T. Coraghessan Boyle's short story, "Friendly Skies," is about a woman named Ellen who is trying to get to New York to visit her mom, but keeps getting delayed. The engine on her first plane catches on fire, and they are forced to turn around for an emergency landing. Once back at LAX, where she had started from, she is only able to get a non-direct flight that stops off in Chicago. While on this flight, Ellen keeps thinking of grim details of her past, and she takes prescription medicine with alcohol to try and numb her pain. Eventually, a man named Mr. Lercher goes crazy on the plane and threatens to kill everyone. With her built up frustration, Ellen picks up a fork and stabs the man repeatedly, which helps in restraining him long enough to land in Denver. Boyle shows that repressing one's feelings might cause them to build up, resulting in an irrational outburst of emotion.…
“There was a time in Africa when people could fly like blackbirds.” Sue Monk Kidd opens the book with this concept while Charlotte is talking to her daughter, Handful. Right away she gives off the impression of Charlotte having a strong mindset and imagination that will be passed onto Handful. This interpretation is very important throughout the book as we read about Handful and Sarah growing up. The novel is divided into 6 sections while the chapters alternate from Sarah to Handful’s point of views. Within the chapters we learn about other characters and their stories from the girl’s perspectives. Originally, the book starts when they are young and don’t know about the world or their social status. Handful, a slave on the Grimke’s plantation…
In Flannery O’Connors short story, “Good Country People,” the main theme is about a southern family and their faith, identity and education. Another key theme in the story is the concept of reality vs. illusion. The story employs irony and symbolism to portray the main character’s nihilism, immaturity and rebelliousness as well as the other character’s traits and personalities.…
The book, Song of Solomon, is a story about a hero – a black(African) man called Milkman Dead. The story talks about how Milkman discovered the history of his family, and his upbringing. In fact, Milkman’s and his family’s history reflect on the situation of all black people living in that society. “Flying” is an important facto in the story. The author, Toni Morrison, who is a black woman, explains many different styles of flying of different persons such as Milkman’s grandfather, his father, his aunt, and his friend(s?). Black people view the “flying” as a dream. They all want to fly. However, flying has different meanings to different people.…
slaves were not only treated like objects but they were sold for amounts of money. They were being trafficked around the globe. No one really thought anything more of it. They thought slaves had no sort of emotions. Fredrick Douglas was taken from his mom at a young age to become a slave. At a plantation, he same as Shyima did not choose his lifestyle some one else did for him. Shyimas family choose her destiny. She ended up with a family and moving to california…
Slavery, the dark beast that consumes, devours, and pillages the souls of those who are forced to within its bounds and those who think they are the powerful controllers of this filth they call business. This act is the pinnacle of human ignorance, they use it as the building blocks for their “trade,” and treat these people no more than replaceable property that can be bought, sold, and beaten on a whim. The narrative of Frederick Douglass is a tale about a boy who is coming of age in a world that does not accept him for who he is and it is also told as a horror that depicts what we can only imagine as the tragedies placed on these people in these institutions of slavery. It is understood as a chronicle of his life telling us his story from childhood to manhood and all that is in between, whilst all this is going on he vividly mixes pathological appeals to make us feel for him and all his brethren that share his burden. His narrative is a map from slavery to freedom where he, in the beginning, was a slave of both body and mind. But as the story progresses we see his transformation to becoming a free man both of the law and of the mind. He focuses on emotion and the building up of his character to show us what he over time has become. This primarily serves to make the reader want to follow his cause all the more because of his elegant and intelligent style of mixing appeals. Through his effective use of anecdotes and vivid imagery he shows us his different epiphanies over time, and creates appeals to his character by showing us how he as a person has matured, and his reader’s emotion giving us the ability to feel for his situation in a more real sense. This helps argue that the institution of slavery is a parasitic bug that infects the slave holder with a false sense of power and weakens the slave in both body and spirit.…
Frederick Douglass’s book titled “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, demonstrated the reality and hardships of being a slave within America. Although Douglass’s story is one of pain and sorrow, within the text is an essence of hope. Douglass’s life was stacked against him, yet he was still able to succeed where so many others had failed. Douglass achieved freedom and created a legacy for himself. Douglass’s achievements are extraordinary, not only was his personal determination the factor that led to his freedom, but also his luck. Through “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave”, the essence of luck helped both protect and guide Douglass through this life. Luck was only one factor which…
The best way to give someone the idea of an institution’s terrible enormity, is to give them depictions of people who have suffered under it. This is the principle idea of the slave narrative, where former slaves tell their experiences in slavery and how they escaped. As most were written when slavery was still legal, the true purpose of these published accounts is addressed in a myriad of different ways throughout, but sums up to this - to convince the reader, through depictions of abuse and dehumanization, that slavery should not be condoned, for the perpetual abuse and misery the slave must endure is not worth the product. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are two examples of slave narrative authors who utilize this emotional appeal…
