, on the contrary, declared that character and culture were the only things considered; and that if most of their members were light-colored, it was because such persons, as a rule, had had better opportunities to qualify themselves for membership. Opinions differed, too, as to the usefulness of the society