In the novel “The Middle Passage” by Charles Johnson, mental slavery is a huge factor that is used throughout the book. Metal slavery is the inability to view events, or one’s self, differently from commonly held beliefs. This explains that if you have heard something that is most likely not true and will not research history on it, but spread it around as if you did thus being ignorant as the person that told you. I think that mental slavery is a terrible thing in the world today because everyone is or was a slave captivated by lies or false accusations. In the novel it was possessed by almost every single character in “The Middle Passage”. Within my essay I will discuss the topic of mental slavery and how it affects four characters that I chose from this inspiring novel .
One of the first people I picked from the novel is Diamelo. Diamelo is one of the Allmuseri that was unknown at first. However, when the rebellion from the slaves happened we could see that he was an important figure as one of the head men. During the rebellion’s planning, Diamelo is one of the only Allmuseri who does not approve of Rutherford being on the inside of the meeting. His cold heart does not try to see the good in Rutherford, even if he is African American, the fact that he is American makes him hideous to Diamelo. All he sees in Rutherford is a pathetic man, because in his cold heart is full of hatred. He has strong hatred for the mere American man. Diamelo is mentally enslaved by hatred. Every since he got locked away on that ship he has hated Americans. He has hated every single person because he was a captured slave. He hated Americans because of the harsh conditions Captain Falcon let the Allmuseri live under. All of the deaths he has beneath t...
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... he finally got off the ship, I hope and assume that he cleared his head and helped himself to exit his entrapment from his old life to a brand new one.
Overall, in the novel “The Middle Passage”, mental slavery is alive in many people. Fortunely, only some people were brought out of their jail cells and were open into a new life, but some will probably be trapped forever. I have mentioned that each character was enslaved in some way and how from in the book. Mental slavery is not a joke and can make or break people. It can change a person and the way their life can turn out for them. Make sure you are not mentally enslaved because it can hurt you now or later.
Works Cited
• Johnson, C. (1990). The Middle Passage. New York, NY Scribner Publishing
• The Anacostia Gazette (2011) Mental Slavery. Ag-east.org. Retrieved from http://www.ag-east.org/achieve/Mslavery.htm
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In the earliest part of Harriet?s life the whole idea of slavery was foreign to her. As all little girls she was born with a mind that only told her place in the world was that of a little girl. She had no capacity to understand the hardships that she inherited. She explains how her, ?heart was as free from care as that of any free-born white child.?(Jacobs p. 7) She explains this blissful ignorance by not understanding that she was condemned at birth to a life of the worst kind oppression. Even at six when she first became familiar with the realization that people regarded her as a slave, Harriet could not conceptualize the weight of what this meant. She say?s that her circumstances as slave girl were unusua...
Ironically, their journey to the “land of the free” ended with their liberty being stripped from them and their enslavement. The slaves lost their own civilization because of slavery, which led to their lost heritage and history. Their slavery not only subjugated them to the white man, but it also locked their psyche into ego-restriction. Their minds became trapped at a very young age during the original phase of their psychical development. In this stage, their primary narcissism never fully developed, which is what helped to lead to their obsession with approval from the white man. This incessant need for approval led to an impaired development of the psyche. Another key factor in the development of neurosis in the black slave was the lack of education. Because the black man’s primary narcissism never fully developed, due to his lack of a proper education, he attempted to lose his true self and become the white man. America’s early history of slavery led to the obsessional neurosis that the black man had for the white man. Thus the dramatic effect that a civilization can have on the psyche is
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
...seem helpless without slavery was a way of gaining the public’s acceptance of Drapetomania. The problem with this was that the evidenced of the mental illness did not stretch north. Northerners did not believe that there was such an illness because it was only being diagnosed in the south on slaves who were not free. They had not seen or heard of African in the north having Drapetomania. Also, it Dr. Cartwright was contradicted by claiming that the illness was within African people when Dr. Little knew it to had been more prevalent among whites than negroes. The evidence of the mental illness was questionable because of its setting, its founder, and its symptom contradictions. Drapetomania gave southern slave holders an excuse for the continuation of slavery and their lively hood, while taking away the lively of every slave in the south by keeping them in bondage.
Metal clanks against metal as the chains rub on old scars issuing in another day of toil in the heat with head-down and blood streaming as each new lash is inflicted. This is usually the picture envisioned when one thinks of slavery. While often this is an accurate depiction, there are also many other forms of slavery. The Webster’s Dictionary describes slavery as, “submission to a dominating influence.” Everyone has influences that shape who they are and what they do, but a problem arises when a person’s entire life is spent abiding under a certain, destructive influence. Often this is done willingly and a sort of addiction occurs in maintaining the hold the authority has in one’s life. It gives the person identity; all they need to do is live under the power they have created for themselves and make up the rules as they go along. Yet in doing this, they rob themselves of true freedom in knowing right from wrong and choosing the right. In fact, in this regard Fredrick Douglass is one of the freest men in his narrative. In the life story of Fredrick Douglass we not only see an African American man struggling against the oppression of slavery, but also many white masters struggling against their enslavement to reputation, power and religion.
