Slave Narrative #2
After reading the slave narrative, The Life of Isaac Mason as a Slave, my understanding for slavery in America was enhanced because it really showed me that not only was life in slavery tough, but also trying to survive once you become free can be just as hard and oppressing. As I predicted in the first post, the conditions for Isaac were bad, but they could have be worse. Mark says:
“The conditions he worked under were not that nice but I can imagine how much worse the conditions were for slaves in the deeper south, as Isaac was in Maryland.”
That is true, he was in Maryland and it would be very hard to comprehend how rough it was for the slaves who lived farther south in America. The way that this narrative enhances my understanding toward slavery is that it is coming from the person who had to go through all the hardships and struggles of slavery. I get to hear the stories and thoughts of this peticular person and get inside their heads as to what slavery was really like. When you read about slavery in a text book or encyclopedia, you do not get all the feelings of the people who had to endure all of this, you only get the facts.
“When I arrived at my home, I returned thanks to the Lord for his mercy to me, sparing my life through the perils of the storm, from the perils of the heat, through the perils of sickness, and from the perils of death.”
This was my favorite quote in the whole narrative because even though there were a lot of more interesting quotes, I think that this one really summarizes how hard it is to survive through slavery and be free afterwards. It really is not an easy thing to do with all the inequality there was at the time of slavery. Isaac would never have life be easy when he was free, people would crook him out of money, like the time when he was at the ferry and he paid for first class tickets, but got ripped off. Even the people that were trying to help Isaac were taking advantage of him. Life was tough.
The narrative of Isaac Mason relates to Huck Finn because it really shows how hard it is to escape from slavery and I think it shows that Jim was very lucky to have Huck by his side and help him escape while people were searching for him and giving reward money to people who returned him. Not many slaves are able to escape without getting recaptured, so I think that Jim was very lucky because Huck made sure that he was safe and made sure that nobody could take him back. This reading really showed me that the slaves were really strong people because even through the hardships of slavery and being a free African American, they were still able to keep their hearts in tact and overcome the seemingly impossible, like writing these narratives, even though they probably were not taught to write as well as they should have.
January 4th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Glad you got some meaning/thought from the narrative. Does your reading of it make Jim seem like a realistic character, or just a cartoon?