It has been made clear that not all slaves were severely oppressed, but most were. The Primary sources support the claims of the cruelty and oppression that the slaves faced, but not all slaves faced the same fate as read in Faust’s essay. Charity Bowey, a slave who was interviewed, mentioned the leniency of her slave master who would turn away overseers who used to whip the slaves, but she also mentioned the cruelty that was reigned upon her by the mistress of the estate. She worked extensively to generate money to buy her children, but eventually the mistress sold her children and herself to speculators despite her best efforts and the 200 dollars she had earned. Most slaves did face harsh times, but there were exceptions, and the slaves of the Silver Bluff Plantation belong to the latter
Not only did this case show the Abolitionist fight against slavery and to stop it, it also showed our questionable laws that come from the Constitution. When comparing and contrasting how Spielberg accurately portrayed this time in American history he did it well. In class we talked about how slaves were captured by others of their kind and sold, treated very horribly while on the slave ships and some left to die. The movie illustrates the horrors of the slaves, all the things they undergone, and how they were captured and taken from their homes and brought to a new world. It was very hard to look at and see all the cruelty and things that went on with the slaves after they had been captured, due to the fact they had been minding their own business a significant amount of years and then someone comes along, suggest that Africans are not to be treated inhuman and turned into a slave.
Although the novel is fictional, Brown’s use of real memories, events, and news stories from his time as a slave provides a realistic look into the pain and suffering endured by slaves at this time. Brown also included opposing views of
Anyone who grabs this book and dives into its narrative will surely feel and understand what slavery must have been like. One becomes in sync with Esteban and it feels as if you are living in the 19th century right along his side. The themes encompassed in the Biography of a Runaway are just as important in being able to tell such a great story. Themes ranging from religion and ethnic customs play largely in portraying the life of slaves in the 19th century. Even though Biography of a Runaway Slave was written much time later, way after the abolishment of slavery it’s intention was to give people a powerful descriptive story of what it was like to live in times that Esteban lived in our current times and it does a great job in telling a story of a runaway slave.
Morrison expresses the atrocities of slavery in a language that I personally have never experienced before. Instead of the typical overused adjectives and factual descriptions she employs beautiful metaphor and a disturbing plot line to make her point. She is raw and shocking. This technique sheds a light on slavery and the purposeful dehumanization of the slave that is almost never depicted in the history books. It is important when talking about the effect of slavery to consider what it takes for the slave owner to be able to treat another human being in such a bestial way.
In My Bondage and My Freedom, Fredrick Douglass argues that slavery had affected everyone. “Slavery was a brutal experience, from the initial capture in Africa, to the Middle Passage, to a degrading life of labor in America.” (Yazawa, 59) The slaves had it worst during slavery because they were the central part of it. They had their human rights taken away, they were worked until there was nothing left of them, and they were severely abused. Slaves had become a fixture that had no decisions, no ambition, and no purpose. (Douglass, 129) The slave system had mistreated the slaves in variety of ways.
This means that the master had an impact on the slave experience because it could determine whether or not you had a good experience. Olaudah, although still being a slave was well treated so he eventually bought his freedom. Whereas Ellen Craft was not treated well by her masters so she suffered from slavery. Slaves had different experiences depending on if they were captured or born into slavery. They also had different experiences depending on if they were a man or a women and where they worked.
Slavery, which was a major uproar from colonial America to the civil war, is the racial epidemic of the enslavement of people for money and cheap labor with extensive abuses. The question that could be asked is were the slaves dignified, did they still keep their dignity? The word dignity is the conducting of self-respect as a person sees himself or herself rather than, how others perceive that person. Slavery has been around for years and slaves have been treated unfairly for countless of reasons and situations. Did they still keep their self-respect?
His influence is one of the main propellants of the passage. James reminds us that L’Ouverture can read, which means he lives a privileged life as a slave. L'Ouverture learned military tactics, "sophisticated" speaking and writing techniques, and leadership dynamics throughout the time that he served his master that later were crucial to his successes in leading the slaves to independence. James then goes into explaining the characteristics of the small privileged class of slaves. The house-servants could gain education and many other benefits that field slaves could not.
Few people brought attention to the evil and immorality of slavery like Frederick Douglass. In his autobiographical narrative, A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Douglass described the effect that slavery had on not only slaves, but also slave-owners. “That cheerful eye, under the influence of slavery, soon became red with rage” (Douglass 160), wrote Douglass in reference to his slave-owner’s wife, Mrs. Auld. What was a moral lady with a sense of conscience at first, was now a “demon” deprived of it. Slavery gave owners and white men a false sense of superiority, a sense of power, which blinded any vision of justice and equality.