Most of them were skinny and look very unhealthy their clothes look like they were made from rags it was just dreadful. I was disgusted by their appearances. The language they spoke was so different from ours I could hardly understand it. It were many slaves that we had no choice but to put them on deck which by the way is the worst part of the ship to stay. As days grew longer and the nights grew more mournful the weather started to get really bad.
He was stumbilin’ on some rocks and since most of dem were savages, dey thought da shawdowy figure was the beast coming to attack dem so dey attacked first. The bit him an’ tore at his skin. Poor boy… Johnny died because a boulder dropped on his head an’ he fell forty feet to his death. This was also another sad death… Nobody believed da little boy with da birthmark about da beastie-thing. And dat is how he died.
For some, the journey marked the end of their lives. Treated as cargo, many Africans experienced conditions that are hard to believe. The “superior” Europeans that considered Africans, savage and inferior, put these conditions upon them. When looking how the Europeans treated the Africans captives, however, it makes the Europeans look savage and inferior. Before looking at the conditions of the Middle Passage, it is important to understand the economics of the Slave Trade.
“…The negro stable buck…” The term ‘negro’ denotes black and Steinbeck defines Crooks by his race before bringing in his profession. Viewed in a very animalistic light, Steinbeck highlights the disrespect the ranch has for him, “…Crooks’ bunk was a long box filled with straw…” Unlike the bunkhouse where they were privileged with a blanket, Crooks’ bed was more primitive than the ranch hands, ‘a long box’, equivalent to when you want to ship an animal to somewhere they’d often be put in a long box with straw, again demonstrates the disrepute of the ranch to Crooks. Contextually, through this Steinbeck accentuates the idea that during the 1930s, black people were considered as a sub-species. “…Crooks had his apple box over his bunk, and in it a range of medicine bottles, both for him and his horses…” Often in literature, the location of items are to be considered, as in this case the detail that his apple box with his medicine was above his bunk expresses that his disability takes over his life, which is
Slavery in America should be considered genocide because it systematically broke down the social, political and economic structure of African Americans. The first step in distinguishing genocide is differentiating the oppressed and the oppressor. That is dividing it
He lay there, alone and in such pain as no man can ever realize. For the creature Grendel was to be forever alone. He was to die alone and spend eternity alone in torment in the deepest hell for the crimes he had committed. As the water of the swamp became murky with his blood, one last thought formed on the lips of the demon Grendel, “Mother…” By Aaron
A historical situation where human rights have been abused is when there was slavery. Slaves were treated like objects that were abused and tortured by their masters. The slaves struggled to achieve human rights with the help of the Underground Railroad, which is a network of whites and free blacks. Harriet Tubman was a conductor of the Underground Railroad who helped free the slaves which in turn lead to abolitionists and their campaign to free the slaves and help get them back their rights as humans. For many centuries Europeans went to Africa and took the people there by force.
When the British conquered parts of Africa, some of the natives were transported to the United States where they were forced into slavery for the remainder of their lives. The slaves were treated horribly by the plantation owners. Some were even killed for not working hard enough. Even after slavery was abolished African Americans were still seen as inferior to whites. Blacks during the early 1900’s had to with stand segregation and discrimination in the United States.
Boldly described as a “fateful event in the history of fiction” (Watt: 365), Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness delves into Imperialism in the 1890s, loosely based on his experiences travelling through the Congo into the ‘heart’ of Africa. This essay will explore Ian Watt’s essay ‘Impressionism and Symbolism in Heart of Darkness’ in relation to the veracity of his definitions of impressionism and symbolism, and his application of the definitions to the text. It will compare these with other understandings of impression and symbolism, and against Conrad’s own opinions of the writing techniques. In Watt’s assessment of the nature of Heart of Darkness, he uses the establishment of the narrative frame to dissect the novella’s plot, and provide the grounds from which to begin his critical essay. The act of placing the ‘story within a story’ is categorised by Watt to be a symbolic act, and the content of the ‘inner kernel’ of the story displays impressionistic elements (350).
In both cases, the slave trade worked to undermine the legitimacy of political institutions and sustain large gulfs between the interests of the ruling classes and those of the common people. Although the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a global system that involved several continents, the trade as a whole was controlled by European middlemen. As Walter Rodney wrote, "Only the European capitalist had such world-wide power, and they used Africans for their own purposes. "[1] However, views differ as to the causes and consequences of the African slave trade in Europe. Eric Williams' economic reductionist argument presented in his 1944 Capitalism and Slavery supported the theory that the move toward African enslaved labour in the Americas was entirely a matter of economic expedience that helped catapult Western Europe to the forefront of a new global capitalist economy.