Kelly Cooke - Black Robe Reflection

Black Robe reflection
Kelly Cooke

The film ‘Black Robe’ asserts all of the ways that oral and literate cultures differ in terms of their ability
to connect with nature, their environment, and each other. A scene that I interpreted as being significant
was one where the Father was referring to the natives as childish and primitive, and in need of conversion
to Christianity. Another Frenchman traveling with the Algonquin natives informed the father that they did
have an afterlife. The afterlife of the Algonquin natives is the souls of the dead who hunt the souls of
animals in the forest at night. Though this concept of hunting animals is more familiar to the average
person than floating on clouds in the sky, the Father still believes that the Algonquins are childish. I
thought this represented how literate cultures view themselves as being above oral cultures. The scene
also shows how written communication can disconnect one from nature since the afterlife of the
written Christian religion is nothing that one could experience on earth.

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