Dealing with mental illness is hard, but even harder when you are the one caring for a loved one with a mental illness, making you feel as though you have been condemned to a lifetime of servitude. Bebe Moore Campbell usage of slavery allusions throughout the novel 72 Hour Hold explains just how taking care of a family member with a mental illness can feel like being enslaved to their illness. Slavery allusions are used throughout the novel to describe a mother’s, Keri, struggle of taking care of her bipolar daughter, Trina, while also insinuating that she feels as if her daughter’s illness enslaved her to her own daughter. With the usage of slavery allusions author Bebe Moore Campbell creates a new reality, one in which mental illness does …show more content…
Which is what would also occur with family member dealing with someone who has a mental illness. Thus describing how someone may feel like a slave to that person’s illness and how when a recurrence would appear it felt as though they are being sold to auctioneers. When Keri goes to pick up Trina from the 72 hour hold she states, “Something bad was going to happen. The signs were all there: massa was on his deathbed; mistress was crying. Auctioneers and lawyers were assembled on the veranda. I could feel the overseer’s eyes assessing the value of my flesh, her flesh. This wasn’t my first plantation. Deep South, that’s where I was heading” (Campbell 79). In this case, Keri uses how a slave would observe their surroundings while being auctioned. But also uses the viewpoint of a slave who has been sold multiple times and realize that this is not a favorable position to be in. Also referring to the Deep South which would be the worse environment for them considering their current position. As a result, this allusion describes how many family members taking responsibility for someone may feel as their person goes down a dark path once again. While also describing how they have begun to notice when that somebody is going to go down that path and would realize that what is going on is not taking them anywhere wonderful. In conclusion, this allusion helps to create a sort of imagery as to how a caretaker may feel when they experience multiple recurrences with their person’s mental
In Slavery by Another Name, Douglas A. Blackmon delivers a different argument in every chapter, while keeping his initial argument that the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War did not end slavery. The peonage system was illegal, however, the law was manipulated in order for black convicts to work without pension. Blackmon has multiple evidence in his arguments, such as when multiple black allies, such as W.E.B. Dubois, Reese, and Judge Jones tried to prove peonage was illegal, but police department and judges worked together to falsely accuse African Americans of petty crimes or crimes they never did. They were contracted to work without a fair trail and companies signed leases that forced convicts to work for a certain amount of time.
Dealing with mental illness is difficult, but even worse when caring for a family member with a mental illness, creating the feeling of a lifetime of servitude. Bebe Moore Campbell uses flashback of slavery throughout the novel, 72 Hour Hold to explain how taking care of a family member with a mental illness can make one feel enslaved. Flashbacks throughout the novel are used to describe a mother’s, Keri, struggle of taking care of her bipolar daughter, Trina, while also insinuating that she feels her daughter’s illness has enslaved her. With the usage of slavery flashbacks author Bebe Moore Campbell creates a new reality, in which mental illness does not only affect the person suffering but also the people around them. The purpose of these flashbacks are not to just describe a minority, but to highlight the impact mental illness brings to the individual as well as the now indebted caretakers.
This document acknowledges the different set of rules about what the master expect from his slaves to do and not to do. The plantation rules described in this document is accounted from the diary of Bennet Barrow’s, the owner of 200 slaves on his plantation in Louisiana on May 1, 1838. No one will be allowed to leave the plantation without Barrow’s permission is the first of many plantation rules. To add, no one is allowed to marry out of the plantation and allowed to sell anything without their master’s consent. Rules implemented by Barrow is strictly dedicated to the safety and security of his plantation of from encroachment of outsiders. He is more concerned about his
“I asked why the curse of slavery was permitted to exist, and why I had been so persecuted and wronged from youth upward.” Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery and knew from the start that it was wrong. You can only imagine what exactly men and women’s experiences were while going through life as a slave. “If you have never been a slave, you cannot imagine the acute sensation of suffering at my heart.” Jacobs details the abuses of slavery, and the struggles slaves went through. She often referred to slavery as the demon, a curse, or as venomous similar to that of a snake. Many slaves wished death upon themselves and even their children instead of continuing on with their life as being a slave. Slaves went through extremely harsh conditions and were abused not only physically but also mentally. Even through all the tragedies, slaves stayed strong and stuck together and did everything they could to assert their power and gain freedom or to help someone else gain it. “There are no bonds so strong as those which are formed by suffering together.”
Slaves are aware of their positions in society and have the choice to comply with their masters’ demands in order to gain a greater benefit to themselves often in the form of physical protection from abuse. Within the plantation hierarchy, the house slave was considered higher up than field slaves due to their close proximity to the master (Hall 566). The house slave’s position in the plantation microcosm evoked not only favor from the master, but jealousy from the field slaves. The fair-skinned, house slave woman and her master’s control over her mental psyche is a defining factor of her identity in relation to the other slaves on the plantation. Linda Brent in Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an excellent model of the mental bondage endured by light-skinned house slave women because she makes a conscious choice to continue her mental bondage in order to gain physical freedoms. Although many house slaves, like Linda, were granted physical freedoms, they experienced an unfathomable level of mental bondage that defined their character and prompted them to pick their own place in society.
Slavery consisted of numerous inhumane horrors completed to make its victims feel desolated and helpless. Many inescapable of these horrors of slavery are conveyed in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. The entire prospect of the duration of the story is to plan an escape from the excruciating conditions awaiting Douglass as a slave. When his escape is finally executed, unpredictable emotions and thoughts overwhelm him. Within the conclusion of his narrative (shown in the given passage), Frederick Douglass uses figurative language, diction, and syntax to portray such states of mind he felt after escaping slavery: relief, loneliness, and paranoia.
