Topic 2 (literary style): self-selected text analysis related to Literary Style Objectives 5 & 6

Identifying with the Minority Narrative

Being a mother, the hardest thing for me to read was the separation of a child from their mother. I cannot even begin to imagine what the slave mother or father would feel knowing that their child would be taken from them.

Fredrick Douglas writes “It is a common custom… to part children from their mothers at a very early age. Frequently before the child has reached it twelfth month… placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor” (256). For a mother this is the cruelest of punishment.  With this passage Douglass captures the audience’s attention. In this passage Douglas’ style of writing “expresses the minority voice and vicariously shares the minority experience” (lit. style obj. 6c) He grips you by your heart strings; because no matter man or woman we all have a mother, regardless if she raised you or not being torn from her hurts. Having your child torn away from you regardless of your race, ethnicity, or gender cuts you deep in the most profound way.

I find myself disagreeing in part with the essay “Double Minority” from the 2007 midterms which states, “because men do not give birth to children, … they do not become attached to the child”. I am a woman and I know that I would be devastated to have my child ripped from my arms, but my husband would be just as distraught to lose one of our children too. It was not only the women that suffered but the men did too.

Linda’s father was allowed to work at a trade and manage his own affairs; even so he was not free. Again I find myself being put in their shoes, which is what a cultural narrative does, it “reflect[s] an ethnic group’s experience or range of expression” (lit. style obj. 5). Linda’s father’s dream of purchasing his children’s freedom was never realized, so his dream was his nightmare knowing that no matter how hard he worked he could never free his children. (341)

The minority narrative helps the reader to identify with their struggle, sorrow, and triumphs. Minority poetry also gives a voice and identity to the struggle for equality. In “An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ, With Penitential Cries” by Jupiter Hammon the lines “Redemption now to everyone” and “Thy Grace to every Nation” speaks of equality for all people as a whole. The powerfulness of these narratives gives a voice to the minority, a voice that allows the dominant culture to identify with the minority. [SAH]

Topic 2: The Mental Breakdown

            One of the passages that I found very interesting I found in the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. The passage portrays Fredrick Douglass’s belief on the slaveholders reasons for allowing the slaves their holidays. When I read it, it affected me more than any of the brutalities that he describes in the narrative. Fredrick gives his theory on his beliefs of why the slaveholders give holidays and encourage the slave to drink excessively. One would want to believe it to be some small act of kindness on the part of the slaveholder, which, in some cases, it might have been. However, what Douglass believed was that they were given to slaves as a way to avoid revolt. It was a way to give them a taste of a false freedom that they would not like very much. They would find ways to get the slave intoxicated to create a degenerate feeling of sickness. Therefore, after their holiday was wasted away in a drunken stupor, they were resigned to go back to work. “Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation…Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labeled with the name of liberty…Many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery.”

            What affected me most by this passage was that it made absolute sense, which is a frightening thought in itself. The ability for humans to affectively keep another group of human beings from even craving their own freedom was astounding to me. What could be a worse violation of human rights than to take away a person’s desire for their own liberty? I could not help but having to read the passage repeatedly to find some way in which this method could not have worked. Yet, as I continued to read it, I realized that it had to have been uniquely effective. The psychological effects of these methods: ridding a slave of their identity, of their dignity, their hope, their spirit, and their mind, must have been more effective than the strongest of chains and the harshest of whippings. [TP]