Analysis Of Incidents In A Life Of A Slave Girl

What is slavery? According to Dictionary.com it is the process in which “a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bondservant”. Slavery is very unheard of in this millennial era for as it first occurred in 1619 when the first African Americans were brought over to a North American colony of Jamestown and ended in 1865 when the thirteenth amendment was ratified and abolished slavery. For many of the persons in this new generation not a lot of reflection is focused on slavery and its cruelty. It is up to the few who are given the opportunity to share the truth of the violence and exploitation of slavery and the harm it caused not only to the newly founded country but specifically the South. Slavery was a chain of unjustifiable …show more content…
In the book Incidents in a Life of a Slave Girl the main character Linda talks about her life from the very young age of 6 till she is a grown woman. The book gives us a clear view of what it would be like to be a young girl growing up as a slave. One of the biggest things I was able to better understand from the book was truly how cruel slaves were treated numerous times the author Harriet Jacobs used details that would make your blood boil about how cruel and unfair life truly was for her. From the first incident in chapter 2 when Linda’s father passes away and she says “ I thought I should be allowed to go to my father’s house the next morning; but I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress’s house might be decorated for an evening party, I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons,while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me”. The heartache would be unimaginable at poor Linda’s young age after losing her, mother, mistress, best friend and now her father. The Flint’s who are Linda’s owners did not let her grieve properly, which is not uncommon for slaves to not have been thought of with equal emotions I would imagine it would create some sort of resentment towards their inconsideration. Mid way through the book was a very interesting event, in chapter 12 Linda talks about word spreading of Nat Turner’s rebellion to her little town, Linda responds to the incident in a very witty way which I personally enjoyed the humor “Not far from this time Nat Turner’s insurrection broke out; and the news threw our town into great commotion. Strange that they should be alarmed, when their slaves were so “contented and happy”! But so it was”. Then a few paragraphs down, she talks