Determining who was savage and who was civilized in Oroonoko was a difficult task for the
class. This was primarily because there seemed to be a struggle to figure out
how to define a savage or civilized person. Our group questioned whether to
classify someone as civilized based on the progressiveness or primitiveness of
their culture, or the moral and behavioral traits the people use to treat
themselves and members of society. It was interesting that, based on
progressiveness, we thought that the English were the most civilized, and the
Indians the most savage, but when evaluating moral behaviors, we thought the
opposite. All of this has made me curious as to why we would even consider
progressiveness as a mark of civility? How does progressiveness determine the
civility or savageness of a group of people? Why do we not only judge civility
and savageness based on moral behavior?
Post 4/5
Those are really good questions, and I do not think they can be answered simply. It is confusing how as a society we place moral values with "civility" when in reality, the two are completely different things. Good v. Evil should not automatically mean Civil v. Savage, but that is what the history of our society and culture has always told us. Going against the social norms is difficult, and this is something that is tough to wrap one's mind around.
ReplyDeleteI like the questions you're asking. I wish other posts asked more questions! When i think of being civil, i think of simply acting nice and friendly to someone. So yes, i think that both the british and the indians each had their own definitions of civility. The british seemed more concerned with progressing their society, while the indians seemed more concerned with morals, acting civil and friendly to others.
ReplyDeleteI posted about this earlier, but it's worth repeating -
ReplyDeleteDespite our Professor's insistence that this is not the case, I find the most frequent use of the term "savage" that doesn't pertain to an actual violent act is just something used to mean "someone who isn't like me".
Which leads us to things like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Where the "Civilized" are the true-est of "Like Me"-s, and the "Savages" are the least.
It was so hard to decipher who was civilized and who was savage. Honestly I think it depends on the way you decide to use the definitions. There are so many different connotations and denotations of both words.
ReplyDelete