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Venture Smith Character Analysis

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Tyler Schrenker Professor Levecq HUMN 201 17 November 2014 Morality in Venture Smith While reading Venture Smith’s autobiography, we find ourselves enthralled in the story of the life of a poor uneducated slave. Venture uses his autobiography to explain the trials and tribulations of his time transitioning from a child to adult. He came from a tribe where his father was prince, he went through many trials and eventually had to leave with his mother, this is where his true story of being bought and sold begins. Venture spends a vast amount of time describing the struggle of being a slave, yet it is not to teach us a lesson about our misconceptions of a race, but to show the typical state of things and emphasize the use of morality as a tool …show more content…

After carefully considering all the options he has available to him, he finally has an epiphany that in order to get the maximum result of all his desires he must display an unquestionable moral code to his master, even if it is not how his heart truly feels. His behavior has, “as yet been submissive and obedient.” Venture is a young man when he makes these judgments, yet is fully aware to provide evidence that the appearance of morality does not have to match the reasoning behind it. The question this brings up is how motives for our own situations affect us. Because of his morals and “after much trial of my honesty,” Venture is trusted with more responsibilities, and eventually because of the loyalty he has shown to his master he has the ability to work for the money to buy his own freedom. From the naked eye perspective it cannot be interpreted that Venture is disobeying his master, though when we take a more in depth view at his use of morality we find it was used to manipulate his situation and later becomes the fundamental key to his future success and …show more content…

Venture's society told him that they are not educated and do not have any sense of values and morals, which influenced his own morality to be better than what society expected him to be. As Gould illustrates, there were important economic changes that helped to unsettle traditional assumptions about social order, such as slaves like Venture working to gain their freedom, which would then lead to slaves buying people themselves and fueling the economy. This was exemplified as a very difficult adjustment for society and it is a very slow transition. The cause of this was the amount of time white people thought as a whole that the Africans were nothing more than slaves with no code of ethics. Even if they were for the purpose of a secretive rebellion, the masters were highly non-expectant of these actions and entrusted the slaves until they worked to gain

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