Soul on Ice
The book “Soul on Ice” is composed of four essays that were written by Eldridge Cleaver while he was serving time in prison in 1965. The four essays were then arranged into a book form when Eldridge got out of prison in 1968. The book partly influenced the civil rights movement. After Eldridge was released from prison, he joined in on the civil rights movement by becoming part of the Black Panthers because he wanted to combat police brutality that was going on in the 1960s. He was inspired by works done by other authors we learned about in class like Web DuBois and Malcolm X but also was inspired by people like the famous philosopher and economist Karl Marx. Soul on Ice is a book that shows how Eldridge Cleaver went from a criminal to a philosopher that helped fuel the civil rights movement.
In book, Cleaver talks about his experience and thoughts his personal experience with crime and violence. Cleaver was a marijuana dealer and he was convicted of multiple rapes and served time for both crimes. He also spent a lot of time in his youth in detention centers because he caused a lot of problems as a kid like being charged with possession of marijuana and was released after two years but shortly after he was arrested again for a rape and an attempted murder. In the book, he talks openly about his rapes. He says that he would first prey on black women to find ways that would work. After he gained enough confidence, he would move across the train tracks where the white women were and rape them. He talks about how raping white women was the most satisfying thing for him because he was so resentful over how white men had used black women in the past referring to when slave owners had used their slaves to meet their sexual desires. After reading this section where he openly admits to rape, I was a little surprised he would just openly talk about it like that. It did remind me of when we talked about plantations and how they worked in class. We talked about different roles of the field slaves, but also the house slaves. We forget that the house slaves had it just as bad as the field slaves because they were in the house and were easy prey for white men to take advantage of them. This is what Eldridge Cleaver was so resentful over and what fueled his rapings that he talks about in the book. He expressed how he wanted to get revenge for how the white men treated the black women in the past. He was living out the lines from a poem he was inspired by that was written by Roy Jones where it talks about raping white women and their fathers. He then talks about how if he would not have been arrested by the police, he would have slit some white people’s throats. After he goes back to prison, he realizes that he had gone astray and his actions were taken a little too far. Eldridge talks about that he did not care about going astray from the white man’s law but he realized he went astray from who he was as a person. He was obsessed with getting the upper hand on white women because white men covenanted white women and white men never wanted a black man to be with a white women. He wanted to take that from them and did not care about the laws.
The next thing Eldridge talks about are the injustices in America; specifically what happened to Emmett Till which we learned about in class who was the fourteen year old who was beaten up and killed after he was supposedly hitting on a white girl. The police never charged anyone and the murderers got away with it. Eldridge mentions all the things that are wrong with the justice system like how white men can get away with things like what happened to Emmett Till and how it has always been a white man’s world and African Americans never are able to slip up even a little bit.
The last essay in the book is about his views on genders, masculinity, and sexuality. He describes racial tensions as a battle between body and mind. The body represents black people who went through decades of slavery and the mind represents white people and their years of slave ownership and their positions of power. The book talks about how white men are very possessive over their white women and black men are territorial over their black women and how each side tries to seek power over the other’s prized possessions through having sex with the opposite race.
This book talks about a lot of issues such as race inequality, genders and sexuality, and injustice. Eldridge Cleaver’s book Soul on Ice is a first hand account of a man who has experience these things. This book is important to American literature because it helped fuel the civil rights movement because the man who wrote it was very passionate about his stances and was determined to show white people he was resilient. This passion is what propelled him to join the Black Panthers which helped change America by keeping the police accountable for their actions. The book makes me feel indifferent because I feel weird writing an analysis over a guy who openly admits to rape. I think the early versions of Eldridge is kind of a pervert who is out to seek revenge through rape. He does transition into a man who reflects on his past actions and realizes why what he did was wrong, but it’s hard for me to think highly of a rapist even if his motivations were somewhat justifiable, his actions were not carried out in the right way. There is a reason why this book is banned in a lot of libraries. The good parts of this book is that it’s really out there. He is very passionate about conveying his thoughts to a wider audience and wants to make a difference. He sees what is wrong with America and wants to make a difference. I think he is ahead of his time especially with the police brutality and realizing all the problems.