Tuesday, February 7, 2017

H. English Ten period 3

The Slave Narrative and Motifs and Patterns found in Slave narratives.
Consider the following quote from Frederick Douglass in his second Autobiography entitled, My Bondage and My Freedom: "The ante-bellum slave narrative was the product of fugitive bondmen who rejected the authority of their masters and their socialization as slaves and broke away, often violently, from slavery. . . . Through an emphasis on slavery as deprivation--buttressed by extensive evidence of a lack of adequate food, clothing, and shelter; the denial of basic familial rights; the enforced ignorance of most religions or moral precepts; and so on--the ante-bellum narrative pictures the South's "peculiar institution" as a wholesale assault on everything precious to humankind. Under slavery, civilization reverts to a Hobbesian state of nature; if left to is own devices slavery will pervert master and mistress into monsters of cupidity and power-madness and reduce their servant to a nearly helpless object of exploitation and cruelty" (79).
What does the above mean? What examples of this quote do we see in chapters 1, 2, or 3 of the Narrative of Frederick Douglass? 

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