• Home Page
  • Examples Of Punishment In Nightjohn

Examples Of Punishment In Nightjohn

Improved Essays
Show More
Slavery is known to be a dark part in U.S. history, but why should people lie about what clearly happened? Slavery is the practice of forcing people, specifically African Americans, to do labor for an owner on his or her plantation. In the novel, NightJohn, Sarny secretly starts to learn to read and write despite the risks of getting discovered. Although Gary Paulsen’s novel, NightJohn, is considered historical fiction, Paulsen accurately depicts their support between each other, their determination to learn, and their resistance to punishments in corroboration with multiple sources. To start, Gary Paulsen accurately explained the supports between those enslaved that can be proven with first person accounts of slavery. In NightJohn, Sarny, …show more content…
Resistance to punishments is shown in NightJohn when slaves did not scream when whipped and lashed. When John was punished, he did not scream or cry because he did not want to give Waller the satisfaction of giving him pain. As stated in Twelve Years a Slave, by Solomon Northup, “At length to my great joy, I came to a wide bayou, and plunging in, had soon stemmed its sluggish current to the other side.” Northup depicts his escape from his master and the dogs. This is another example of resistance to punishments. Northup resisted the urge to stay because many slaves have tried to escape, but never made it. In NightJohn, John escaped as well and made it out successfully like Northup. In the reading, “Harriet Tubman,” “By holding her ground in a doorway, she shielded a fellow field hand from an angry master, who then hurled a two-pound weight. Missing its intended target, the weight struck Tubman on her head.” Tubman’s actions show that she fought back against her master and slavery. She refused to let her master hurt another person, so she stood her ground. Like Tubman, John refused to let Mammy get punished, so he confessed and got himself punished. Even then, John did not let himself show any pain to Waller. Overall, Paulsen’s portrayal of resistance to punishments can be confirmed from personal accounts due to his broad range of ways people fought back against

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    'Slavery In The Making Of America's Seeds Of Destruction'
    • 1349 Words
    • 6 Pages

    'Slavery In The Making Of America's Seeds Of Destruction'

    During the Antebellum Era, slave narratives were prominent historical sources that gave great insight to the first-hand experience of slaves in America. As they signified to white America the true horrors and exploitation of the institution of slavery from the witness accounts of enslaved African Americans who actually experienced it. In the narratives, the enslaved stressed the horrors of slavery through their various life experiences in the south with their slaveholders and their great will to escape their bondage. Thus, demonstrating the immorality of such an institution to their intended audience of white America in order to not only tell their story but move their audience to see the demeaning and inhumane institution for what it is to hopefully abolish it. Through Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and the story of Harriet Jacobs documented in the documentary Slavery in the Making of America’s “Seeds of Destruction,” their struggles reveal the horror and triumph of surviving and escaping such…

    • 1349 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Kindred, Black Thunder By Arna Bontemps, And Django
    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Kindred, Black Thunder By Arna Bontemps, And Django

    There is a common accepted historical narrative that portrays the antebellum era as one fraught with prominent, white figures who owned slaves who were subservient and complacent. This commonly accepted notion of what slavery was like depicts slaves as individuals who simply accepted their fate and did not opt to exercise any form of agency. This notion that slaves did not try to actively resist the confines of slavery is untrue and is illustrated by the work Kindred by Octavia Butler, Black Thunder by Arna Bontemps, and Django Unchained directed by Quentin Tarantino. These creative works of historical fiction do accurately represent how slaves were treated but also, perhaps more important how slaves resisted such unjust treatment. The three aforementioned pieces were all created at different period of time.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Great Essays

    Jasper Rastus Nall's Freeborn Slave
    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Jasper Rastus Nall's Freeborn Slave

