Differences in Perspectives during the Time of Slavery
Harriet Jacobs, in her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, highlights the terror and misconduct slaves, particularly, slave women experienced under their masters, who were allowed free rein, often committing horrific crimes upon them with no repercussions. With Jacobs, there was no love lost for her master, Mr. Flint as she saw no reason for compassion when he passed away towards the end of the book. Booker T. Washington, in his 1901 autobiography, Up from Slavery, takes a much different approach when analyzing the slavery's effects on himself and those around him. When Book and his family were freed due to the North's victory in the Civil War, they did not resent their former masters, even pitying them. Washington goes further, stating that numerous elder slaves did not have better situations to go to and worked out contracts to stay working for them. The question I will be analyzing is how two people who experienced the same plague of slavery approach it so ...