Examination into the true heart of experience and meaning, Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage looks at the structures of identity and the total transformation of the self. The novel talks about the hidden assumptions of human and literary identity and brings to view the real problems of these assumptions through different ideas of allusion and appropriation. As the novel tells Rutherford Calhoun’s transformation of un-awareness allows him to cross “the sea of suffering” (209) making him forget who he really is. The novel brings forth the roots of human “being” and the true complications and troubles of African American experiences. Stuck between posed questions of identity, the abstract body is able to provide important insight into the methods and meanings in Middle Passage.
Nowadays, students describe slavery based on what they read or learned. Students cannot be able to understand the true meaning behind the word “slavery.” The only people that can understand are the ones who went through it. For them, it is hard to look back from the most brutality and sorrowful years of their lives and yet they chose to write their experience. That is why in school, teachers are requiring narrative books for students to understand the main character’s point of view and apply the moral story to the real world. One of the famous books that English teachers are recommending is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave. It also includes two different introductions of Houston Baker and Peter Gomes and an
America in the mid to early nineteenth century saw the torture of many African Americans in slavery. Plantation owners did not care whether they were young or old, girl or boy, to them all slaves were there to work. One slave in particular, Frederick Douglass, documented his journey through slavery in his autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Through the use of various rhetorical devices and strategies, Douglass conveys the dehumanizing and corrupting effect of slavery, in order to show the overall need for American abolition. His use of devices such as parallelism, asyndeton, simile, antithesis, juxtaposition and use of irony, not only establish ethos but also show the negative effects of slavery on slaves, masters and
At first glance, the book “my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass appeared to be extremely dull and frustrating to read. After rereading the book for a second time and paying closer attention to the little details I have realized this is one of the most impressive autobiographies I have read recently. This book possesses one of the most touching stories that I have ever read, and what astonishes me the most about the whole subject is that it's a true story of Douglass' life. “ Douglass does a masterful job of using his own experience to expose the injustice of slavery to the world. As the protagonist he is able to keep the reader interested in himself, and tell the true story of his life. As a narrator he is able to link those experiences to the wider experiences of the nation and all society, exposing the corrupting nature of slavery to the entire nation.”[1] Although this book contributes a great amount of information on the subject of slavery and it is an extremely valuable book, its strengths are overpowered by its flaws. The book is loaded with unnecessary details, flowery metaphors and intense introductory information but this is what makes “My Bondage and My Freedom” unique.
At first glance, the book “my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass appeared to be extremely dull and frustrating to read. After rereading the book for a second time and paying closer attention to the little details I have realized this is one of the most impressive autobiographies I have read recently. This book possesses one of the most touching stories that I have ever read, and what astonishes me the most about the whole subject is that it's a true story of Douglass' life. “ Douglass does a masterful job of using his own experience to expose the injustice of slavery to the world. As the protagonist he is able to keep the reader interested in himself, and tell the true story of his life. As a narrator he is able to link those experiences to the wider experiences of the nation and all society, exposing the corrupting nature of slavery to the entire nation.”[1] Although this book contributes a great amount of information on the subject of slavery and it is an extremely valuable book, its strengths are overpowered by its flaws. The book is loaded with unnecessary details, flowery metaphors and intense introductory information but this is what makes “My Bondage and My Freedom” unique.
...tive on the psychological damages of slavery. White believes “pairing the psychological with the enslaved woman’s means of survival has helped us analyze many patterns that emerged after slavery (10).”
Douglass's narrative is, on one surface, intended to show the barbarity and injustice of slavery. However, the underlying argument is that freedom is not simply attained through a physical escape from forced labor, but through a mental liberation from the attitude created by Southern slavery. The slaves of the South were psychologically oppressed by the slaveholders' disrespect for a slave’s family and for their education, as well as by the slaves' acceptance of their own subordination. Additionally, the slaveholders were trapped by a mentality that allowed them to justify behavior towards human beings that would normally not be acceptable. In this manner, both slaveholder and slave are corrupted by slavery.
Toni Morrison supports her “truth” that slavery causes mental alterations in her novel Beloved by using repetition, parallel syntax, and metaphors. From the time of being young children in elementary school, it is drilled into society’s mind that owners of slaves were wrong for whipping and beating blacks, yet not often do we discuss that these violent actions affected them mentally as well.
The Middle Passage (or Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade) was a voyage that took slaves from Africa to the Americas via tightly packed ships. The trade started around the early 1500s, and by 1654 about 8,000-10,000 slaves were being imported from Africa to the Americas every year. This number continued to grow, and by 1750 that figure had climbed to about 60,000-70,000 slaves a year. Because of the lack of necessary documents, it is hard to tell the exact number of Africans taken from their homeland. But based on available clues and data, an estimated 9-15 million were taken on the Middle Passage, and of that about 3-5 million died. While the whole idea seems sick and wrong, many intelligent people and ideas went in to making the slave trade economically successful.