The Role Of Slavery In Octavia E Butler's Kindred

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves,” is what acclaimed slavery emancipator Abraham Lincoln once stated (Dorfman 1). However, before freedom was able to be obtained by all, many slaves had to endure traumatizing lives. Harriet Jacobs, a runaway slave, explains the sexual, emotional, and physical abuse that female slaves were forced to face in her narrative Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. With her writing, awareness for the burdens of female slaves and the fact that they do not ask for the difficulty they receive was brought to the reader’s attention. Women in both the southern and northern regions were able to sympathize with what Jacobs had to say about her own personal struggles throughout her girlhood.

Soon it had struck her that she was a slave and suffered from psychological trauma when she found out that a human being could be sold and used just like an object. After some time working as a slave,she described her experience as if she “ had not lived fourteen years in slavery for nothing, she had felt, seen and heard enough to read the characters and

She becomes the sole provider of the family when her husband left as a result of slavery. With the fear of having her children taken away constantly present, the relationship Sethe has with her daughter Denver, is filled with stress and anxiety. Her memories of Beloved, even before her return, are filled with guilt. Sethe and Beloved’s stories, intertwined, reveal the ghastly reality of slavery. Because of what black slaves have experienced, and black people cope with to this day, on a daily basis, their history, culture and spiritual values become a vital part of their lives.

For over hundreds of years, slavery has been one of the most controversial subjects discussed in history. Society is still taught about the wonders of the phenomenon because of the major impact it has had on the world. Symbolic, historical figures such as Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Louisa May Alcott have shared their personal accounts on bondage with the world in their own way. These six figures have written their own pieces of literature, so that people can understand the life of enslavement through persecution to freedom. Furthermore, slave narratives or literature opposes to slavery in a multitude of ways based on that slave’s own journey to freedom.

Since the beginning of slavery, resistance has been a dominant feature. Whether it was in Africa, during the middle passage or when they had finally arrived in the Caribbean, resistance towards this way of life, has been inevitable and ubiquitous. The harsh and inhumane treatment meted out by slave owners, provided slaves justifiable reasons to resist it. Significant accounts of backbreaking labor, harsh treatment, and deplorable living conditions fueled great resentment on the part of slaves. This view is well supported in the literature which suggests that wherever men and women felt they were in captivity, they resisted strongly.

Religion and Abuse in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, there are many passages that reveal the horrors of the institution of slavery. These passages, so realistically depicted through the jaded, yet educated voice of Frederick Douglass, paint a picture within the reader’s mind that cannot quickly be forgotten. His conversational, yet eloquent tone gives the reader the impression that Douglass is intentionally detaching himself from any emotion that he may have about what he saw on the plantations. One such occasion is the story of the beating of Douglass’s Aunt Hester. Douglass explains early in his narrative that Aunt Hester was a very beautiful “woman of noble form,

Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood” (Douglass 43). The battle between Mr. Covey and Douglass shows the primitive and subjective nature of the laws in slave-holding communities. Instead of there being law and regulation as there is in the rest of the United States, this battle proves that violence is rampant in the plantations.

I kissed them slightly, and turned away” (Jacobs, 79). This is the moment that Linda Brent left her children, Ellen and Ben with her grandmother at her house to get away from Mr. Flint who was sexually abusing her. This moment can compare to the article that talks about motherhood and help readers understand what Harriet Jacobs message throughout the novel was about being a slave mother. The article Motherhood as Resistance in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl breaks down all the parts of Harriet Jacobs life that has to do with motherhood and also explains to the readers about what one of the outcomes is to being a slave which is “Enslaved women and their children could be separated at any time, and even if they belonged to the same owner, strict labor polices and plantation regulations severely limited the development of their relationships” (Li, 14). No matter who you are when the time comes you and your children will be separated from each other and possibly never see them again or at least for an extremely long time.

The individuals who were slaves were "captured in warfare, some were debtors, others were criminals" (Clark, 16). The slavery was temporary and never passed down to the child. As well as, the slaves can work into their freedom, and the slaves can get married into the family that held them. There were bad parts to this type of slavery as well because some slaves were sacrificial death, woman and children were in demand for labor or even any sexual purpose. Even though this is bad on its own the Triangular Trade is deemed much worse for multiple reasons.

I believe that Slavery is the act of being trapped without any fundamental freedom, or that is what I would have said a few months ago. Subsequently, after engaging numerous discussions and cultivating a sizable collection of poems and excerpts, I have vastly broadened my definition of slavery. With my new understanding, I have found slavery to be the general occurrence of sadness through control of oneself by another entity, including themselves, in a manner that causes a negative effect on the individual that is being controlled.Thus, slavery is the condition of displeasure through domination. In the beginning of my reading, my original explanation of slavery stood unchallenged as the first two excerpts I read had not been unknown to me. However, “The Things They Carried” really opened my eyes to the extent that slavery could reach.

Inhumane What is a slave? The word slave in the dictionary is as stated; a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. Many have heard the word slave before but few are familiar with the brutality and horrors slaves endured in the past and still sometimes today. Through the book Kindred, written by Octavia E Butler, the movie Roots, Incidents in the life of a slave girl seven years concealed, and the diary of a slave we are exposed to some of the gruesome and appalling ways slaves were treated. Not only are we exposed to the physical inhumanity but we also get a glimpse of the emotional expedition slaves overcame and overcome on a day to day basis.

Bravery can overcome anything. Amari had to come her parents and little brother’s death and surviving barely any food and water. Also being raped on a slave ship and held at a rice plantation where she escaped four people including herself, Tidbt, Polly, and soon to be born baby. These situations expressed Amari’s bravery and hope for a better life to be stronger for her soon to be born baby and herself also for a better future.

Slave owners had many punishments for slave it rarely depends how serious the crimes were. Some of the punishments were being shackled, being chained to the ground, being whipped, and being hung to die. Plantation owners often made the other slaves watch it because it will prevent them from slacking at work or trying to run away. All of this is related to Solomon during his 12 years of hardship work. The things that Northup did was disobeying a white man’s order and then putting his hands on him.

Lily finds freedom for herself and her nanny after breaking her out of prison, setting them on a life away from her abusive household. They escape to Tiburon as an attempt to learn more of Lily 's late mother 's past, finding mothers in the Boatwright sisters. There she is forced to encounter bouts of racism as she gets involved in the black community. Her boyfriend, Zach, is put unjustly into jail, which brings much heartache to said community, resulting in May Boatwright 's suicide. Her boyfriend is set free, as well as Lily herself, whom escapes her father 's isolating grasp once more, staying with the family she made and not the one she

Slavery had many faces but the underlying concept remained beneath each of these different faces. No matter how kindly a slave was treated by their master, they were still considered property and subhuman. While some owners beat and mutilated their slaves, others were more "kind" and treated their slaves humanely. Nonetheless, they still owned slaves and believed the slaves were property. Famous former slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, enlightened people as to how slaves were treated by their masters.