Sample Student Research Project 2015: Essay
LITR
4328 American Renaissance / Model Assignments
Sample Student Research Project 2015:
Essay
Zach
Thomas
Slave Narratives: The New Voices
These narratives, that began long before any civil war, have encapsulated
readers across our nation. Though hardly extinct, these writings had to endure
long standing help from keeping them hidden for a period of time. In fear of
persecution and execution, slaves who had poured out their hearts to the words
on paper, will begin to see a new day coming that was in the making as soon as
they put words onto such sacred parchment. The real tragedy is that most slaves
could never have a voice. Their masters would not allow such teaching to go on
within their fortified walls of ignorance. Being black meant that you were
property to someone, if in fact you were living in the South. Many blacks,
whether enslaved or not, cherished the idea of freedom beyond any treasure on
this planet. Freedom would come only at a great price, but even a short moment
of freedom would somewhat alleviate a lifelong journey of enslavement.
The main catalyst for freedom in a slave’s
life is literacy. Without literacy, there is little to no chance that a slave
can be declared anything other than someone’s servant. To read and to write
meant that a slave could not be held down by the physical and psychological
bondage that a white man possessed over them. For ones like Frederick Douglass,
literacy looked like a man finding a treasure that he could not show to others,
but one in which he held closer than his very skin. “This bread I used to bestow
upon the hungry little urchins, who, in return, would give me that more valuable
bread of knowledge” (7.5). Whatever could feed the means of learning, through
reading and writing, Douglass took advantage of in those moments. Prior to this
situation, the new master of Douglass in Baltimore found out that his wife was
teaching Douglass how to read. His response was as followed, “if you teach that
nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would
forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no
value to his master” (6.4). There is a commonality within slavery that literacy
cannot be taught in order to subdue an entire people of the mind to think for
themselves. The importance of literacy is like a drug to a people that were
dragged from their country of origin and taken to a new country without the same
language and culture. Mr. Auld knew in truth that his choice of words, including
“unmanageable,” meant that with literacy and the chance to learn, slaves could
question their daily torment. Not that I am assuming they did not question it
before, but that with literacy, it is extremely magnified. Men and women like
Douglass, arrived at the conclusion that learning provided the framework for
escape, both physically and mentally. There arose a glimpse of hope in the
hearts of those that tasted literacy and could see an upcoming freedom.
Harriet Jacobs learned how to read and write through a different set of
circumstances. She was sent to work for her mother’s
mistress after Jacob’s mother had just passed away. Her story through
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, does not touch on the the initial
start of her literacy, but rather scholars have discovered that she began
learning at the age of six in the new confines of her mistress’ home. So quite
different are the roads traveled by Douglass and Jacobs; Douglass learning by
sheer perseverance in the convincing of poor white children in exchange for
bread, and Jacobs unknowingly, being granted the privilege of literacy at the
death of her mother. Though their stories differed in regards to how they
received knowledge, both involved being near the northern states, which are
notorious for allowing better care for slaves. Not that there was a lack of
slavery in the Union, but there voided the likemindedness of dehumanizing slaves
through sheer rejection of differing opinions. As one can picture a countryside
with the vastness of trees and starry nights, one can also assume that
plantation life is a mirror image of the country. People in the country all seem
to share the same ideals, the same belief system, the same morals. The city, in
which Douglass and Jacobs were taught how to read and write, was the place where
opinions were said to flourish. Different cultures, languages, and beliefs all
were shared openly for the most part (sorry,women). There is nothing inherently
wrong with living in the country, but for slaves, it was more common for them to
experience life outside the bondage of slavery when they were near the city.
Literacy was ineffably important for Douglass and Jacobs because they would
write about their experiences in such a way that would captivate the hearts of
white men and women for decades. This push of opinion meant that revolution
could occur in the minds of those who found it necessary to hear out a people
who did not have a voice before.
