Literature
Thesis Statement: The effect of domination and oppression of the white masters against the black slaves symbolized by the cruel, inhumane and harsh punishments became the catalyst for the slaves to escape.
In the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, the female author was speaking based on her own personal experience and used her pen name “Linda Brent” as disguise. In this book, Brent emphasized how the Southern whites have completely taken control over the blacks. The whites became the oppressor with the blacks as the victims. The author defined the word slave as a piece of merchandise, that has been entrusted to his or her parents for safekeeping and whose liberty is dependent on the masters’ wishes at any moment they please (Jacobs 1). In the similar way, in the novel “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, the male author was also born as a slave in Maryland and Baltimore where he was raised. The authors in the books both changed his last names. In the first book, the author resorted to use a pen name to express her feeling about slavery. In the same manner, the male author in the second book changed his last name from Bailey to Douglas.
The strategies to resistance of both authors are the same in such way that both of them escaped slavery. In the case of Douglass, he escaped his hometown and headed to New York and Massachusetts to liberate himself from slavery. When he escaped from slavery, he became a laborer and finished education at the same time, as a working student for three (3) years. In the case of Linda Brent, she escaped from the plantation where he worked as a laborer and became a fugitive.
In the case of Brent, she saw how her master, Mrs. Flint imposed cruel punishments on slaves by seeing how slaves were brutally attacked while seeing the woman whipped the slaves until the blood trickled from the heavy strokes of her lash (Jacobs 10). In the same manner, Douglass Linda despised the fact that slaves were sold as property. On the other hand, Douglass saw how cruel the masters treated the slaves after he was regarded as a beast of burden or a chattel mortgage which motivated him to escape. Both of the authors resisted in similar ways by wanting to get out slavery and using education as a tool to free themselves from cruelty.
The effect of domination and oppression of the white masters against the black slaves symbolized by the cruel, inhumane and harsh punishments became the catalyst for the slaves to escape. The effect of oppression caused an emotional and psychological effect in their well-being of the slaves during the public sale of Negroes to their new masters (Jacobs 10). Some of the slaves who refused to be sold were whipped and locked in prison unless they agree to go with the new masters. Resistance of slaves resulted to several times of whipping until the blood flowed at their feet as their limbs are put in chains (Jacobs 14).
Despite all these hardships experienced by the authors who became slaves themselves, they were able to regain their self-worth by escaping and pursuing education. Both of them remained resilient by overcoming the traumatic experiences in the hands of their masters.
Bibliography
Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. USA: Cricket House, 2012.
Print.
Jacobs, Harriet Ann. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Los Angeles, California: Indo
European Publishing, 2010. Print.
