Tamicka Lloyd

A young African boy, impacted by the society in mid-nineteenth century, wrote about him growing up with negative viewpoints all around and not being able to learn like other kids did . This boy was Frederick Douglass and this autobiography was “My Bondage and My Freedom”. In “My Bondage and My Freedom”, Frederick Douglass illustrates the impact of a like-minded society, the impact knowledge had on a slave, and slaves having knowledge allowed for them to have free thought but still not being free as a person.

Hawa is the main character in this book. Though she is not the author of the story, the story is told from her perspective. Hawa was born in the 1950’s to her family in Ghana. Her stories were tape-recorded in the 1970’s. At the age of three, Hawa’s mother died, and Hawa was then passed from family member to family member to care for her. Hawa had a very distinct personality—she was very stubborn and tended to get herself trouble. When asked not to do something, she would turn around and do that very thing. Because of this, she never managed to stay with one relative for very long. At one point, she lived with her aunt who forced her to do all the work. Hawa was forced to carry heavy items to the market while her cousin taunted her. This obviously frustrated Hawa, and it resulted in her returning to live with her father. At the age of 16, Hawa was forced to

Captivity narratives were popular with readers in both America and the European continent during the era of North and South American discovery and colonization. They related the experiences of whites being enslaved by Native Americans and of Africans being enslaved by whites. Two captivity narratives that were widely read during the time are A Narrative of the Capture and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson by Mary Rowlandson and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano. They relate the experiences of a married white Puritan woman captured by Native Americans and an African boy captured for the American slave trade at a young age respectively. They were often used as propaganda, Europeans during this time created stereotypes for Native Americans as being cruel and warlike and helped whites to start to see the slavery of African-Americans as wrong. The two narratives are similar in the use of diction to describe each author’s fear of their captors. Further examination reveals several other similarities and differences in the purposes of the narratives as well as in the experiences, reactions, comforts, and views about religion of these two captives.

The life of a slave is never easy; it is full of hurt, cruelty, and chains; there is no freedom. Naturally, one in such a condition would want to escape, but often that is an improbable option; there are too many limitations such as a lack of money and/or connections. Also, slaveowners will stop at nothing to keep their slaves in their possession and will use methods such as moving their slaves around or keeping their slaves too weak and uneducated to go anywhere else. Frederick Douglass employs religious diction, contrasts, and repetition in his memoir, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, to convey the longing despair for freedom that many slaves have, even if they can not necessarily escape.

Throughout the eighteenth century, many fugitive slaves wrote narratives to express their experience as a slave. Fredrick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, an American Slave and Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are two famous examples in which the writers demonstrate their perspective as slaves and dangerous, agonizing life. Nevertheless, there are also many dissimilarities between these narratives, including gender based treatments, main character’s first steps towards freedom, and main character’s personality.

Through the course of history, whenever people hear the word “slaves”, they imagine a long period of hate,torture, ignorance, and cruelty. The term slaves mostly refers to the group of people that today are know as Africans. During these harsh times some slaves kept the detailed memories of their daily suffering and later told them to help create their narratives. In the Classic Slave Narratives the hardships of four slaves who today we remember as Mary Prince, Frederick Douglass, Gustavus Vassa, and last but not least Harriet Jacobs, are descriptively told. Experiences varied based on where the slave was located or their gender. Slaves would be treated as objects, rather than human beings, they were someone’s possession. In The Classic Slave

This paper is a comparative evaluation I did between the autobiographical experiences of two former slaves, Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs and the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass, were both written during the same time period (the former in 1861, the latter in1856). These two books are compelling works of African American Literature. They are depressing but at the same time hopeful, discouraging but uplifting. Both authors go into many aspects concerning the brutality of slavery, but I have thoroughly reviewed and am about to go over only a few in this analysis. Some of the more pertinent issues are a slaves childhood, the effect of gender on

The cruel and harsh treatment of slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth century is something that in today’s millennium a person could not even dream of. Slaves were known to be illiterate; however there are few that had the opportunity to be educated and from them society has a small glimpse into the past. There are two slaves in particular that give people a way to see life through their eyes. Frederick Douglass and Olaudah Equiano were two slaves during those times that were forced into the world of slavery. Frederick Douglass’s “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave” and Olaudah Equiano’s “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano” are literary pieces that talk about their views, experiences, and ideas in relation to slavery.

