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abolitionist and finally reaches for freedom.
Theme: Never give up! Fight for your dreams!
Illustrations: Nelson’s illustration are extremely beautiful, emotive and so realistic, that they tell the story by themselves. The illustrator realistically portrays great sorrow and pain when Henry has to endure during the days of his slavery. He also puts a reader inside the wooden crate and help imagine how the journey must have looked and felt like by painting the box upside down, lifted up and thrown away or by portraying Henry’s eyes full of fear and ache. I particularly love the close-up image of Henry’s sad face after his wife told him that she and children would be probably sold. What makes this creation so special to me is the light from the window reflecting off of Henry’s face and foreshadowing good things that are in store for him.
Illustrator uses muted colors and crosshatched pencil lines that add texture, depth and shadow to the images and layer them with watercolors and oil paints.
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Personal Response: Henry’s Freedom Box is an excellent piece of literature for teaching students about slavery and Underground Railroad.
Additionally, the author provides a note at the end of the book including more information about runaway slaves which extends reader’s knowledge and conscience about the Underground Railroad. This incredible story tugged at all of my emotions, I felt sadness, anger, despair and happiness. I appreciate that the images and the text successfully convey the inhumanity of slavery without the use of overtly violent illustrations and words. I have to admit that this fabulous book inspired me to fight for my own future and believe that great things are waiting for me even if the reality looks
different. Extension ideas: • Write how would you celebrate your first day of freedom if you were Henry? • I have brought a cardboard box with me today. As you can see, it contains the same address as Henry’s box: “To: William H. Johnson, Arch Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” and a sentence: “THIS SIDE UP WITH CARE”. In a few minutes, I will allow you to explore the box and if you are not scared, you will be allowed, one by one, to squeeze inside (the box has to be barely large enough for students to squeeze inside) and then I will shut it up. You have to think what it would be like to be inside of the box for 27 hours, which is a little more than the entire day and night. 27 hours is the amount of time Henry stayed in his wooden crate. Please, remember that some of the time you would be upside down and you could not cough, sneeze or even move. After the activity, a teacher ponders the following questions: “Would you be willing to pay such prize to become a free man”? “How much would you want to be free to be willing to do this?”
days working in an art store. He built a replica of his village. Henry is given a choice by his boss,
Henry's first-person narrative is the most important element of these stories. Through it he recounts the events of his life, his experiences with others, his accomplishments and troubles. The great achievement of this narrative voice is how effortlessly it reveals Henry's limited education while simultaneously demonstrating his quick intelligence, all in an entertaining and convincing fashion. Henry introduces himself by introducing his home-town of Perkinsville, New York, whereupon his woeful g...
... slave and the cruelty of it. It’s important to literature because if the reader didn’t have the perspective of an actual slave, nobody would no what slavery actually did.
Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like. Charles Ball’s Fifty Years in Chains and Harriet Jacobs Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl were both published in the early 1860’s while Kate Drumgoold’s A Slave Girl’s Story came almost forty years later
The killings made by the slaves are saddening, too. Mutilating the whites and leaving their bodies lying is inhumane. It is such a shocking story. This book was meant to teach the reader on the inhumanity of slavery. It also gives us the image of what happened during the past years when slavery was practised.
In Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, we see a piece of history being slightly rewritten. Whitehead was able to give the reader a visual of how mentally and physically the slaves were affected. We are given a glimpse of what they call freedom and the reality of freedom in the 1800s through eyes of the protagonist Cora.
In, “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass”, readers get a first person perspective on slavery in the South before the Civil War. The author, Frederick Douglass, taught himself how to read and write, and was able to share his story to show the evils of slavery, not only in regard to the slaves, but with regard to masters, as well. Throughout Douglass’ autobiography, he shares his disgust with how slavery would corrupt people and change their whole entire persona. He uses ethos, logos, and pathos to help establish his credibility, and enlighten his readers about what changes needed to be made.
