She would beat the other enslaved children if they said something she didn’t like, and she also threatened to shoot the slaveholders if they whipped her mother. She had no authority to show her affection during her upbringing. This can even be noticed during her interview. The interviewer writes that Cragin is “barely hanging on to the thread of life without a thrill or a passion.” (Cragin 8.) After being shown no love as a child, it is hard to imagine that one would show much passion as an elderly woman with no money living in a single …show more content…
In Ellen Cragin’s interview, she is very forthright in her realization that she and her fellow slaves were merely accessories on the Polk plantation. Conflictingly, Ellen Betts does not seem to detect William Tolas’s intentions. It is easy to see that the way these women were treated has influenced their adulthood. Ellen Cragin, after being treated awfully her entire childhood, is living with little enthusiasm, as the interviewer describes. Ellen Betts is living comfortably with friends, surrounded by support. These two women are proof that slaveholders were not all alike - some cared for their slaves to an extent, and others did not. But no matter how they acted, there was always one thing on their mind: an