The Comparison Between Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass

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The way children are raised, affects them tremendously throughout their adulthood. Being raised in the wrong type of environment may cause them to rebel or make wrong decisions throughout life. A person’s environment affects how they behave, how they make their choices and how they choose to live their overall life. Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs had a lot in common because they weren’t raised in the best type of environment, but they learned how to adapt to it. Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs implemented representations of self-freedom and freedom of literacy in both of their narratives, which made a major impact in their adulthoods. One main thing that the two narrators had in common is that they both shared some type of self-freedom. They showed self-freedom because they still weren’t physically free but they earned some type of internal freedom through some of their experiences. For example, when Douglass wrote “….he ordered me to take off my clothes. I made him no answer, but stood with my clothes on. He repeated his order. I still made him no answer, nor did I move to strip myself.” He described how his slave master ordered him to take off his clothes so that he may be whipped but he refused. “Mr. Covey seemed now to think he had me, and could do what he pleased; but at this moment—from whence came the spirit I don’t know—I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose. He held on to me, and I to him.” (Douglass ‘95) This shows how Douglass fought back. Even though he wasn’t freed, he still had a small triumph in this situation. In his novel he describes how he feels after the fight with Covey. “This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood. It

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