    The memoir of Jasper Rastus Nall, “Freeborn Slave: Diary of a Black Man in the South” is unique in that it offers an exclusive viewpoint even among the variety of critically acclaimed historical novels of his time. It includes an assemblage of both first and second-hand accounts by Nall of his and his family’s history. Although the novel shows shortcomings in Nall’s biases and a few stories that depart from the motif, its true strengths are in the book’s organization, its honest account of what it was like to be a black man in the south, and its competency depicting Nall’s confidence in the value of education. The author’s tone in recounting these stories reflect his determined, frank, and serious nature with intelligible language easy for the reader to understand. Nall’s writings are composed matter-of-factly and there is no further embellishment beyond what is necessary for his stories, giving the reader a sense of assurance in his veracity.…

    • 1490 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Review Of Solomon Northup's Twelve Years A Slave
    • 2265 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Review Of Solomon Northup's Twelve Years A Slave

    Twelve Years a Slave was not only an abolitionist novel but it exposed the hypocrisy resulting from slavery. He said, “I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of slavery;” (Northup 53). From the eyes of a black man the laws, beliefs, and ideology of the United States did not make any sense to…

    • 2265 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Frederick Douglass Slave Narrative Essay
    • 1748 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Frederick Douglass Slave Narrative Essay

    Phoebe Wolfe Professor Neary ENGL 399.96: Race and Visual Culture 10/30/2014 Frederick Douglass’s Demolition and Reconstruction of Visual Codification The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass exemplifies the complexities and paradoxes involved in the genre of the slave narrative. While, at many points in the narrative, Douglass appears to be merely conforming to the standard requirements of the slave narrative genre, the subtleties and intricacies of his work challenge both common characterizations of slaves and the narrative conventions themselves. By appropriating the very mechanisms and tropes that readers expected of him, Douglass retools traditional techniques to illustrate his specific account of slavery and to assert his humanity.…

    • 1748 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs: American Slave Narrators
    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Frederick Douglass And Harriet Jacobs: American Slave Narrators

    Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs: American Slave Narrators Being raised as slaves; both Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass devoted their professional life for telling their true story based on their own experience. As a matter of fact, their works “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” (1861) and “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” (1845) are considered the most important works in the genre of slave narrative or of enslavement. Thus, this paper will compare and contrast between Jacobs and Douglass in terms of the aforementioned works. Losing their mothers and realizing their status as slaves at about the same age; Douglass and Jacobs’s feelings are different, for example, looking at the beginning of Jacobs’s…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Compare And Contrast Harriet Jacobs And Frederick Douglass
    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Compare And Contrast Harriet Jacobs And Frederick Douglass

    Informal Essay 3 Harriet Jacob’s and Frederick Douglass both became salves in their younger years. Through their narratives we are able to get a better understanding of how they were treated and what they experienced as slaves. However, their experiences and their style of writing about their life as a slave, greatly differs. They both present us with a “literary scene”.…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Decent Essays

    Slave Narrative Summary: Rhetorical Analysis Of A Slavery
    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Slave Narrative Summary: Rhetorical Analysis Of A Slavery

    Rhetorical Analysis of a slave narrative Slavery was an unfortunate and devastating mark on American history. We talk about it and learn about it in classes but it is rare that we read about honest firsthand accounts from actual slaves. The account in question comes from the viewpoint of Tempie Herndon Durham which was saved through the passage of time by the federal writers project which can be found online via the library of congresses online affiliate. This story holds influence not only socially and politically but gives us information on the history and culture of a group of people who had been tried to be silenced which makes its interest fall under the umbrella of everyone in the united states for influencing this country and how…

    • 1039 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Hypocrisy In The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass
    • 1820 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Hypocrisy In The Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass

    Specifically, in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave Written by himself, Douglass emphasizes the lack of moral standards and hypocritical beliefs slaveholders held using examples of dehumanizing acts…

    • 1820 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More
  • Great Essays

