Venture Smith Character Analysis

Venture Smith is a man of honesty and integrity. He believes in the ambition of obtaining goals and achieving those goals. In Venture Smith’s, Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, Smith establishes the fact that he has had numerous amount of struggles over the course of his time, but has managed to find joy in the midst of all the struggles and hardships. His losses include incidents from his childhood, from the time he left Africa to becoming a slave, and from the time he was declared liberated. Throughout his time, Smith was able to see through the negativity from the losses and look beyond to what he was able to gain in his life in order to find the happiness he wanted in the end.
Smith’s experienced losses in the earliest stages …show more content…
Smith realized that all the pain and struggles he went through in order to obtain his freedom really just aggravated him in the end. He has been cheated, lost, and paid an enormous amount of money just for his freedom. Here, Smith is a little hesitant if he made the right decision of continuing his goal to freedom because he is thirty-six years old and finally earning his freedom. However, Smith was an ambitious man who was able to gain his freedom despite this controversial situation.
Venture Smith continued to experience loss and grief even after he gained his freedom of slavery. He lost great amounts of money during his time as a free slave. He had to purchase his wife and two of his children because they were still considered slaves, and he was losing money due to people lying, stealing and cheating him out of it. However, one of his greatest losses he described included the death of his oldest son, Solomon. In his slave narrative, Smith …show more content…
But on my arrival at Church’s, to my great grief, I could only see the vessel my son was in almost out of sight going to sea. My son died of the scurvy in this voyage, and Church has never yet paid me the least of his wages. In my son, besides the loss of his life, I lost equal to seventy-five pounds (182).
Not only did Smith lose his dearest beloved son, he also lost a great amount of money. This moment highlights a disturbing piece in this narrative. The mistreatment of Smith and his family is greatly seen in this small portion of the passage. Church did not have the decency of paying Smith the money that his son has earned despite the son’s death. This event shows the lack of sympathy towards Smith’s family. Also, this incident displays a sense of inconsideration for the family and his deceased son. Smith experienced losses in his own child and a considerable amount of money. Smith put his trust in too many people as well. He believed everything that people promised and was gullible at times. He trusted two Negro men to pay for their debts that they owed him, but the two Negro men, Mingo and Jacklin, ended up disappearing and never returned to pay their debts to Smith. Also, he had his boat stolen by a person he trusted and purchased named James Webb, and Smith had to pay a fine for losing molasses that he trusted an Indian to