The Human Stain - Essay Example

When Silks father was alive, this was never an option for Coleman. The elder Silk was a proud, intelligent man who was forced, because of the bigotry and prejudice of the time, to work on a rail car as a server on the car. This was humiliating for him, for it was made known that the elder Silk was known for the precision of language, and was also well-versed in the classics. He could have been a professor, himself, if he would have been able to “pass” as Coleman had been able to. This was the clear implication of being black in those days – the elder Coleman represented everything that younger Coleman feared, that he would be relegated to a lower station in life than he would have been had he been a different color.

But, after the father died, Silk had to turn his back on his family. He learned this from Steena. Steena was a girl whom Coleman loved – one would say, as Coleman implied, that Steena was the love of Colemans life. However, Steena met Colemans family, and the implication was that Steena was not warned beforehand that Colemans family was African-American. Steena was polite with the family, but afterwards, she left Coleman with barely an explanation. Coleman then learned that he had to disown his family if he was to live in a society where he could find a good woman, and have professional success.

Therefore, he told Iris, the woman who was to be his wife, that his parents were dead. And, this just about killed his mother - “He was murdering her..murdering her on behalf of his exhilarating notion of freedom!” (Roth, 2000, p. 138). He could never acknowledge his mother, and his mother would never know his children, unless the mother posed as a nanny, which the mother was willing to do. However, this was the worst punishment for Coleman and his family, for his identity, which was obtained from his family, had to be subverted so that he could pass as white.

But the damage was clearly done - “You