The Flamming Cross

28.03.2001

White an essay about The Flaming Cross

related to your main theme freedom

First of all I will give a brief summary of the book, because then it will be a lot easier to talk about “The Flaming Cross” in a point of view, where we can include the main theme freedom, and talk about, what freedom actually is. What is freedom? I will answer the question later in the essay.

“The Flaming Cross” is about a doctor Jane Jones who comes from the big city of New York to the little isolated suburb called Hicksville. Her intention is good; she wants to help the poor Negroes who live in the town, but her way of helping them is not accepted by all the people in the town. She is giving young women tele-phone numbers for abortion clinics, which makes The Ku Klux Klan really upset. The members of the Klan (actually a greater part of the town) are against her, and they call her a ‘baby-killer’ because she prevents new life to be born.

The book ends with, that Dr. Jane Jones leaves town, because she is in danger. The Ku Klux Klan is really mad of what she has been doing. “Go back to the city of New York. You don’t know how a little town acts,” they said, in other words, they recommended her to leave immediately. She refuses and wont believe what she has been told, but soon she realises that they are serious. They are going to kill her sooner or later, if she doesn’t leave, and lucky for her, she does leave.

What is The Ku Klux Klan, and what do they believe in?
The Ku Klux Klan was formed after the Civil war in America in 1865. It was a group of people, who was unsatisfied with the result of the war. They could NOT accept that Negroes was allowed to go free. In the beginning The Ku Klux Klan wasn’t a violent clan, but after two years the violence sat in. The aim the Ku Klux Klan has been fighting for is a white United States '' without any coloured people.

What makes people be a part of such kind of brotherhood?
I think, that the reason why people are joining these kinds of clan is, that they want to be part of something big and different. Not just any kind of group, but a famous and feared group. A group that will make people notice them. People who want attention are joining these clans.

How does the main theme ‘Freedom’ fit in, in this kind of discussion?
If we talk about freedom related to the discussion, we then have to make it clear, what freedom is. We have to define the conception. Therefore I’m going to look it up in the dictionary. How is it defined? It says:

“The word freedom has a lot of positive meanings.
‘Freedom is better than gold.’ Freedom and life are inseparable. It is not possible to have a good life without freedom, and opposite; it is not possible to have the freedom without the life, and therefore it is not possible to separate these conceptions. Independence is another expression for freedom. The French resolutions countersign was: ‘freedom, likeness and brotherhood’ and it was also a demand of dissolution to the dependence-condition, which was tying the human beings to each other. Freedom could also be an expression of tolerance.”
(my translation)

How can we use is it, in the discussion?
Well … if we return to the book “The Flaming Cross” '' which certainly is a good example when we talk about freedom '' we will see, that this book is touching a lot of aspects about freedom. For example: The understanding between human beings '' when one of the persons are coloured '' could be a terrific break on the freedom-question, and therefor a break of the human rights which are worked out by the FN-convention. Another point of view when we are talking about understanding could be that a lot of people don’t understand each other because of their differences. Here I have to make it clear that it is not only, when we are discussing racism. People who are different from one other tend to separate.

The word freedom does also have a lot of symbolism-value. For example: Freedom is one of the highest advantages which is valued to fight for, and in last instance valued to die for, and that is also, what some Negroes do (not in the book) in the real world, and that connects my opinion to the fact, that it is not possible to separate life and freedom from each other.

In the text I tried to talk about freedom from the book “The Flaming Cross” and I have been telling some facts about The Ku Klux Klan, and what they believe in. I have also tried to define the word freedom from the dictionary. I used the definition in my own opinion of what freedom is, and I used it to see, how we can look at freedom, in an understanding of the conception.