Gelding The Boy-Herd
Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2018 6:04 pm
I enjoyed reading "Gelding The Boy-Herd" but the story left two big questions to the reader's imagination. Where were the boys from and how much did they know?
My take on the story is that the boys were sold by their parents or perhaps impounded by debt collectors or by the IRS for unpaid back taxes. I believe that the cognitive abilities of the boys was completely intact and that they knew what was happening to them. They could reason as well as you or I. However if you were so young (prepubescent) that your personality wasn't yet set and you were still figuring out how the world worked, and if you were treated as livestock, I think that after awhile you'd act like livestock.
The story was written from the point of view of one of the ranchers and that's the rub. I believe that the owners/ranchers suffer from the same sort cognitive dissonance as did the slave holders of the pre civil war American south. In other words they're deep in denial. In order to justify their actions and consider themselves "good people" they had to deny the humanity of their "property." Consider that millions of children were born into slavery and it really wasn't even a black or white issue. If you were 1/16th black and 15/16th white you could legally be bought and sold. A person who was 15/16 white had no rights to speak of.
Reading this story from the mind set of the "Gelding The Boy-Herd" universe it seems only slightly more barbaric than American chattel slavery of 150 years ago.
Your thoughts?
My take on the story is that the boys were sold by their parents or perhaps impounded by debt collectors or by the IRS for unpaid back taxes. I believe that the cognitive abilities of the boys was completely intact and that they knew what was happening to them. They could reason as well as you or I. However if you were so young (prepubescent) that your personality wasn't yet set and you were still figuring out how the world worked, and if you were treated as livestock, I think that after awhile you'd act like livestock.
The story was written from the point of view of one of the ranchers and that's the rub. I believe that the owners/ranchers suffer from the same sort cognitive dissonance as did the slave holders of the pre civil war American south. In other words they're deep in denial. In order to justify their actions and consider themselves "good people" they had to deny the humanity of their "property." Consider that millions of children were born into slavery and it really wasn't even a black or white issue. If you were 1/16th black and 15/16th white you could legally be bought and sold. A person who was 15/16 white had no rights to speak of.
Reading this story from the mind set of the "Gelding The Boy-Herd" universe it seems only slightly more barbaric than American chattel slavery of 150 years ago.
Your thoughts?
