A victim is a person who is embittered or tricked by someone else ("Victim - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary"). Victims of slavery are induced into slave-like corruption through deception, force or coercion. The enslaved are subjec... ... middle of paper ... ...were obligated to fulfill. The main purpose for Harriet Jacobs writing ILSG is to attack the specific role that slavery has played on African American lifestyles, also how the institutionalization of slavery permits a degrading behavior that has a negative impact on all African Americans. The special effects of slavery are due to the fact that when slaves were eventually freed they were not given any reintegration or help to be accustomed into the mainstream of society.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement.
Her narrative focuses on the domestic issues that faced African-American women, she even states, “Slavery is bad for men, but it is far more terrible for women”. Therefore, gender separated the two narratives, and gave each a distinct view toward slavery. Douglass showed “how a slave became a man” in a physical fight with an overseer and the travel to freedom. Jacobs’s gender determined a different course, and how women were affected. Douglass and Jacob’s lives might seem to have moved in different directions, but it is important not to miss the common will that their narratives proclaim of achieving freedom.
In Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, Countee Cullen’s “Yet Do I Marvel,” and Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” perceptible transmogrification towards the black aesthetic has befallen throughout the contradistinctive literary periods. Douglass’ slave narrative, written in the nineteenth century to describe the astringent realities of slavery in America, is indicative of the protest aesthetic in African American Literature. Cullen’s poetry, on the other hand, reinvigorates the British Romantic poetry by emulating the iambic pentameter, and it epitomizes the bourgeois aesthetic, which predominantly addresses the class and race issues. Wright’s story is archetypal of the proletarian aesthetic, which primarily focuses on inequalities in the working class and is highly evocative of the communist party. The black aesthetic has played a part in enhancing the comprehensive constitution of life for African Americans by distilling on the ethical issues, such as the evils of slavery and the unparallel economic disadvantages, of the period that help circumvent racial and class bigotry.
In the same manner, Horton reveals the part of the slave agony. The black folk and the nation itself are in a determinant position. The nation has the duty to end slavery in practice and in principle and the slave has the duty of moving forward despite the injustice. Horton’s poem gives voice to the hope stilled in many new free blacks, but also denounces the effects of slavery. Both authors denote the way the slave’s character resisted bondage despite its consequences.
"Naming or not naming the father of a child, taking as a wife a woman who had children by unnamed fathers, [and] giving a newborn child the name of a father" were all considered by Herbert Gutman to be "everyday choices" in slave communities (Davis 15). Not being able to name a father must have made slave women feel great pain from being a "genderless" tool and great isolation by forcing them to take care of bastard children on their own. However, the worst comes when the child is old enough to work and, in most cases, is auctioned off. By auctioning off a slave woman's children slave masters not only dehumanized slave women but gave additional pain to slave women by taking their loved children away. Slave... ... middle of paper ... ...brother.
It was the idea of slave owners to separate them so the sense of loneliness and a lack of confidence will come over the slave. This practice is noticed in Mary Prince narrative when she describes the auctioning of herself and he siblings. She states, “I then saw my sisters led forth, and sold to different owners; so that we had not the sad satisfaction of being partners in bondage. […] When the sale was over, my mother hugged and kissed us, and mourned over us.”(4) Prince and her siblings were all young when they were sold. Today, and even to some during this time period, this practice seems absurd.
African American writers used varying writing styles to carry their message across. Some used pious and moral instruction, others used political exhortation and social prophecy, but all were delivered in a distinctly vintage nineteenth century rhetorical vein which was evocative and powerful. RESISTANCE THROUGH MORAL AND CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION Harriet Jacobs and Maria W. Stewart assert that slavery produces deprivation and degradation on its helpless victims. It is a disadvantage to blacks because it robs them of the opportunity for virtue, morality and enlightenment. Jacobs argues that slavery is as much a curse to whites as it is to blacks.
His autobiography focuses primarily on the ill effects slavery has on slaves; however, he also acknowledges the damage that enforcing the laws of slavery has on slave holders. Through the use of imagery, Douglass masterfully illustrates the dehuman... ... middle of paper ... ...oppression due to the lack of liberty, education, humanity, or justice. Works Cited Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. The Heath Anthology of American Literature.
Frederick Douglass’ Anti-Slavery Autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself is controversial anti-slavery literatures of the mid-nineteenth century. Douglass narrates other slaves’ lives while grabbing the attention of residents in the North and many other places throughout the world. Douglass draws much attention to devastating reality and the inconceiva-ble cruelty of enslavement. The purpose of Narrative of the Life is not to introduce Frederick Douglass’s life, but to expose the evil underside of slavery to its readers. Because of the fact that he is black and was once enslaved, Douglass possibly as-sumed that his readers’ attitude towards his autobiography would be unsympathetic.