In my argument I will show both the pro-slavery and the abolitionist’s views on slavery and their insight to their understanding of race in the slavery debates. These will be my main points in my argument as I want to gain a greater understanding into the origins of slavery and how people thought slavery was
Frederick Douglass, much like other authors of slave narratives came up against an unconventional set of difficulties when planning his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Douglass came face to face with peculiar problems; one example of this is that he had to be very careful with the language of his narrative. He had to ensure that it was able to navigate between the black linguistics of the south and that of his northern audience. His narrative probes deep into the barbarisms and hypocrisies of slavery and are conveyed to the reader through a variety of strategies employed by Douglass. These strategies allowed Douglass to tell his story in his own words, words which encompass deeper meanings and messages than the dominant white people comprehend.
Ingrid Hong Core 2 Literature Response Frederick Douglass Literary Response Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, written by Frederick Douglass describes the life of a slave in the mid 1800s living in the southern slave states of America. The theme of this story is to use knowledge as the path to freedom, use ignorance as a tool of slavery, and slaveholding is a forgery of religion. This story begins in the 1840s, when Frederick Douglass is born in Talbot County, Maryland. The narrative is a detailed, firsthand account of slave life and the process of self-discovery where Douglass recognized the evils of slavery as an institution. In my opinion, the narrative was very well written and it was a great resource when learning about the lives of slaves.
Ira Berlin wrote “American Slavery in History and Memory and the Search for Social Justice.” In this he explains the different ways slavery is viewed through history and memory. Through numerous comparisons and contrasts of the two Berlin ultimately states, “ Indeed, only by testing memory against history’s truths and infusing history into memory’s passions can such a collective past be embraced, legitimated, and sustained. And perhaps by incorporating slavery’s history and vice versa, Americans ---- white and black---- can have a past that is both memorable and, at last, past. “ (Berlin 1268) Berlin basically says that to finally overcome the stigma of slavery history and memory should coincide with one another. The film Andanggaman by Roger Gnoan M’Bala depicts the toil and strife of slavery Africans faced in 17th century Dahomey.
Anyone who grabs this book and dives into its narrative will surely feel and understand what slavery must have been like. One becomes in sync with Esteban and it feels as if you are living in the 19th century right along his side. The themes encompassed in the Biography of a Runaway are just as important in being able to tell such a great story. Themes ranging from religion and ethnic customs play largely in portraying the life of slaves in the 19th century. Even though Biography of a Runaway Slave was written much time later, way after the abolishment of slavery it’s intention was to give people a powerful descriptive story of what it was like to live in times that Esteban lived in our current times and it does a great job in telling a story of a runaway slave.
His influence is one of the main propellants of the passage. James reminds us that L’Ouverture can read, which means he lives a privileged life as a slave. L'Ouverture learned military tactics, "sophisticated" speaking and writing techniques, and leadership dynamics throughout the time that he served his master that later were crucial to his successes in leading the slaves to independence. James then goes into explaining the characteristics of the small privileged class of slaves. The house-servants could gain education and many other benefits that field slaves could not.
He supports this argument by looking closely at the meaning of the symbolism behind the color black. (Winthrop 14) The skin color of many enslaved cultures were often linked to the hard labor that was done outside, exposed usually to the burning sun. He ultimately argues that a dark skin became a rationale for enslaving people of darker skin tones. The argument that Williams makes is that Economics was the main driving force behind the creation of Slavery, not so much Racism. To support his thesis, he pointed out that any lower social class was sent to do manual labor.
Comparative of Narrative of the life of Frederic Douglass and The Awakening In this life we sometimes have to follow guidelines or a set of expectations of what society expects of us; but all that we really long for is to have freedom of our self. Transcendentalist, the individual, the true-self was sacred, and conforming to the norms of the institutions of society was worse than death itself. In the Narrative of the Life of Frederic Douglass, Frederic himself revolts against the peculiar institution of slavery because he made a decision in his mind that there was something more than just be a slave in life. The awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin, it should a lady that revolts against patriarchy. Douglass upholds Civil Rights, while Chopin upholds Women’s Rights; yet both essentially uphold the Right of the individual.
ANALYSIS: PLOT ANALYSIS Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice. Initial Situation Douglass is born a slave and has to figure out what that means. Douglass wrote this book to show people what slavery was like from the inside. He takes his readers into the mind of a child who is trying to understand what it means to be a slave.
To him, slavery is twofold. Aristotle suggests that there are ‘natural slaves’ and ‘conventional slaves’ and throughout this essay I will be exploring how justice relates to each one of those ideas. It is important to understand that Aristotle’s views on mankind were very different from our modern perception. He argues in an almost Platonic sense that people are born into certain roles in society; ‘from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule. [1]’ hence the idea of the ‘natural slave’.