Friday, December 6, 2013
What's wrong with Guitar?
I think there is significant irony when it comes to the group of men called The Seven Days. The Seven Days group kills a white person everytime a black person is murdered. They attempt to hold the revenge murders on the same day that the first took place, and keep it within the same fashion too. Like if a black woman is raped and murdered, then a white woman will be raped and murdered too. Guitar tries to justify these actions by saying that they're just trying to keep things equal between the populations. He claims that it's in white peoples blood to murder. So by carrying out these murders on them isn't he being a little hypocritical? He doesn't have to kill people - but that's the only solution that occurs to them. Sure, within Guitar and many others lives they've been severely wronged by the white people, but that doesn't nescessaryily justify killing them. He tries to say that they are unatural so they need to be killed, which is really concerning, psychotic, and slightly genocidal. I think all his motives hide behind revenge, not any real reasoning on his part that they have to be eliminated. Which makes him as bad as the white people.
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Guitar intrigues me because of his complex character and extreme viewpoint on the racial conflict. Morrison shows the opposite extremists views from the characters Milkman and Guitar. Although they are friends, a blow-up of the relationship is just bound to happen because of their difference in opinions (well for Milkman his lack of opinion). It is very interesting to learn about the different sides of the conflict between people who are supposed to be on the same page supporting the same cause. When I first read all of this I was surprised because we don't learn about this stuff in our history textbooks. Yes, we do learn facts about the Civil Rights Movement. Yes, we know about the awful crimes that the Klu Klux Klan was never convicted for. Yes, we do watch movies about Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Maybe that's why I thought everyone in the Civil Rights Movement was on the same page. I just think that it is really interesting to see the viewpoints of the extremes - Milkman not caring and Guitar violently fighting back - without a happy medium. On a side note, I can understand Guitar's motives because revenge is a natural instinct in everyone, but killing is way too far and barbaric and just ends up hurting rather than helping his fight.
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