Ciela A Slave Analysis

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Ciela, A Slave illuminates the moral dilemmas that lie in the heart of slavery. Slaves were seen to be less than everyone else and did not receive the same treatment that white people did. In the book Ciela was bought by her master, Robert Newsom, and lived on the land his family owned in Missouri. Robert raped Ciela when he first purchased her, and would walk to her cabin, located a few miles away from his family’s cabin and demand sex from her. Ciela had had enough of being raped and ended up killing Robert with a stick and burned his body to get rid of the evidence. Ciela was brought to court when the Newsom family realized what she had done.
People back then didn’t realize how complex slavery is. There are many issues that belong with it, and one of the issues is how the masters controlled their slaves. They would force their slaves to do things that nobody should ever do. The husbands’ prefer to get female slaves since they would be able to do sexual favors for the husbands. Also the battle with how the slaves chose to resist the masters’ control. No matter how the slaves chose to resist, the punishment that followed was always horrible.

A moral dilemma in the book is how the white women “chose to support slavery, and to accept, the abuse of black women it produced” (McLaurin, pg. 138). They emphasized in court how Celia struck her master with the stick until he was dead, and burnt him to get rid of him. The courts accepted that Celia was a murderer with or without a motive simply because she was a slave. White women generally went with what their husbands’ said since they made most of the earnings. This being said, the women chose pro-slavery since their husband owned slaves. With Celia being guilty, th...

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...his skills and working odd jobs to make money. His resources helped him marry a Mumford slave, and to help plan his escape from slavery. When Venture tried to escape the first time, he ended up being sold along with his daughter. After that he planned a way to purchase his freedom and help his family escape.
Over all, Celia delivers a convincing portrayal of slavery—even as it existed outside the Deep South—as a brutal institution. And it offers vivid possibilities for showing how the legal and moral assumptions that upheld slavery got tested from the bottom up. Making Freedom showed how slaves went through a lot to try and gain freedom. And it showed that Venture worked hard to get his freedom and his family’s freedom. Moral dilemmas are shown in both books and the slaves that go through these dilemmas show great strength and courage to continue their lives.

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