Much of “Desiree´s Baby†is told by implication, in this essay I will concentrate on the implications about Armand´s feelings and his feelings towards the baby after he found out it was black.
In the story we see a deep contrast in Armand´s emotions, and ways of expressing these emotions. It says near the start that “Armand is the proudest father in the parish†and that “he hasn´t punished one of them†to “an awful change in her husbands manner, which she dared not ask him to explain†and “the very spirit of Satan seemed suddenly to take hold of him in his dealings with the slaves.†This implies that he was very happy then he changed to very angry and upset. He also changes his manner towards Desiree, as if she has a disease, he avoids her when ever possible and talks to her with “averted eyesâ€. The strange thing about this is that Armand´s mother is black (but he didn´t know it at the time) but surely Armand´s father (who knew about her being black) would have taught Armand to be at the very least respectful to black people. That is another contrast in the story it says that “as they had been (gay) during the old master´s eas
I feel some of the sympathy in this story should lie with Armand because (even though its because of his own actions) he loses his wife, his baby and then has to deal with his hatred of himself (racially.) He also increases his pain by achieving self-alienation in the pursuit of social-acceptance; he also achieved self-alienation (in kind) by rejecting his ethnic origins.
Desiree seems to sink into madness, she is described as “hysterical†and when she goes to kill herself she obviously hasn´t prepared, for she isn´t not dressed for it (well who is dressed for killing themselves?) or thought about killing herself. She had reached the conviction that she must kill without much thought.
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