In the poem, “Saturday at the Canal” by Gary Soto, the act of irritation, an emotion often found in adolescents, was demonstrated. Through lines of imagery, the narrator who is a 17-year-old in highschool, expressed many variations of irritation. An example of this is when the narrator internally said, ”I was hoping to be happy by seventeen” (Line 1). As soon as the narrator said that they were hoping to be happy by seventeen, an issue many adolescents and highschoolers face got brought up. Adolescents often hope for better opportunities or even freedom when it comes to maturing but, maturing is realizing that not everything goes accordingly.
Frederick Douglass & Harriet Jacobs Slavery has been noted as one of the biggest social issues in America. From the beginning of time, race has been seen as a barrier for some people despite their various attempts at equality none seem to yield any positive results. Frederick Douglas and Harriet Jacobs both have tried to be seen as equal to others but come up short due to the oppression of their skin color. But as a result of their power to not conform to being enslaved and treated like objects due to dehumanization is what leads them on their journey to becoming one of the few free slaves. “My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute.”
Later on in his life he was separated from his family and was sent to Baltimore, Maryland to be a slave for Hugh Auld and his family. The Aulds were not as cruel as his past owners because Mrs Auld was a Northerner and Northern slave owners were more kind and not as tough on slaves as Southerners were. It was here Douglass was able to acquire an education, learning basic reading and writing skills, until Hugh Auld found out and made her stop (“Frederick Douglass Biography”). Slave owners kept their slaves uneducated because they saw an education as an alleyway for a slave to begin freely thinking and eventually escape. Frederick did just that, borrowing identification papers from an African American sailor and escaping to New
Frederick Douglass was a slave from Maryland who, through luck and intelligence, was able to escape slavery at 20 years old. In his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he describes how it felt being a slave throughout his childhood and adolescence, as well as the traumatizing conditions on plantations. Douglass also discusses how he learned to read and write, which causes him to consider his position in slavery and helps to inspire his escape. Nevertheless, once he arrives in New York, Douglass’s hope quickly fades as he is faced with the reality of his situation; he is all alone in a place where he could easily be caught and returned to slavery, making the efforts of his escape in vain. In the excerpt from his autobiography,
A Cowboy’s Prayer, a poem written in 1906 by Badger Clark, has meaningful diction that still triggers deep thoughts and emotions from the modern reader. The book in which this poem is found is called “Cowboy Poetry, A Gathering”. This book includes a series of poems written by more than 40 different poets. According to Hal Cannon, the author of the introduction, some of the poems are classic and have “proven their vitality by their longevity surviving tenaciously in the minds and hearts of cowboys and ranchers of the west for decades,” while others have a more contemporary taste. In the introduction, Hal Cannon describes the book as “spirit corraled into form”.
Frederick Douglass was a slave for a total of 20 years until he escaped to the North on September 3, 1838. Douglass was in the care of his grandparents and then his grandmother abandoned him, leaving Douglass at Colonel Lloyd’s plantation. There, Douglass worked every day at the plantation and in the city of Baltimore, alternating every few months. While at Lloyd’s plantation, Douglass wore a sackcloth shirt, slept on the floor, and ate cornmeal every day. Douglass was put in the care of “Aunt Katy.”
Every group of people needs a good leader, and that good leader to fight for the freedom of slaves was Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass was the most influential African American abolitionist who pushed forward the movement to abolish slavery and fighting for women's rights. Overall, Douglass is a man who believes in equality and the everyone should be free. Douglass was able to speak out on these problems and his views by creating his own movement from telling his life story in the book “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, working and communicating with other abolitionists, describing the ideology of freedom in america, and travelling to other countries to gain support and have a larger audience. In his own narrative, Frederick
“I have observed this in my experience of slavery, – that whenever my condition was improved, instead of its increasing my contentment, it only increased my desire to be free, and set me to thinking of plans to gain my freedom.” Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, this autobiography was published in 1845. Frederick a prominent abolitionist figure was the first black “public intellectual.” At a time where many slaves were illiterate and prohibited to learn how to read and write, Douglass, despite being forbidden to do so by his master (Hugh Auld), managed to learn to read and write. His narrative has very astounding vocabulary which impressed many people.
In the 1800s, for a slave to know how to read and write was not only unheard of, but illegal. Frederick Douglass was born a slave in rural Talbot County, Maryland. For about seven years, he received reading lessons from his mistress Hugh, but that all changed as soon as she commenced her duties as a slaveholder. The once kind hearted woman was changed into a woman to be feared. She stopped teaching Douglass how to read and would monitor his whereabouts in her home to ensure that he was not reading anything.
How would you feel if someone could control what you were thinking? In “The Feed” written by M.T Anderson, everyone living in the community had a feed in their brain that was controlled by one large organization. Violet, the main character, suffers through a malfunction in her feed that changes the way she sees her society. Most people’s opinions can be changed when they have experienced the benefits and the disadvantages of something. Since Violet is aware of how life is with and without the feed, she becomes hesitant to believing that her community is being run efficiently.
“Raised by his maternal grandmother on the Tuckahoe, Maryland, estate of captain Aaron Anthony, he enjoyed a relatively happy childhood until he was pressed into service on the plantation of Anthony’s employer, Edward Lloyd” (“Frederick Douglass”). His grandmother’s house was located only miles away from the plantation and his mother but they were never allowed to see each other. Life as a slave was hard he made it through. The experience molded him and made him want to be an amazing man.
Poems can be analyzed in various ways ranging from their complexity to the emotions they convey to readers. The poems, “The Weary Blues” by Langston Hughes and “The Harlem Dancer” by Claude McKay will be analyzed based on their similarities and differences to name a few. The poems may describe different events; however the overall connection between the two can be identified by readers with deeper reading. Comparisons between the poems may easier to analyze and identify compared to the contrasts based on the reader’s perception. Overall, the concept and much more will reveal how the poems are connected and special in their own way.
“A Song in the Front Yard” by Gwendolyn Brooks is a narrative poem. This poem is written from the perspective of an innocent, naïve child. The poem tells several stories, the surface story and the hidden metaphor. Therefore, the narrator is that of a child, the surface story is of a young girl who has lived a sheltered, picturesque life. The young girl lives life in the “front yard”, but she wishes to live in the “back”.
In a similar way, pursuing illegal immigrants is like targeting minorities, it attracts far less attention than killing Caucasians. Immigrants are often reluctant to come forward and report of suspicious behavior, and there are even times when no one notices the victim’s disappearance. This makes easy prey for the killer. If the killer goes through the trouble of hunting those crossing the border in the darkness, he can abduct them, take his time, and then dump the body in the desert in a secluded area.
The poem fully develops the idea of the limited of privileges that some might have according to the their races and the racial division. The “borderlands” is the division of a place, but in the eyes of Gloria she makes the character grow up in a place where there is a racial division. The character is in the middle of how of her race is important as her cultural ways get in the way of trying to practice each one of them. The poet writes in both english and spanish to explain how she speaks to the different races she carries. As you read the poem you can feel how the tone changes as the author is speaking of the different events that she goes through in her life.