There are slaves who never learned how to read or write. In short, these
slaves never truly had a voice that separated them from the abundance of blacks
in the same boat. Sojourner Truth was an exception to this rule. She could not
read or write, but served nonetheless, to the call of women’s
rights and the abolitionist movement. Stowe remarks beautifully on the
potentiality of blacks in bondage by saying, “One longs to know what such beings
might have become, if suffered to unfold and expand under the kindly developing
influences of education” (99). Education for the slave seemed to be the
hope-infused seed of life. Sojourner was able to bypass literacy, but it begs to
question if her leadership ever met a ceiling without having prior education.
There are only so many interviews/meetings she was able to speak at. Thankfully
there are those that did chronicle her life and her beliefs on slavery. The
truth in providing these interviews were crucial to the anti-slavery initiative,
but narratives depicting the gruesome imagery and overwhelming sorrow of slavery
would always outlast the spoken word.
Slave narratives, though they seem more historical in nature, are really
very romantic in context. As spoken before, most slave narratives are written
later in a slave’s
life, but almost always describe the setting on a plantation. The countryside is
romantic in that there are trees to provide cover for slaves on the run in
search of freedom. On plantations, there are usually one to two plantation
owners that play a very prominent role in a slave’s life as a villain, or better
yet, a monster. The gothic becomes infused with a slave’s narrative to describe
their masters and the darkness of one’s soul. “Precipitating the narrator's
decision to escape is some sort of personal crisis, such as the sale of a loved
one or a dark night of the soul in which hope contends with despair for the
spirit of the slave” (Andrews). Escape brings about a sense of euphoria for
these unpaid laborers. Deep and agonizing pain is often stirred up in an
individual who lost a loved one in the slave trade. Romanticism in slave
narratives dip mostly in the direction of the gothic. Some narrators of their
own story play the heroic individual. Not that what they did as a slave was
heroic, but that in their storytelling can they be considered heroic on the
account of an entire race of people. The city and the country begin to play an
important role in the elements of romanticism and realism. The country is
composed of the romantic agenda because of the setting, but there could also be
exaggeration in the details of the cruelty slaves faced, nonetheless, it makes
for good reading. The city is characterized as the hustle and bustle setting, as
if the people in the city never sleep. Topics of conversation seem to be more
concise and realistic; there is little credibility in lofty ideas such as
punishing an entire race of people. Realism has limits to keeping reality in
constant submission. The purpose of Realism in slave narratives comprise
situations where there are absolutes in the morality of how one sees a slave.
Realism plays on rational thinking to enhance the argument that slaves cannot be
treated in this way to provide output. Morality is a product of realism because
there is not an overwhelming consensus of how slaves should be treated. There
are opposing ideals because without them, slavery would never have been
abolished. Romanticism and Realism play hand in hand throughout slave narratives
to entice the reader, but also to drive home morality to ignite readers to
action.
The American Renaissance is the historical period of time where American
Romanticism was brought out of the woodwork. Slave narratives enhanced this
period of time by being romantic, popular literature, and rising in the area of
novels. The slaves at one point had no voice, being that they were dehumanized
often. When tragedy befell slaves over time, black authors arose to enlighten a
nation of the reality of slavery. Slaves at one time were not a people. Only
through pushing the status quo aside could they possibly pop the bubble of
morality and religiosity to get it to a place where it needed to be.
“These slave narratives came to resemble one another, both in their content and
in their formal shape. So similar was their structure that sometimes seems to
the modern reader that the slave authors were drawing upon shared patterns, and
then imposing these patterns upon different pieces of cloth” (Gates xiii). These
young authors gave their people a voice for generations to come. Freedom was the
reward for those who sought to escape their present reality, but having a mind
to think for themselves would surpass even that.
Works
Cited
•
Andrews, William. "North American Slave Narratives." An Introduction to the
Slave Narrative (2004). Documenting the American South. The University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. Web. 2015. <http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/intro.html>.
•
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/4232/
•
Gates, Henry Louis. "Introduction." The Classic Slave Narratives. New York,
N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin, 1987. Xiii. Print.
•
"Harriet Jacobs." Harriet Jacobs. Web. 5 May 2015.
"Great Star" flag of pre-Civil War USA