However, he understands that it is for the common good that he must withhold this information, saying, “such a statement would most undoubtedly induce greater vigilance on the part of slaveholders than has existed heretofore among them; which would, of course, be the means of guarding a door whereby some dear brother bond-man might escape his galling chains” (Douglass 88?). Douglass would not, for the sake of a good story, share details that would enlighten slaveholders and hinder a “dear brother bond-man” from escaping servitude. Like Harriet Tubman, he acknowledges the importance of secrecy in the practice of illegally freeing slaves. Douglass understood that the Underground Railroad was not simply an organized route or action, but instead it was a (magnificent) operation and all over the (country) slaves were attempting escape. He knew that secrecy was the driving force for the railroad’s success and that any detail could drail the movement completely.Without a full understanding, it may seem that The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is fragmented and vague. But after further research, the undetailed writing style tells an even deeper story of the time in which it was written. Douglass’ novel is now read as a classic piece of educational, historical literature, but it was originally written for a different audience. Contemporary readers were abolitionists, slaves and blacks
The issue of Slavery in the South was an unresolved issue in the United States during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. During these years, the south kept having slavery, even though most states had slavery abolished. Due to the fact that slaves were treated as inferior, they did not have the same rights and their chances of becoming an educated person were almost impossible. However, some information about slavery, from the slaves’ point of view, has been saved. In this essay, we are comparing two different books that show us what being a slave actually was. This will be seen with the help of two different characters: Linda Brent in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and Frederick Douglass in The Narrative of the life of Frederick
To understand the desperation of wanting to obtain freedom at any cost, it is necessary to take a look into what the conditions and lives were like of slaves. It is no secret that African-American slaves received cruel and inhumane treatment. Although she wrote of the horrific afflictions experienced by slaves, Linda Brent said, “No pen can give adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery." The life of a slave was never a satisfactory one, but it all depended on the plantation that one lived on and the mast...
Slavery consisted of numerous inhumane horrors completed to make its victims feel desolated and helpless. Many inescapable of these horrors of slavery are conveyed in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”. The entire prospect of the duration of the story is to plan an escape from the excruciating conditions awaiting Douglass as a slave. When his escape is finally executed, unpredictable emotions and thoughts overwhelm him. Within the conclusion of his narrative (shown in the given passage), Frederick Douglass uses figurative language, diction, and syntax to portray such states of mind he felt after escaping slavery: relief, loneliness, and paranoia.
We discussed the details and differences between the types of slavery mentioned in the book, and they became just as confused and angry as I was.... ... middle of paper ... ... This book is also one of the first non-fiction books that I’ve had to write a reaction to.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, brings to light many of the social injustices that colored men, women, and children all were forced to endure throughout the nineteenth century under Southern slavery laws. Douglass's life-story is presented in a way that creates a compelling argument against the justification of slavery. His argument is reinforced though a variety of anecdotes, many of which detailed strikingly bloody, horrific scenes and inhumane cruelty on the part of the slaveholders. Yet, while Douglas’s narrative describes in vivid detail his experiences of life as a slave, what Douglass intends for his readers to grasp after reading his narrative is something much more profound. Aside from all the physical burdens of slavery that he faced on a daily basis, it was the psychological effects that caused him the greatest amount of detriment during his twenty-year enslavement. In the same regard, Douglass is able to profess that it was not only the slaves who incurred the damaging effects of slavery, but also the slaveholders. Slavery, in essence, is a destructive force that collectively corrupts the minds of slaveholders and weakens slaves’ intellects.
At first glance, the book “my bondage and my freedom by Frederick Douglass appeared to be extremely dull and frustrating to read. After rereading the book for a second time and paying closer attention to the little details I have realized this is one of the most impressive autobiographies I have read recently. This book possesses one of the most touching stories that I have ever read, and what astonishes me the most about the whole subject is that it's a true story of Douglass' life. “ Douglass does a masterful job of using his own experience to expose the injustice of slavery to the world. As the protagonist he is able to keep the reader interested in himself, and tell the true story of his life. As a narrator he is able to link those experiences to the wider experiences of the nation and all society, exposing the corrupting nature of slavery to the entire nation.”[1] Although this book contributes a great amount of information on the subject of slavery and it is an extremely valuable book, its strengths are overpowered by its flaws. The book is loaded with unnecessary details, flowery metaphors and intense introductory information but this is what makes “My Bondage and My Freedom” unique.
The book The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead closely follows the life of Cora, a plantation slave in Georgia in the time of mass enslavement of African Americans. While in the south Cora describes the harsh life on the plantation, the controlling slave owners and gruesome punishments the slaves had to endure, often leading to death. One-night Cora executes a grand escape to the north in search for a brighter future discovering “The Underground Railroad.” Whitehead leverages ideas of human commodity, intense imagery, illusioned reality and symbolism to expose slavery, times of brutal hardships and the fight for freedom making The Underground Railroad an astonishing read.