Comparing The Lottery And Desiree's Baby By Kate Chopin

Another example is Thomas Auld, having come into ownership of his slaves through marriage, he was not used to the power and responsibility of owning slaves. By using his religion as sanction, he could be a cruel and inhumane man while still having support. The alteration of kind to cruel is an important component to prove the dehumanizing effects of slavery on slaveholders. This characterization provides a powerful argument that slavery is not only bad for slaves, but slave owners

In the beginning of chapter six, Frederick Douglass focuses the reader’s attention on how slavery can affect even the best and most innocent people. While talking about how slavery removes the good from slave owners, Douglass also explores how slavery is not only detrimental to them, but corrupts their ethics as well. Douglass remarks, “The crouching servility, usually so acceptable a quality in a slave, did not answer when manifested toward her. Her favor was not gained by it; she seemed to be disturbed by it” (19; ch. 6).

Until 1865, the enslavement of African Americans was legal in the United States (History.com Staff). Most of the nation believed that African Americans weren’t equal to Whites and could be treated as property. Even after slavery was abolished, these racist ideals were ingrained in the minds of most Southerners. In the 1930s, racial ignorance still caused society to believe that African Americans were sinful and a lesser race. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee illustrates how important decisions are influenced by racial ignorance ingrained in a society.

The slave trade would not interrupt society until later on around 1749. The trustees were people that wanted to shake off the British form of class system, because that system tightly grabbed on to a person’s station in life and rarely let go. It was difficult for any person to move around from their societal role. They wanted change. McIlvenna makes a crucial point when she tells that Great Britain saw Georgia as a failure due to the colonists challenging the class system.

It has been observed before, that society for a long time discriminated against another minority, the blacks on the same basis - that they were different and inferior. The happy little homemaker and the contented "old darkey" on the plantation were both produced by prejudice…”-Shirley Chisholm This means that she feel `uncomfortable that many people don’t accept females and black to do a certain job. In addition, this also proves that she is forthright when it comes to her speeches. Another example comes from Listen a speech from Howard University by Shirley ‘’While nothing is easy for the black man in America, neither is anything impossible. Like old man river, we are moving along and we will continue to move resolutely until our goal of unequivocal equality is attained.

In the novel, Kindred, Octavia Butler characterizes Rufus Weylin to develop the theme of power and authority. Rufus Weylin is Dana’s great-grandfather, and is thrown back into the past to save him. As she does so, she has to adjust into slavery and empathizes with the other slaves as well. Rufus is characterized at first innocent, then cruel, prejudiced, and selfish. When he was a child, Rufus is sweet but ill-tempered when his mother spoils him but father ignores him.

From this, derives a bond with the reader that pushes their understanding of the evil nature of slavery that society deemed appropriate therefore enhancing their understanding of history. While only glossed over in most classroom settings of the twenty-first century, students often neglect the sad but true reality that the backbone of slavery, was the dehumanization of an entire race of people. To create a group of individuals known for their extreme oppression derived from slavery, required plantation owner’s of the South to constantly embedded certain values into the lives of their slaves. To talk back means to be whipped. To fail to do work to a respectable level means to be sold to another plantation and ripped away from one’s family.

The system of slavery caused many southern slave owners to believe that without this system American progression would not be as prosperous. The system of slavery was not only a benevolent institution for black slaves but for slaveowners as well. Southern slave owners valued making profit rather than seeing slaves as equal, therefore, would treat slaves as animals causing the slaveowners to have little to no morals. Famous president Thomas Jefferson stated in a letter, “Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigation of Euclid” Jefferson’s tone

In the book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass reveals his life as a slave and the valuable lessons he learned from his experience. Douglass wants the truth about slavery to be revealed and wants to eliminate the lies that portray slavery as beneficial. Douglass exposes the reality of slavery by criticizing the “romantic image” of slavery, showing the intellectual capabilities slaves had, and revealing the reasons why slaves were disloyal to each other. Douglass criticizes the southern, romantic image of slavery by exposing the harsh treatment and sadness that slaves endured. It was southerners who thought slavery as beneficial, because it benefited themselves and white society.

Armand treats Désirée very nicely through the short story by buying her lavish clothing, and supporting her financially. This exemplary treatment only occurs while Armand believes Désirée is white. However, his entire demeanor shifts the moment the baby begins to seem to have black blood. Before the joys of fatherhood Armand treated the slaves terribly, and for the first months before his baby appeared to be something other than white, Armand would not beat them. However, with his own child beginning to appear black he goes back to abusing them.

When people talk about slavery they more or less tend to label the good ones who were against slavery into the North and then the monsters as being the Southerners. Stowe showed the readers that this isn’t true, and that you can’t just point and blame that easily. Through Tom’s owners, Mr. Shelby and St. Clare, Stowe showed us the reality of kindness that some Southern slave owners possessed. Both of these slave owners believed it wrong to harm their slaves and to treat them with any type of cruelty. St. Clare tended to share his opinions on slavery, and Stowe used this character to show how many Southerners thought slavery to be an act of iniquity, but were too stubborn to try and change the ways of their society.

It was partially due to the former “social death,” a concept in Slavery and Social Death, that slaves were given made America used to blacks having misrepresentation. Some blacks were used to given into White Supremacy post-war, which was no different from giving into a slave master’s authority. Well into the Jim Crow era if 1877-1954, in despite of activism, blacks still followed patterns of mental enslavement by allowing segregation to control their action. They were, like a slave, separated from society. The abolishment of slavery only aided the physical condition of African Americans and according to the documentary, some former slaves still continued to work as slaves, meaning freedom had no meaning to them.

There is no modesty or decency shown by the owner to his slaves; men, women, and children are exposed alike. (37) To argue against slave masters’ belief that slaves are truly happy as slaves and would not wish to be free, she describes some of the terrible things slaves are forced to go through in their lifetime. These consequences often involve parting with their own children through the slave trade, this is especially predominant in cases where the slave master is the father of the child; however, if they are not sold, an enslaved mother must watch her child grow up in bondage and struggle against the abuse and torture inflicted upon them by their slavemaster. The most heart-wrenching scene of separation is perhaps in Mary Prince’s narrative where her mother is forced to sell all of her daughters on the same

In Celia’s case, we see this truth through Virginia and Mary Newsom’s position of powerlessness. Whether they wished to assist Celia or not, Newsom’s husbandless daughters were utterly dependent upon their father (McLaurin, 32), a fact that made confronting him dangerous. The importance of this master-slave structure in Southern life, as well as the value of slavery itself, may explain the actions of the Judge presiding over Celia’s trial. By choosing to sustain the objections of the prosecution, Judge William Hall sealed the fate of Celia the slave. Had he acted against the established institution, Celia might have been spared.

One factor that led the South wanting to secede from the Union was that the South wanted to preserve slavery. Slavery was a major part of the South’s economy. Slavery was also brutal in the South. Owners were often harsh and abusive to slaves. Slave owners in the North were less abusive and sometimes treated their slaves like family.