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Harriet Jacobs Essay

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In this incredible memoir, Harriet Jacobs, AKA Linda Brent, states in the preface that her goal of writing this memoir was not to bring attention or pity to herself, but to arouse the women of the North (mainly white people) to realize the atrocities that were still going on at the time. She wants to focus on the women of the North coming to sense with the conditions of the South, some people experiencing far worse treatment then Linda, were still in bondage. She also says her goal is to give her testimony, along with the rest, to convince people from the Free States what slavery actually is. Nobody can truly understand unless they have personally experienced it, but with god’s blessing, she will help shine light on the darkness of slavery. …show more content…

It honestly only took a couple of pages to convince me that some of the things going on at the time should never be forgotten, no matter how ferocious. She doesn’t ask for her readers to pity her, or call out her persecutors, but detail her courageous journey to freedom, which anyone can be inspired by.
I think her purpose in writing this memoir, along with my reasoning above, was to talk about the great corrupting power that slavery is. As soon as a man feels like he is superior to another man, his morals are destroyed until they become monsters. Even though some slave slave owners during her time were more generous than others, she firmly believes that there are no such thing as good slave masters. The slave master is evil, the mentality of a slave master is immoral and the justifications for it are twisted and distorted by beliefs to dehumanize colored …show more content…

It’s a story that made me put the book down a few times and stop reading because I was so shocked to be reading about some of the things that were normal back in the day, like when Dr. Flint picked up Benny when he was little and threw him across the room because he was trying to protect his mom. It is a story of ultimate courage and hardship that can inspire literally anyone and it really puts our lives today in perspective. We really have everything we need, and yeah life is unfair sometimes but if Linda thought that way, she would have never made it out of the

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