It is difficult to relate personally to the narratives covered in "Slavery and Freedom", especially during this time of year when we are reminded to give thanks for all that we hold dear. It is unimaginable to think about the life of slaves such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. Their sense of family was cut off at birth or shortly after, forming a personal identity was impossible and gaining freedom required huge acts of courage.…
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are two of the most influential autobiographies of slavery. Douglass’s experiences are similar to Harriet Jacobs’s, but they have their differences. Jacobs said “O, you happy free women, contrast your New Year’s day with that of a poor bondwoman! With you it is a pleasant season, and the light of day is blessed.” Douglass said “The white children could tell their ages. I could not tell why I ought to be deprived of the same privilege.”…
Harriet Jacobs was a slave who was able to escape, and she describes her life as a slave and towards the end the start of her new life in the North in a brief narrative. In the beginning she describes her master and his vile actions, which are against her morals. She describes how sometimes he has a bad temper, but other times tries to be gentle, and states that she prefers his “stormy side.” She also describes her mistress who instead of helping her against the masters’ unruly behavior only feels jealousy and anger. In the account, she describes her master who was unrelenting in his quest to make her submit to him, and often followed her around. Harriet also scribes that she was always treated kindly until she came upon Dr. Flint. During the narrative, Harriet was locked in a shed that…
-Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The novel personalized the horror of slavery and…
I’ll tell the master right quick.” Harriet, who went by Minty at the time, had to deal with the threat by her own husband to tell her Master, “the man who would sell her south,” when finding out she took her leave. Yet and still she remained composed and let her faith in God as well as her strong desire to be free from slavery guide her to the north. Even when harmed and betrayed, Harriet still decided to travel the distance, whether alone or with others who wished for a better life too. Harriet let her words and actions dance through the ears and minds of people, changing their…
Slaves, male and female, were subjected to similar hardships. Both searched for freedom and had dedication to help free others. The narratives of Harriet Jacobs, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and Frederick Douglass’, “In the Life of Frederick Douglass” portrayed two very different accounts. The narratives detail what living a slave’s life entailed. However, Jacobs’ emotional memories and obstacles of being a female slave make a stronger connection to the reader who is capable of feeling her emotions through the intense words she wrote.…
Yet while Douglass could show “how a slave became a man” in a physical fight with an overseer, Jacobs’s gender determined a different course. Pregnant with the child of a white lover of her own choosing, fifteen year old Jacobs reasoned (erroneously) that her condition would spur her licentious master to sell her and her child. Once she was a mother, with “ties to life,” as she called them, her concern for her children had to take precedence over her own self-interest. Thus throughout her narrative, Jacobs is looking not only for freedom but also for a secure home for her children. She might also long for a husband, but her shameful early liaison, resulting in two children born “out of wedlock,” meant, as she notes with perhaps a dose of sarcasm, that her story ends “not, in the usual way, with marriage,” but “with freedom.” In this finale, she still mourns (even though her children were now grown) that she does not have “a home of my own.” Douglass’s 1845 narrative, conversely, ends with his standing as a speaker before an eager audience and feeling an exhilarating “degree of freedom.” While Douglass’s and Jacobs’s lives might seem to have moved in different directions, it is nevertheless important not to miss the common will that their narratives proclaim. They never lost their determination to gain not only freedom from enslavement but also respect for their individual humanity and that of other bondsmen…
Because she associates the slave’s humanity with defiant or subversive speech, resistant behavior, and the ethics of reciprocal relationships, as well as with writing and individual autonomy, Jacobs affirms the humanity of the collectivity of slaves as well as the successful fugitive and literate narrator” (Mullen…
In the Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Ann Jacobs describes her own life as a slave when she was younger until she was set free. “The narrative was long believed to be a fictional account of slavery” (Carson, p.1). “Through extensive research… it is now considered one of the most important antebellum slave narratives” (Carson 1). Jacobs describes her life in the narrative by using the name Linda Brant instead of using her own. Through her narrative of her life as a slave, Jacobs shows the many things that she went through as a child. The reader notices the life of Jacobs through the plot, the setting, the characters, and…
Self desires are the major reason why people should not have control over others because it motivates power over others being abused. The short story, “Harriet Jacobs Owns Herself”, provides many instances where control is mishandled influenced by self desires. Dr. Norcom, Harriet’s unofficial owner, raped Harriet when she was fifteen. Afterwards, he threatened to kill her if she told anybody (Carnes, 1996). Motivated by achieving his personal self desires, he chose to misuse his power that sequentially impacted Harriet’s life horrendously.…
Jacobs used the lives of slaves to show the cruelty reality of slavery. “After receiving hundred of lashes. . .whipped him to his satisfaction. . .the wretched creature as cut with the whip from his head to his feet, then washed with strong brine” (Jacobs, 75). Slave owners brutally whipped, tortured and punished their slaves as if they were not human beings.The extreme violence that Jacobs describes in the novel shows the inhumane of slaveholders and how horrible they are as human beings. By describing the situation in the exact full detail, Jacobs persuade her audience into having sympathy for the slaves in the South and opposed slavery from expanding to new…
Through Douglass’s Phrases [1] In the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” Frederick Douglass successfully introduces various conflicts in the novel. Many of which expose the cruel treatment of slavery, and show changes Frederick made that led him to have courage to leave slavery behind and find peace and freedom. However, three of these conflicts highlight the impacts of the overall plot of the novel. One of the main conflicts is the dehumanization of African Americans. This conflict gave light in a more like manner to the empowerment, and self discovery that fed into the freedom of Douglass.…
In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave written by, none other than himself, Frederick Douglass presents to the reader several instances in which the fellow slaves that he knew, a vast majority of them family and friends, were whipped nearly to death and were inflicted upon the most horrible crimes known to man. Through these stories from his past, the reader is shown how cruel and emotionally scarring to the individual slavery was and why it should never have happened. By the end of his narration, Douglass manages to express to the reader through his appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, the need for slavery, as inhumane and unjust as it was, to come to an end.…
A man who fought for his rights, thought himself the knowledge to freedom, and wrote a book, Frederick Douglass. He was on the slaves that couldn’t deal with the fact that his race accepted to be tormented and treated terribly. He knew he had to do something to revise this so he then on went to teaching himself varieties of things and sooner than later, he ended up with his very own narrative that is throughout the world. In the ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’, he first discusses his life time and what lead to his narrative, and also explains the treatment and roles of women by using anecdotes, victimization of female slaves, and description…
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.…