The book The Classic Slave Narratives is a collection of narratives that includes the historical enslavement experiences in the lives of the former slaves Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, and Olaudah Equiano. They all find ways to advocate for themselves to protect them from some of the horrors of slavery, such as sexual abuse, verbal abuse, imprisonment, beatings, torturing, killings and the nonexistence of civil rights as Americans or rights as human beings. Also, their keen wit and intelligence leads them to their freedom from slavery, and their fight for freedom and justice for all oppressed people.

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill is a fantastically written fictional slave narrative. In the story, Aminata Diallo (the protagonist) is kidnapped from her home village of Bayo as a young girl. The story tells of the hardships Aminata faces throughout her journey of going from slave to free woman. Many characters are introduced throughout the story. Some characters were kind and helpful, such as Georgia and Captain John Clarkson. And other characters are not as kind, such as Mr.Appleby and Solomon Lindor. The character that showed the most potential is the protagonist, Aminata Diallo. This is due to Aminata’s many great attributes that make her exceedingly influential. In this essay, I will explain why the character I would like to be is Aminata Diallo.

The novel Chains, by Laurie Halse Anderson, is a story about a slave who is trying to find freedom for herself and her sister. The protagonist, Isabel, is a slave who wants her freedom but is bound to work for Madam Lockton. This historical fiction novel is an adventurous tale about slavery and war in New York. Freedom is worth fighting for because without freedom you are becoming what another person wants you to become, not what kind of person you want to be. Also, without freedom you can’t be the person that can make a difference in society and change how people think or feel.

The stories of Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano are riveting tales of struggle and subjection to the dehumanizing trials of slavery. Accounts of slavery from the perspective of the captive bring to light the strife and everyday horrors that these people had to endure, sometimes throughout their entire lives. Both of the depictions give voice to the emotional peaks and troughs that the authors experienced during their ordeals. The events described took place almost one hundred years apart, and yet they are eerily similar in spirit. Although they bear a general resemblance, the narratives of Mary Rowlandson and Olaudah Equiano are dissimilar in the tone of their respective recounting, the descriptions of their captors and life before their

A time in this world where African Americans were forced to become a slave was a very rough time. Slaves were people who were owned, forced to work for people even if they didn't want to. They didn't have a choice if they wanted to be a slave or no. Just like Isabel, the main character, she was owned didn't want to become a slave but she was forced to, she wanted to have freedom like many other people had in this time. Isabel from the novel “Chains,” by Laurie Halse Anderson, was a really brave person, who did things she wasn't supposed to do.

Slavery has always been the most dreadful phenomena of our world. Slavery, by itself looks so unusual and provokes mixed feelings from the heart of each person. In other words, slavery change a human being into a “thing” or even some type of consumer item. However, a fugitive slave, Frederick Douglass writes the novel called “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” to reveal how the slavery system works. Douglass’ narrative resembles not so much an autobiography as a memoir. If we read this novel closely, women often appear not in a primary plot, but in a short passage and as a vivid images; specifically, an image of abused bodies. Douglass associates women with suffering. Also, he gives an understanding

“I was just a slave. They tricked me and I was sold, I worked and worked. My boss would slap me and beat me. He said: ‘If you do not remove your clothes I will cut your neck,’” Adia, 24, a survivor of domestic servitude. Adia was 24 when she gained a visa sponsorship to the Middle East. The visa sponsorship exploited loopholes, which did not allow workers to leave without permission. If she ever tried to leave without permission, she would go to jail for absconding or even returned to back to her cruel employer. Adia was starved, locked in a bathroom, beaten and raped,and all she really wanted was to quit.