Sergeant Waters Creating and Becoming His Own Unideal Black Man
A Soldier’s Play, written by Charles Fuller, follows the investigation of Sergeant Waters’ murder, conducted by Captain Davenport. The play is set in a military base in the United States during World War 2, while racial tensions are still high between whites and blacks – in this case, the white officers and black enlisted men. Upon arrival, Davenport begins his investigation, determining the murderer and, in the process, discovering much about Sergeant Waters as an individual. Sergeant Waters is a coarse individual, and is quite hard on his underlings. It soon is revealed of Waters’ contempt for several members of the black community, and that Sergeant Waters’ aim to remove or …show more content…
Segeant Waters finds Wilkie to be drunk, and proceeds to take away all of his stripes (later said to be an extreme punishment) in order to make him an example. He says, “Colored folks always runnin’ off at the mouth what y’all gonna do if the white man gives you a chance – and you get it, and what do you do with it? You wind up drunk on guard duty…” (Fuller 25) Sergeant Waters says that he does not blame the whites for this, as he cannot blame them for not trusting the black man when this occurs. While a more justified example of Waters’ actions, this shows that he thinks the black individual should be a more responsible one that takes the “chances” that the whites give and uses them to their full potential, instead of wasting them and bringing disgrace to the …show more content…
His father, as said earlier, emphasized learning to read and write, and, in a scene close to Waters’ death, he divulge that his father also placed emphasis on proper enunciation of words: “My daddy said, ‘Don’t talk like ‘dis – talk like that! Don’t live hea’ – live there!’” Another component for his motives is Waters seeing a black man acting the fool in front of white men in France in World War 1. A black man was paid by whites to parade himself as a monkey, making a fool of himself and, as Waters’ perceived it, the black race. Waters says that his father told him that the black race must “turn our backs on his [the foolish black man] kind” (Fuller
A Soldier’s Play, written by Charles Fuller, follows the investigation of Sergeant Waters’ murder, conducted by Captain Davenport. The play is set in a military base in the United States during World War 2, while racial tensions are still high between whites and blacks – in this case, the white officers and black enlisted men. Upon arrival, Davenport begins his investigation, determining the murderer and, in the process, discovering much about Sergeant Waters as an individual. Sergeant Waters is a coarse individual, and is quite hard on his underlings. It soon is revealed of Waters’ contempt for several members of the black community, and that Sergeant Waters’ aim to remove or …show more content…
Segeant Waters finds Wilkie to be drunk, and proceeds to take away all of his stripes (later said to be an extreme punishment) in order to make him an example. He says, “Colored folks always runnin’ off at the mouth what y’all gonna do if the white man gives you a chance – and you get it, and what do you do with it? You wind up drunk on guard duty…” (Fuller 25) Sergeant Waters says that he does not blame the whites for this, as he cannot blame them for not trusting the black man when this occurs. While a more justified example of Waters’ actions, this shows that he thinks the black individual should be a more responsible one that takes the “chances” that the whites give and uses them to their full potential, instead of wasting them and bringing disgrace to the …show more content…
His father, as said earlier, emphasized learning to read and write, and, in a scene close to Waters’ death, he divulge that his father also placed emphasis on proper enunciation of words: “My daddy said, ‘Don’t talk like ‘dis – talk like that! Don’t live hea’ – live there!’” Another component for his motives is Waters seeing a black man acting the fool in front of white men in France in World War 1. A black man was paid by whites to parade himself as a monkey, making a fool of himself and, as Waters’ perceived it, the black race. Waters says that his father told him that the black race must “turn our backs on his [the foolish black man] kind” (Fuller