In a time filled with torture and pain and where “whipped”, “chained” and “beaten to death” were words and phrases commonly tossed around the topic of American slaves, some individuals rose up and fought against the odds and in doing so solidified their place in history. Mostly all African Americans were subjected to slavery but it was the brave few that could only be pushed so far and decided to escape in hopes of finding a better life. Harriet Tubman is a prime example of a woman who aimed to turn her dream into a reality. Harriet possessed both outstanding courage and remarkable determination as she paved the lengthy road to freedom for hundreds of…
Frederick Douglass, who grew up as slave but would later become one of the most influential African-Americans in U.S. history, describes this precisely in “Learning To Read.” Douglass describes how he learned to read partially by the help of his masters mistress who taught him the alphabet and partially by the help of white kids on the street who helped him form those letters into words and sentences. Around age twelve he got ahold of a book called “The Colombian Orator.” Douglass describes how in one story, a slave was able to change his masters mind about slavery, and was consequentially set free. In the same book he read a speech by Irish activist Richard Sheridan from which he got “a bold denunciation of slavery, and a powerful vindication of human rights.”(Douglass, 48) This speech opened douglass’s eyes to the injustice of slavery. He said “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light that a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery.”(Douglass, 49) By reading this speech, Douglass realized the injustice that is slavery and that he was not the only one that knew this. Douglass later said “As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! That very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish.”(Douglass,49) Douglass was no longer satisfied with a life of bondage nor was he okay with others being left in…
Slavery has always been a difficult topic to discuss from the point of view of a slave, due to the lack of information directly from slaves. Thankfully, a now well-known abolitionist and former slave, Frederick Douglass wrote a narrative of his entire life in slavery, as far back as he could remember. He let the world know the ugly truth of what life was like for an America slave, and what trauma slaves endured all around him. Douglass let’s people explore his innermost thoughts and only hides details when discussing his escape, as to not prevent other slaves from escaping through the Underground Railroad, as he did. His book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, finally humanizes slaves.…
In this book, it explains the distress and grief these slaves had to face in their everyday lives. There is ten slaves and each of them wrote their own story about what they had to face each and everyday. For example, one of the slaves is Frederick Douglass. He was the most famous African American of the nineteenth century. This book, sets back into the eighteen hundreds and kids at eight years old would be taken away from their loved ones and were put to work like cattle by their new possessor. For example, Frederick Douglas at the age of eight was taken from his mother without even saying goodbye. Douglas had to call his new controller Aunt Kathy or he would get a flogging. He explains the misery he had to sustain and how many times he was beaten or punished to starve. For example, he wrote about his new owner Kathy, “The cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage; the voice, made all of sweet accord changed to one harsh and horrid discord; and that angelic face gave place to that of a demon”. (Taylor, 2005, p. 58). Each slave at the end of their story explains their after life. Growing Up In Slavery makes you think of life in other people’s shoes and how it would make you feel if you were them.…
In this article we are putting ourselves in the shoes of a child in slavery, 150 years ago. We look at the hardships in which the slaves had to endure to make it through the day. Each day you would do whatever you’re told to do in order to stay alive. One day, you hear something that really sparked your interest, you heard that three slaves have fled to freedom. By June, your whole family is planning their route to Fort Monroe, to take refuge at a Union camp, where they work as hard if not harder than they did on the plantations. This was all in their plan to freedom.…
This narrative begins with the childhood of Frederick Douglass and ends with his adventures as an abolitionist. He gives insight into his personal recollections of his first awareness of what it meant to be a slave, from his own experiences and his experience as a witness to the brutality of one human being upon another human being. He allows readers through his words to have a front row seat to the world of slavery and the main objective of slavery supporters to dehumanize and oppress another race and culture. The goal of his prose is to raise awareness of the cruelty of man upon the backs of blacks, which subsequently he hoped would end…
However, this transition from man to slave was not completed in the case of the author, and this is thanks to all the events or moments previous to his realisation that he was no longer going to be part of that business. Those moments are illustrated in the narrative, and they show the way they have affected and the influence they have had on the outcome of Douglass’ life. As these events or moments encouraged the author, he managed to make a step forward towards the status that all men should have on the United States: to be a free man. This work allowed Frederick Douglass to exhibit and condemn the situation to the whole nation. In addition, it was a clear example that the transformation was both possible and needed, since slaves were not the only ones affected by the situation, but masters as…