In my opinion, the narrative was very well written and it was a great resource when learning about the lives of slaves. Douglass’s Narrative shows how white slaveholders continue slavery by keeping their slaves ignorant. At the time Douglass was writing, many people believed that slavery was a natural state of being. Slave owners keep slaves ignorant of basic facts about themselves, such as their birth date or who their parents were. This ignorance robs children of their natural sense of individual identity.
Kelsey Vonwald January 27, 2013 Period 6 The Slave Who Tried to Leave Imagine if you were a slave getting whipped and never seeing your friends and family again, this is what occurred in the writing form of realism. What realism is an interest or concern for the actual or real things. Throughout The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass shows things that helps the readers see things in their mind (imagery), things that cause, point of view, cause and effect. With imagery it shows a mental image in your mind of what the reader read. When Douglass said, “the blood was yet oozing from the wound of my head” (Douglass Page 428) it shows the reader a gruesome picture of Douglass’s head just bleeding and the blood going everywhere.
She was quickly cut off from teaching Douglass when her husband, Master Hugh, realized what she was doing and forbid her from ever doing so. As a faithful wife, she adhered to her husband demands. Since there was no more use of learning with the mistress, Douglass had to find new means to learn to read. As a young boy, while out in streets when sent on errands, Fredrick Douglass used to bribe white schoolboys to learn to read. He would offer the starving, poor boys bread in exchange for a lesson in reading.
Douglass has no “respect” because he is thrown into a world of slavery where he must tolerate the disrespect being shoved at him. It isn’t until his fight with slave-breaker Edward Covey that the beginning stage of “respect” starts to make its way to him. The fight is where I can see Douglass start to transform. He writes "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man" (47). Brewton also brings to my attention that Douglass “devotes greater space in his first autobiography to the portrait of Covey than to any other character, black or white.” I think this is because the fight with Covey is a pivotal turning point for Douglass.
We can also tell this by Ellen Craft. Ellen was born in the South of America from a slave mother and a master who was her father. She was treated really badly by her mistress-the master's wife. She was given as a wedding present to her half-sister at the age of 11 who treated her badly as well. This means that the master had an impact on the slave experience because it could determine whether or not you had a good experience.
There are books about the past that allow people to realize the horrible times there have been in the United States. For example, slave narratives. Linda Brent’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a true slave narrative because in her novel, she talks about the hardships during slavery and rebellious experiences of several slaves. Olney states that a slave narrative must include examples of hardships people came across during slavery (Olney 1). In her novel, Brent states that many slaves, including herself, would have preferred to die then to keep living through slavery.
She discusses the story in a unique way because she changes its point of view; helping the audience gain a new perspective of the issue. “I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress” (Jacobs 84). Jacobs’ story speaks out to me because she addresses an audience of people that slavery should have been stopped. She tells a story about how traumatizing the life of an enslaved black female can be. She tries to gain sympathy for what she has been through.
3. Mr. Auld tells his wife, “if you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master. As to himself… it would make him discontented and unhappy.” Do you think there is truth in Mr. Auld’s words?
“124 was spiteful, filled with baby venom”. This pain and sadness is constant throughout the novel. By focusing on the grief of a slave, Morrison conveys right away that slavery brought such pain and sadness to African Americans. Later on in the novel Sethe reveals her experiences as a slave through a series of flashbacks, including her lashings and beatings, which are described in graphic detail much like in the traditional slave narratives. This pain and grief is only heightened throughout Beloved as Morrison attempts to keep these things in the readers mind throughout the novel.
The story of Huck Finn is a beautiful set-up for Nafisi’s experience. She was expelled from the University where she was working. Surprisingly, the two students were involved in a fierce altercation with her. In the article, Nafisi provide a broad range of examples, ranging from a literature story, from her own experience to historical events. The story of Huck Finn, a small boy who was against to what he was taught at Sunday school to fellow with Jim, a black slave required the reader to imagine the friendship between them through their action: “talking, singing and laughing”, in “the day and night-time, sometimes