(Douglass, 129) The slave system had mistreated the slaves in variety of ways. But the slave system affected everyone, including people who were and were not involved in it. Although slaves were victimized harshly by slavery, slaveholders and non-slaveholders were also affected by the system. The main way slaves were victimized was being stripped of their identities. They did not know when they were born, how old they were, and did not have any knowledge of their parents or family.
Response Paper on Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl According to the encyclopedia Merriam Webster, slavery is a condition in which one human being is owned by another. However, we can define slavery as an institution and holocaust that has been set in place by insecure and greedy individuals with inhuman desire to physically and morally use and abuse other human beings to acquire wealth and status in the society. In her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs autobiographically writes about her family and friends’ slavery journeys as well as hers in the South of America. Going through Jacobs’s memoir helped me see slavery from a slave’s perspective, but it made me question religion and the capacity of slaves to measure immorality. It is more than pleasant and cheerful to read the story of a slave girl written by the slave girl in question.
A perfect example of this is when Mrs. Auld is told that if Douglass learns he will no longer be useful as a slave, at this time in the book she began to turn very mean and cruel towards her slaves and treating them more like property instead of being somewhat generous as before. Frederick’s family was forced to struggle through the hard times, and had to live a very unusual life, for example: Frederick’s mother was sold to another slave family so it was very hard for Frederick to see his mother, and eventually she passed away when Frederick was seven, although he didn’t seem very effected. Frederick also ends up proving that Covey was extremely two faced by bring up a very valid point, which was owning slaves was unnatural and unchristian like. As for Frederick’s Grandmother, that truly opened his eyes as to how these slave owners really feel about you, regardless as for what you do. She served her masters for years and then when she grew too old to serve them they just tossed her out like a piece of trash and left her for dead.
4. Paradox: p. 20 “whip her to make her scream, whip her to make her hush” He uses this device to show how futile a slave who had wronged his master was. The master could go on whipping forever and the slave had no control over it. 5. Metaphor: p.20 “it was the blood stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, that I was about to pass.” He uses this to show how much the whipping of his aunt traumatized him, and to show how horrible slavery was.
At such a young age, Pecola is obviously a very troubled person. A life of abuse, both physical and emotional, led to insanity in her adult years, fueled mostly by being raped by her father Cholly. Pecola Breedlove represents the voice of many “voiceless” communities: young girls of any race who are uncomfortable with their appearance, victims of emotional and physical abuse, as
The wound was directed towards Harriet’s head and resulted in seizures, and sleeping spells that lasted the rest of her life. In 1844 at the age of 25, Harriet married John Tubman. John was a free African American who did not share the same goals and aspirations as Harriet. Since Harriet was a slave she lived in fear of being sold, thus separating her from her husband. Harriet’s dream was to run North.
Within the first couple of sentences of the novel, Rhys harshly portrays the difficult circumstances in which Antoinette and her family live. The sentence “But we were not in their ranks.” concisely evinces a very melancholic tone to the story by expressing how Antoinette and her mother do not seem to belong in their home. Rhys proceeds to evince a strong image of racial discrimination through the sentence “She was my father’s second wife, far too young for him they thought, and, worse still, a Martinique girl. By portraying the Jamaican ladies’ negligence of other minor races, the reader feels sympathy for both Antoinette and her mother and Rhys expresses a very ruthless environment the two live in. Antoinette has to endure insults such as “Go away white cockroach” which further compounds the unforgiving nature of the Negros where she lives.
When the poem was written, most children were used in slavery; this could suggest that the baby is being born in a dangerous world. Reiterating, the words ‘helpless and naked’ show that the baby is unable to react and is being forced into a life of servitude. Enjambment is used on the last two lines. The mother is trying to protect the infant judging by the last line, but we all know there is nothing she can do. Overall it is a very depressing poem expressing how life if them times were strenuous and there being no
As a child, Jane lives in a social environment, filled with the violence and torments of her aunt Mrs. Reed and her son John, and the contempt of the servants, who constantly remind her of her poverty and worthlessness. Even so, the suffering of the little Jane does not end here. To focus on her sufferings, Charlotte Brontë brings the
Jane being an orphan since birth, and Sayuri being sold to a geisha home, both characters had an unstable foundation to develop in. Jane was thought of as a vexation upon the Reed’s house hold and was commonly neglected and abused. When John Reed struck her, Jane was punished for causing a “passionate scene.” (Jane Eyre, 10) Instead of John being punished for causing violence and unnecessary harm to an innocent child, Jane was locked in a cold dark room where Mr. Reed died. In Memoirs of a Geisha, Sayuri was often punished for stealing and causing trouble that she never committed. Hatsumomo, would accuse her of stealing money or items that she purposely planted on Sayuri, in order for “mother,” to lose faith in Sayuri’s career as a geisha.