    Harriet Jacobs Argumentative Essay
    • 2057 Words
    • 9 Pages

    Harriet Jacobs Argumentative Essay

    The system of slavery, which brutally exploited the labour of a large and primarily Black population, shaped the history of the United States of America for over four hundred years (Davis: African Slavery, Sept 28). A primary tactic that was implemented in the system was to eliminate any motive of forming black communities by discouraging family ties. Many slaves resorted to documenting and preserving these experiences of slave cruelty through slave narratives, a genre of literature similar to autobiographies. Slave narratives can be regarded as a source that appeals to collective humanity through the complicated and multilayered acts of resistance carried out by the protagonists against their masters. By using Harriet Jacobs’ narrative entitled…

    • 2057 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Summary of 'Ar'n't I a Woman?' by Deborah Gray White
    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Summary of 'Ar'n't I a Woman?' by Deborah Gray White

    Although the male experience shaped the image of slavery, White brings forth attention to the lack of enslaved women perspectives when she asserts, “Rather, black women were invisible because few historians saw them as important contributors to America’s social, economical, or political development…” Enslaved narratives published before White’s book disregarded gender distinctions to analyze slavery life. I agree with White’s argument as she opens the doors to view slavery through a different lens. The experience of slavery contrasted among each individual, requiring more than the male perspective to disclose the story of slave life in the antebellum…

    • 824 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Decent Essays

    The Dehumanization Of Slaves's Narrative Of Frederick Douglass
    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Dehumanization Of Slaves's Narrative Of Frederick Douglass

    Frederick Douglass argues in his narrative that slavery dehumanizes both the slave and the slave master generating a dependency for each other. For slave’s, this dehumanization came in the form of having their name, culture and personal identity stripped away from them and for the slave master, the inability to function when deprived of slave assistance. In this essay, I will use Frederick Douglass’s narrative; along with, first-hand accounts to demonstrate how both the slave and the slave master became dehumanized through the institution of slavery. Using Frederick Douglass’s narrative, I will explain how slaves became exploited for cheap labor by the slave master creating a society depended on slaves.…

    • 1019 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Decent Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    The Hidden Origins Of Slavery By Ronald Takaki
    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The Hidden Origins Of Slavery By Ronald Takaki

    Growing up slavery was simple, it was blacks only, or at least that’s how it was pictured and taught in American schools. For the most part, that is true, but only to a certain extent, leaving out vital occurrences that are monumental in today’s society. What if the perception you have on slavery or what you thought you knew about it, was in fact only half of what took place? In “The Hidden Origins of Slavery,” by Ronald Takaki, shows us the ‘forgotten’ side of slavery in the 1600’s. He does this by exposing the truth behind slavery, explaining to us the similarities both black and white slaves encountered.…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Improved Essays

    Slavery By Another Name Summary
    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Slavery By Another Name Summary

    In the literary work, Slavery by Another Name: The Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, by Douglas A. Blackmon, a critical piece of untold history regarding the issue of slavery is explored in a captivating and compelling argument stating slavery had not truly been abolished until forty-five years after the emancipation proclamation. To any human who has completed grade school through high school this claim might come to shock you, as we are told that Lincoln had freed the slaves through the emancipation proclamation in 1863. This story explores the question up for popular debate concerning the role of black men in society. The author does an excellent job of explaining to the readers that despite the great strides that were made after the civil war; slavery would continue to be a battle many would fight for a much longer period of time…

    • 990 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
    Read More
  • Superior Essays

    Gender Roles In Frederick Douglass
    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Gender Roles In Frederick Douglass

    The Consequences of Gender on Freedom In antebellum America, a new genre of literature emerges as freed or escaped slaves begin to write about their experiences in bondage. In a time period of institutionalized slavery and general compliance to its role in society, people know and care little about the issues that slaves faced; but with the emergence of this new genre, general education on the lives of slaves begins to make an impact. The rise of the abolitionist movement is fueled by these accounts, and opens up discussion on many new topics about the legitimacy of slavery. One of the most notable writers of this time is Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became educated and wrote his account, Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass,…

    • 1330 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
    Read More

Related Topics

Ready To Get Started?
Discover
Company
Follow
©2024 Cram.com
Privacy Policy |  About Ads |  Site Map |  Advertise  | 
  • Cookie Settings