Monday, November 10, 2008
Emotion
Throughout the piece, Harriet Jacobs makes use of many different styles in order to evoke emotion. The most common and most powerful are direct quotations from slaves about their affliction or slaveholders regarding their cruelty. Other stylistic elements, also powerful, are the breaks from the narrative in which she addresses the reader. Accusing them of being partly to blame for the suffering she is describing evokes shame and will to do better in the reader, and her pleas for help out of hopelessness bring the reader into a state of mind ready to assist the plight of the slaves. An especially moving passage is her description of the old man learning to read despite his age and condition. By describing the devotion to god of a slave in the face of such cruelty, and his desire to learn how to better serve god despite the legal dangers of doing so, Jacobs both teaches us of the plight faced by slaves trying to learn and pulls us more heavily into the world of the slaves. By knowing their desire to learn and their devotion to God, we see how strong they really are as people.
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2 comments:
I was actually considering to do this passage myself, but then i found something better (haha joke calm down). I agree, direct quotation was a powerful way to appeal to my emotions, mostly because of the dialect included in the direct quotation. This is an important piece of the quotes because it shows the educatedness (is that a word) of the slaves and how it affects their speech. I also thought it was very moving how he wished to devote himself to god more through. Nice blog
Is it their strength as a people or their strength as humans? How would the Caucasian race react in a situation like the slave's? Questions like these are where I wonder where stereotypes meet kernel of truth. I agree that the strength, courage, and devotion found in the slaves of the American south is outstanding, but is that attributable to their race or their humanity?
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