Afro-American Apocalypse Analysis

The recreation of the apocalypse as a racial pastoral cataclysm and as a ‘revelation’ to stir the moral conscience of the white plantation owners, by involving them in the authentic testimonial about the institution of slavery, his simple style of writing and comprehensible language makes it an instrument used for antislavery propaganda. Thus we see that the Afro-American apocalypse tradition in self-writings later called self-narratives written before and during civil war is conditioned by the politics of abolition. The descriptions of gruesome details of violence inflicted on the black slaves foreground the cruelty of white plantation owners and overseer to shame and shock them into their acceptance of their sin and the humanity of the blacks and their

The trauma of slavery left the minds colonized. Douglass’ decision to retain his first name after his successful escape reflects his choice to own himself with the legacy of the apocalypse. Clearly Afro-American concept of apocalypse as revealed in this narrative is both cataclysm and revelation; the latter is aimed to be achieved in this world here on this earth. North is projected as that world; it worked as a north star motivating them to seek it in this life. Thus, the issue of identity becomes an integral part of the Afro-American apocalypse. However, the male slave-narrative with its focus invariably on education, escape to North and identity even if including the atrocities inflicted on black women, hardly reflects their perspective of the Afro-American apocalypse, which can be best shifted in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. For them the southern pastoral apocalypse invariably involved their sexual exploitation, very poignantly illustrated by Harriet Jacobs in her self-narrative. Unlike black men who hated white men, black women found themselves in a fix unable to love or hate the white fathers of their