Analysis Of Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl By Harriet Jacobs

The lives of everyone were impacted during the time of slavery. African Americans faced daily obstacles in their lives while being considered as property. In the excerpt from “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” published by Harriet Jacobs, and the interview “Charity Anderson Mobile, Alabama” the story of Charity Anderson, both reflections from former slaves, reveal opposing points of view of their unjust lives as slaves by their treatment while considered slaves, and their differing levels of education. Not all slaves were treated the same, even though many shed blood on the plantations of their masters. Treatment differed on the master, and treatment was not cruel all the time. Harriet Jacobs writes about mainly mistreatment, but there

Harriet Jacobs reveals specifics about the brutality that went on during these times: “...it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the fierce bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human bloodhounds of the north, who enforce the fugitive slave law” (Harriet Jacobs 2). Her first hand experiences affect her negative view on slavery. She addresses the inhumanity happening in her past life. Unlike Harriet, Charity Anderson did not have the exact same type of experience, because she did not go through the the same type of barbarity. In her interview, Charity addresses that she knew about the beatings that others experienced, but she did not go through those type of incidents herself: “But honey chile, all white folks warn’t good to dere slaves, cause I’se seen poor niggers almos’ tore up by dogs, and whipped unmercifully, when dey didn’t do lack de white folks say. But thank God I had good white folks, dey sho’ did trus’ me to…” (Charity Anderson 2). Charity knew that she was lucky enough to have masters that treated her much better than how other masters treated their slaves. She recalls the times when she was a slave as the good ol’