Charles W. Chestnutt's The Passing Of Grandson

In Terrance Hayes’s poem “Mr. T-,” the speaker presents the actor Laurence Tureaud, also known as Mr. T, as a sellout and an unfavorable role model for the African American youth for constantly playing negative, stereotypical roles for a black man in order to achieve success in Hollywood.  The speaker also characterizes Mr. T as enormous and simple-minded with a demeanor similar to an animal’s to further his mockery of Mr. T’s career.

In “Nightjohn” by Gary Paulsen, Nightjohn and Sarny, live difficult lives of slavery. With no freedom, and Sarny’s wish to learn, Nightjohn is in desperate need to teach Sarny to read and write, to able to write to others to teach them about the bads things of slavery. Through the story’s brave characters, description of hardships they, and a beautiful picture of their bravery they have, readers understand that Gary Paulsen is expressing the idea that helping others, is worth sacrificing yourself.

In his letter he described his life as an indentured servant as one where he has nothing to comfort him but sickness and death. The life that he was living in colonial Virginia was one where you couldn’t escape or else you will be captured. Attempting it could of cause him to die, therefore he hoped his parents brought his escape but with his parents being poor there was no way of escaping the life of an indentured servant. Having no escape as an indentured servant, he wrote to his parents a letter asking that his parents bought out the indenture. In his letter, he wrote that he was trapped in a place filled of diseases that can make any body weak and leave you with lack of comfort and rattled with guilt. Those feelings constantly controlled

Frederick Douglass was a great writer, but he wasn’t always. He was an escaped slave who used that in his speeches as a topic to gain the attention of his audience. His audience was a seemingly sympathetic one and got to them through rhetorical questions. Douglass wanted to convey the message that there are many changes that need to be made.

Slavery is wicked and gory and monstrous and that is well known today but during the time it was well known. In Frederick Douglass’s, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass tries to persuade everyone to stop the madness and recognize how awful slavery is; to do this he uses comparison and realization leading to the reader being blown away by this one slave’s life story.

The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.

Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a first hand experience into the imbalance of power between a slave and a slaveholder and the negative effects it has on them both. Douglass proves that slavery destroys not only the slave, but the slaveholder as well by saying that this “poison of irresponsible power” has a dehumanizing effect on the slaveholder’s morals and beliefs (Douglass 40). This intense amount of power breaks the  kindest heart and changes the slaveholder into a heartless demon (Douglass 40). Yet these are not the only ways that Douglass proves what ill effect slavery has on the slaveholder. Douglass also uses deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion to present the negative effects of slavery.

“Well, does the colonel treat you well?” “No, sir,” was the ready reply. “What, does he work you too hard?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t he give you enough to eat?” “Yes, sir, he gives me enough, such as it is.” The colonel, after ascertaining where the slave belonged, rode on; the man also went on about his business, not dreaming that he had been conversing with his master. He thought, said, and heard nothing more of the matter, until two or three weeks afterwards. The poor man was then informed by his overseer that, for having found fault with his master, he was now to be sold to a Georgia trader. He was immediately chained and handcuffed; and thus, without a moment’s warning, he was snatched away, and forever sundered, from his family and friends, by a hand more unrelenting than death.” This shows that the slave gave his honest opinion, and instead of began rewarded he was sold to a Georgia trader with no time to say goodbye. This is not peaceful because all people have the right to an opinion that no one can change, and that right was violated because his master

The idiosyncratic style Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass depicts the discriminatory actions of postcolonial slave owners in the southern United States, which reflects their greed for unpaid labor on their plantations. He employs the metaphor of the book that their masters prohibited them from owning by law throughout the memoir to demonstrate the avarice that drives white slave owners to turn a darker-skinned, intelligent being into a machine for personal benefit for centuries after the colonization of America. Also, the irony further displays the power of greed by expressing the slaveholder’s uncivilized method of forcing another human out of civilization. Furthermore, his use of a paradox of the use of pure religious beliefs to justify a slaveholder’s inhumane treatment reveals their rapacious actions that contradict the teachings of the church.

In the 1800’s slavery was a major issue in the United States which was dealt with on a daily basis in the South. The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” Fedrick Douglass himself expresses the differences in the lives of black people in the North and in the South. The South was known to have some of the wealthiest white people in the states, that wealth and power they had was due to the many slaves they had working in their plantations. In the other hand, the North had black people getting paid for their labor, their black people were free. They were treated like human beings and even though they might still encounter problems with some of the whites these problems where nothing compared to the retched life blacks had in the South.

Fredric Douglass wrote, “What to the Slave is Fourth of July” in 1852. In this speech to the American public, Douglass states how great of a country American “was” and how great the forefathers “were”. In contrast to those statements he professes his reasoning for freeing slaves. However, Mary Rowlandson wrote, “A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson” in 1682. This captive narrative takes place during the King Philips war, and depicts how the native Americans treated their prisoners of war. Although from different eras, both Douglass and Rowlandson use similar techniques such as religion, repetition, and sentimentalism to show that being held captive and slavery is wrong.

Her name was Celia, and she was a slave. Her master, Robert Newsom, was an old and prosperous fellow by the time he purchased her. In almost every way, Newsom embodied the ideal “yeoman farmer” that Thomas Jefferson envisioned during his presidency (Lecture, History 250, 10-7-2015): he was hardworking, self-sustaining, and self-made. Despite Newsom’s “respectability”, the young slave Celia quickly became a victim of one of the ugliest blights in American history: the systematic abuse of black women for sexual pleasure (McLaurin, 24 & 137). Like many prosperous men of the time, Newsom was not simply self-made, but slave-made. He owned several. Celia lived under his oppression for five long years before defending herself. This desperate act of

I strongly suspect him of having learned to read”. Because Grandison plays the part of the dumb, humble, obedient slave the Colonel is moved to tell Dick to take Grandison with him because, “He’s too fond of good eating to risk losing his regular meals” (Reidhead 707-708). Thus, Grandison the Colonel believes that Grandison, being accustomed to eating well and being treated decent, would never consider running away. Grnadison did what he needed to do in order to say alive; however, he waited for the opportune time to seize not only his freedom, but the freedom of his family. Although “The Passing of Grandison” was written in 1901, which is after slavery had ended, the ingenuity Grandison uses to trick Col. Owes into believing in his allegiance is what ultimately wins him his freedom. As mentioned earlier, it is Grandison’s conduct that grants him the opportunity to run away at the appropriate

In his “The Great Gatsby” F. Scott Fitzgerald creates a unique situation where his narrator is not the protagonist of the story. This means readers are lead to believe the narrator’s opinion of the protagonist. To accurately develop the protagonist Fitzgerald constructs a narrator free of judgement and full of observation. Fitzgerald incorporates figurative language to develop the main character and build a sense of mystique toward Gatsby.

“Outcasts” by Bret Harte and “The Passing of Grandison” by Charles Chesnutt are both local color stories, which is “a pleasant and often sentimental presentation of typical life in a certain definite locality that has characteristic speech, manners, and customs peculiar to itself. The pleasant portrayal of manners in the chosen locality is the primary aim of the local colorists or regionalists” (Local Color (Regionalism)-2 Notes). These two stories have heroism expressed in different ways, due to this different expression “Outcasts” is the better story and more worthy of study than “The Passing of Grandison” is. Although “Outcasts” and “The Passing of Grandison” have similar themes within their stories, after reading the two stories the reader will find that the characters in “Outcasts” have better intentions and are more real than the characters in