Fear By Margaret Garner Analysis

Fear can cause people to do thing that they normally wouldn't do. In the text, a party of 17 slaves made arrangements to escape from their masters and head to Canada. One woman from the party was Margaret Garner. Margaret Garner had 4 children that she was trying to escape with. The party arrived to Joe Kite's house to wait until night to cross over to Canada. Joe Kite went up town to ask the counsel, he was told that they were in a very unsafe place and went directly back to his house. Once he arrived at his house, but he was too late, his house was surrounded by the masters and officers. The fugitives decided to fight and began to shoot at the officers. Margaret Garner said she would kill herself and her children before they would return to bondage. As the fugitives were getting overpowered, Margaret Garner grabbed a butcher knife and cut the throat of one of her daughters, as she reached for her other daughter, she was overpowered and arrested. On her way back to slavery, she jumped off the boat and drowned her child to save her from slavery. Margaret Garner's fear caused her to do something she didn't want to do and that was to kill her children, but it was to save them from slavery. Fear played a heroic action in this event,

The slaves let the fear control them and it gave them a worse out come than just turning themselves in. If they would have turned themselves in, they would have gotten off without being charged with murder. Fear is also what caused them to leave in the first place. They were scared of slavery so they attempted to escape and they left heading North. The party of 17 rode horses until they reached the river below Covington, then left everything and crossed the river on foot. Some of them made their to a colored man's house named Simon Kite. They were going to stay there until it became night time so they could escape on the Underground Railroad and go safely through