Many different people got abused and exploited to do hard labor in all periods of time, even in recent times . In the situations that were in the pieces of literature, both of the characters suffered somewhat the same. Although their situations were different that the same time.
In the Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass and Slave Girl, the characters in the books were held as slaves, both since a little kid and they also didn't have their parents. The only difference is that they are from two different periods in time so that would make their living conditions different.
Being given away as a little kid, slave girl grew up working for people without getting paid, her owners treated her as if she didn’t matter. Her parents had given her to these
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She lived with them and had to do everything they told her to do. Her owners decided they were gonna move to america since they lived in the middle east and her parent had no choice but to let her go. When they moved to america, they made her live in the garage. She was threatened if she told anyone or if she tried to
Runaway, that they would kill her family that she hadn't seen since she was a little baby.
Similar to slave girl, the life of frederick douglass, the boy there which is frederick douglass was born into slavery, back when slavery was legal. He didn't have his mom with him and his father was a white man. He was made to work at an early age, frederick had to work in the fields and he witnessed people getting beat and whipped which left him traumatized. The people around him were also slaves and the people that owned him were cruel people who would hurt them if they don't please them. In his life frederick worked on two different plantations with two different slave
about a way that she could go to Eretz Island, Israel where she could be safe. She left her
Jacobs, Harriet, and Yellin, Jean. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
“The law on the side of freedom is of great advantage only when there is power to make that law respected”. This quote comes from Fredrick Douglas’ book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, written in 1845. Fredrick Douglas who was born into slavery in 1818 had no understanding of freedom. However, his words shed light on the state of our country from the time he made this statement, but can be traced back fifty-eight years earlier to when the Constitution was drafted and debated over by fifty-five delegates in an attempt to create a document to found the laws of a new country upon. However, to eradicate the antiquated and barbaric system of slaver would be a bold step to set the nation apart, but it would take a strong argument and a courageous move by someone or a group to abolish what had enslaved thousands of innocent people within the borders of America for centuries. There was an opportunity for the law to be written within the Constitution, which would support this freedom Fredrick Douglas alluded to. However, the power, which controlled this law, would as Douglas stated, “make that law respected”.
Frederick Douglass was born into the life of a slave, and at an early age was ripped away from his mother Harriet.
forced to live in and start a new one where her people could be respected. This was her heritage.
From before the country’s conception to the war that divided it and the fallout that abolished it, slavery has been heavily engrained in the American society. From poor white yeoman farmers, to Northern abolitionist, to Southern gentry, and apathetic northerners slavery transformed the way people viewed both their life and liberty. To truly understand the impact that slavery has had on American society one has to look no further than those who have experienced them firsthand. Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and advocate for the abolitionist, is on such person. Douglass was a living contradiction to American society during his time. He was an African-American man, self-taught, knowledgeable, well-spoken, and a robust writer. Douglass displayed a level of skill that few of his people at the time could acquire. With his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by Himself, Douglass captivated the people of his time with his firsthand accounts into the horror and brutality that is the institution of slavery.
Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2nd Edition. Edited by Pine T. Joslyn. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, INC., 2001.
When first introduced to Douglass and his story, we find him to be a young slave boy filled with information about those around him. Not only does he speak from the view point of an observer, but he speaks of many typical stereotypes in the slave life. At this point in his life, Frederick is inexperienced and knows nothing of the pleasures of things such as reading, writing, or even the rights everyone should be entitled to. Douglass knowing hardly anything of his family, their whereabouts, or his background, seems to be equivalent to the many other slaves at the time. As a child Frederick Douglass sees the injustices around him and observes them, yet as the story continues we begin to see a change.
At the time he was born, a slave child was not allowed to stay with their mother more than a couple months. He spent his childhood under the care of an older woman, who was kept as a slave just to raise the children. "I never saw my mother, to know her as such, more than four or five times in my life; and each of these times was a very short duration, and at night. " After that, the mother was sent off to another location so that the child would not have any ties to her.
Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Talbot County, Maryland, around 1818, his mother is the slave also, and, probable he is the
She worked as a slave for the family for seven years, from 1993-1999, and was then sent to London, England to work for the family’s relatives. She was a slave in London from 1999-2000.
It was not just men being forced to work as slaves. Both Men and Women and sometimes even children were being forced to work as slaves for wealthy farmes
The first topic found in these books is the difference in the roles of women and men slaves. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl gives us the women 's point of view, their lifestyle and their slave duties and roles. On the other hand, The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows us the male side of slavery; the duties and role of men slaves and their way of living their situation. Both books state clearly the roles of both men and women slaves. We can easily observe the fact that slaves’ roles were based on their gender, and the different duties they had based on these roles. This gender role idea was based on American society’s idea of assigning roles based only on gender. Slave men’s role was most of the time simple. Their purpose was mainly physical work. In
Douglass exclaims, “all its glaring odiousness … slaveholders have ordained, and by law established, that the children of slave women shall in all cases follow the condition of their mothers; and this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and make a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father”(Douglass 14). The ignorance of Douglass not knowing his father shows the lack of stability caused by the inhumanity of slavery. Biological fathers were commonly unknown, with the possibility of them being their own master. Crawford gives the information that “parental death and unknown fathers were common to both slave and free populations. But the reasons for the absence of fathers in slave families also includes sale and the fact that some fathers were white... Put another way, between 15 percent and 25 percent of the mother-headed households were formed because the father was white” (Crawford 336) . The intimidation of a father was different in the case of slavery due to the lawful abuse, control, and power exhibited by the master/father figure. Fathers did not have a strong figure or identity in slave
The Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass can be referred to as a memoir and writing about the abolitionist movement of the life of a former slave, Fredrick Douglass. It is a highly regarded as the most famous piece of writing done by a former slave. Fredrick Douglass (1818-1895) was a social reformer, statesman, orator and writer in the United States. Douglass believed in the equality of every individual of different races, gender or immigrants.