From the period of Antebellum America up into the present time, many documents and pieces of work have been published regarding the abolition of slavery and slavery in general. Regarding the abolition of slavery, slave narratives were one of the ways to get readers first hand look at accounts of slavery and in turn were a big part of abolitionist movements. In class we have read three of the great slave narratives and there are abolitionist themes that can be traces through all three of them. These themes argued against slavery and were used to persuade their readers to support the abolition of slavery. Although there were many similar themes through out the narratives I will be focusing on just two of the most effective ways that argue for the abolition of slavery: slavery seen as a slow poison, and emotion through extreme cruelty and suffering.
As a struggling country, America’s south discovered slavery as a way to gain financial stability. Except, slavery grew into much more than a need for money. It became a social thing and also a controversial topic among politicians, especially with the emergence of abolitionism. Even after slavery, it became a great learning opportunity to ensure that it never happens again.
The reader starts to see that the system of slavery is a cruel one. Douglas uses words such as “violence,” “angry,” and “fury” to make the reader feel the depravity caused by such a terrible system. The reader realizes the anger that the slave system insights in wonderful people such as Mrs. Auld, and acknowledge the dishonesty of such an institution. It takes beautiful people and turns them into terrible vectors for its vile gain. Slavery damages the individual, inasmuch as it insights them with a vicious rage. It causes them to insight this pain in others. Slavery is a self reciprocating wheel of torment and anger. That is what Douglas uses these words to do; make the reader feel the pain and hate slavery causes in an individual. Furthermore, Douglas makes the reader feel the desperate pain that he felt when he was a slave. Using words such as, “wretched,” “tormented,” “distressed,” and “gloomy” to describe his enlightened state in slavery, he forces the reader to feel his pain. Douglas was stuck as a slave seeking enlightenment, which was a terrible position to be in; he was forced to accumulate knowledge in secret. Douglas was then stuck with this knowledge and a want for it in a situation that the could not utilize it. This would truly cause any human rage and hate, damage their soul, scaring them. Douglas’s use of these words cause the reader
In the story "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler, all of the characters are struggling from an illness, an epidemic outbreak that has affected their entire lives. Rye is a woman who lost her family and, because of her illness, her ability to read. Her story is similar to African Americans during the era of slavery because when they were taken and put on ships they lost their entire families, their freedom to do what they wanted, and their ability to learn how to read, write and communicate. In a way, the illness that Rye obtained symbolized what happened in many slaves lives. It was as if slaves were condemned with the same illness as read in the story. This story is symbolic in the way that they use the characters and their circumstances. Slaves
This is the account of an ex-slave by the name of William Barker who now resides in Bethany, AL. He is approximately 95 years old and lives in a little shack with a plot of land. He has worked for some local townsfolk doing some grounds keeping and gardening since he was freed when he was 20. But for the most part, Barker keeps to himself. He has no wife and no children. He is only 5 foot 4 and may weigh about 145 lbs. As a slave he worked as a gardner, and later learned to cook, but soon thereafter was freed. Gardening is all he seems to know. However, he seems very proficient at hunting. He says that is the only way he keep alive, living off what God gives him from the land and water. He was son to Frances William and Eliza William. His father died in the war. Because of his size and ability to cook, William Barker did not go to war. His mammy died within weeks of being free due to starvation. Here is his account
The author Kevin Bales ,and co-writer Ron Soodalter, discuss the issues pertaining to forced labor in “Slavery in The Land of The Free”. Free The Slaves is a non-profit organization in Washington that Bales founded to help end slavery not only in the United States, but around the world. The Abraham Lincoln Institute has the honor to have the established historian, Soodalter, serve on it’s board.The two authors also wrote a book by the name of “The Slave Next Door: Human trafficking and Slavery in America Today” (2009). One of the issues that Bales and Soodalter effectively touch on is how widespread the issue of human trafficking and slavery is in
After she was deemed too old to be useful, she was left alone in a desolate and remote cabin, as Douglass’s phrases it, “turning her out to die!”(Douglass 29). Following this exclamation, he describes her wrenched condition; she was alone, without the children and grandchildren she cared so deeply for, too old to care for herself and with no one there to care for her. He believes she must have died; he imagines her death, her suffering, her loneliness, and misery (Douglass 29). Douglass ends his depiction of his grandmother’s fate by remarking that if she lives, “she lives to suffer” (Douglass 29). This specific example, enriched by the potent imagery, makes the myth, that slave owners tended to their slaves when they were no longer useful, shatter in his readers
The word “slavery” brings back horrific memories of human beings. Bought and sold as property, and dehumanized with the risk and implementation of violence, at times nearly inhumane. The majority of people in the United States assumes and assures that slavery was eliminated during the nineteenth century with the Emancipation Proclamation. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth; rather, slavery and the global slave trade continue to thrive till this day. In fact, it is likely that more individuals are becoming victims of human trafficking across borders against their will compared to the vast number of slaves that we know in earlier times. Slavery is no longer about legal ownership asserted, but instead legal ownership avoided, the thought provoking idea that with old slavery, slaves were maintained, compared to modern day slavery in which slaves are nearly disposable, under the same institutionalized systems in which violence and economic control over the disadvantaged is the common way of life. Modern day slavery is insidious to the public but still detrimental if not more than old American slavery.
Beloved “Beloved” is the story of a young black woman's escape from slavery in the nineteenth century, and the process of adjusting to a life of freedom. Most people associate slavery with shackles, chains, and back-breaking work. What they do not realize the impact of the psychological and emotional bondage of slavery. In order for a slave to be truly free, they had to escape physically first, and once that. was accomplished they had to confront the horror of their actions and the memories. that life in chains had left behind.