Essay on Middle Passage

Our name identifies us in many ways. It connects us to who we are and connects us to our family. White people have had the power to express what identifies them best and black people really never got the chance to experience what identity is, it has always been prearranged for them. This passage’s main point is about identity and breaking out of the silence that the whites have had over the black people, about taking control and breaking the norms.

Imagine waking up in a near pitch black room, overwhelmed by the smell of death and despair, chained to a board squished in with hundreds of others. As strange as it might seem, at one point that was a reality for some and the suffering they would have to endure hadn’t even begun to begin. These people were victims of the Atlantic Slave trade and were on their way to the Americas to be bought and sold and forced to work. Exploited and abused these people would go on to become a huge part of what made the United States and our history.

The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man depicts the narrator as a liminal character. Beginning with an oblivious knowledge of race as a child, and which racial group he belonged, to his well knowing of “white” and “black” and the ability to pass as both. On the account of liminality, the narrator is presenting himself as an outsider. Because he is both a “white” and “black” male, he does not fit in with either racial group. In the autobiography of an Ex-colored man, James Weldon Johnson uses double consciousness to show the narrators stance as a person that gives up his birthright for the “privilege of whiteness”.

One of the most interesting arguments that modern apologists makes for the practice of race-based slavery in the Americas is the fact that slavery existed in Africa during that time period and that Africans were complicit in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. What is fascinating about Olaudah Equiano's discussion of the Middle Passage is that, as a man who had been enslaved in Africa prior to being shipped as a slave to the Americas, he was in a unique position to describe slavery in Africa with his introduction to European-influenced slavery in North America. His perception was that the immense brutality of the Middle Passage foreshadowed the dehumanization of slaves in the Americas, which was more inhumane than the treatment he had received as a slave while in Africa. Furthermore, he did not suggest that this brutality was linked to the race of the traders, though that seemed to have been his initial impression, but to the nature of the Trans-Atlantic trade. Therefore, Equiano's writings suggest that shipping Africans across the ocean for slavery was part of the dehumanizing process that helped fuel the practice of slavery in America.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

Lastly, the spirit and “soul” of the individual was threatened. In the Gilded Age, many workers lost a sense of their true identity, and turned to drinking or long fits of depression. In DuBois’ writings, we also here stories of the desperate slave who has had his identity stripped of him by wealthy plantation owners. However, through all the inhumane and degrading atrocities they faced, the spirit of African-American’s as a people did not die. In DuBois’ book, we read songs and stories that kept hope alive. We

The Middle Passage was a triangular route that was frequently used by many European nations who engaged in the Atlantic slave trade of millions of Africans. One such African slave was a man by the name of Olaudah Equiano, who 's autobiography spoke of the mortality rate on slave ships, what he and his fellow slaves thought of their European captors, and what their captors thought of them.

Middle Passage is a novel filled with different techniques such as allusions, foreshadowing, humor, character transitions, and many other techniques. Charles Johnson, the author of this amazing novel wanted the readers to acknowledge the past and present events. He connects the past and the present with many different examples. One example is when the police hit Santos for no reason. This comparison is made very clear and simple enough for the readers to understand that police brutality continues to this day. Charles Johnson uses such vibrant words to make the reader feel, smell, hear everything that was going on in the novel. It’s as if this book comes to life throughout his descriptions, and the techniques used that

essential to the reading of the narrator’s struggle with his own identity and how the black

Through his work, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” W.E.B. Dubois takes the reader on a journey through the typical black man’s eyes. He creates a new meaning of the African American man as he shares personal experiences and stories of the past alike. He plays upon the heart strings of every reader, no matter the race, with his literary knowledge of words, use of pathos, and stories of his past experience to pull in emotional ties to his work. The application of dualism allows the reader, who is most commonly white men, to choose a side to sympathize with, for Dubois gives the sense of double consciousness as the African and the American throughout his entire work.

First, it should be mentioned that the author divided the text into subtitles that guide a reader through reading. The fact that the author analyzes

In modern literary interpretation, the correspondence of the authors intention with the meaning of the work, is considered paramount to discerning the ‘true’ literary meaning of a work . E.D. Hirsch a renowned literary critic argues that to correctly interpret a text, the interpret must consider the author and the text’s “inner” and “out horizon”. To discover the inner horizon, the interpreter must look at the culture and background of the work and author so they can understand the logic, belief systems, and historical context that bound the work. The addition of the outer horizon allows the reader to consider the author’s intention in writing the piece. Hirsh establishes that a literary interpretation can be considered the most probable, if the reader considers the plausibility of the interpretation based on the context established from the text’s horizon, coherence .

In this journey our main character also see’s the many faces of the black man, and how all of these faces where created in response to the actions of the white man never in response to one’s own actions. Towards the end of the novel the main character finds himself in a difficult predicament as he is being hounded by men who want him dead. Despite this, he manages to find a pair of glasses and a huge hat which he believes would disguise him just enough so that he can escape his potential murderers. As he walks around Harlem in his new guise, many begin to confuse him for someone called Rinehart who seems to be bookie, a pimp, and a preacher all at once. The ability to be so many things is at first attractive to the main character as he slowly begins to sink into the role of Rinehart, however he soon realizes that Rinehart’s multiple identities are merely a reflection of his inauthenthicity. Rinehart has no true self-consciousness and has allowed for others to create his image for him; Rinehart is only identified in the novel by others, never by himself. Rinehart’s character is representative of the notion of Double Consciousness as it shows the black men without the ability or better yet the privilege of self identity.

In exploring the problem of identity in Black literature we find no simple or definite explanation. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that it is rooted in the reality of the discriminatory social system in America with its historic origins in the institution of slavery. One can discern that this slavery system imposes a double burden on the Negro through severe social and economic inequalities and through the heavy psychological consequences suffered by the Negro who is forced to play an inferior role, 1 the latter relates to the low self-estimate, feeling of helplessness and basic identity conflict. Thus, in some form or the other, every Negro American is confronted with the

In this paper, I plan to make the argument that the characters of the texts discover a new side of themselves while they understand the idea of ‘belongingness’ in their respective worlds. It is the medium of language, clothing, religion and/or food which enables them to reflect on their lives, in an attempt to make the most out of their present and