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The Virtue In The Book Of Negroes By Lawrence Hill

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People misinterpret patience to be the act of waiting passively in a situation. In reality, true patience is the ability to endure hardship without retaliating in anger and resentment. It is the ability to make moral decisions when the id, the deep well of desires inside every human being, can urge people to make impulsive and immoral choices. This is why patience is a virtue. The Book of Negroes is the compelling story of a woman, named Aminata Diallo, who is forced into slavery at a young age. The novel recounts the several struggles in her journey through the slave trade to attain fundamental human rights and freedoms. Lawrence Hill employs structure and rhetoric to illustrate that patience and perseverance assist Aminata in maintaining fortitude and courage. This allows her to better adapt to each hardship, which leads to …show more content…

At the very end of the chapter titled “Negroes or other property”, she states, “I wondered who would catch the baby for me, when its day dawned bright in Nova Scotia. I hoped it would be Chekura.” (Hill, 311) Specifically, the last line of the chapter, “I hoped it would be Chekura,” is separate from the rest of the text. This emphasizes Aminata’s hope that she will be reunited with her husband. With a child in her belly, having been separated from her husband, travelling on a ship where nobody knows her merely days after she was almost re-enslaved by Appleby, Aminata still maintains an optimistic state of mind. Her ability to endure hardship where many others could not insinuates that previous adversities have embedded courage and fortitude in her. Moreover, despite the cold and bitter atmosphere in Nova Scotia, Aminata uses the word “bright” to imply that the birth of her child would bring her contentment and warmth, once again suggesting a positive mindset. Hence, Aminata’s prolonged existence is achieved through patience and

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In this passage the tone is very sarcastic yet it’s pretty literal. Gerner seems more some like a nice fella, he goes against the public will of calling his nigger men, men and not niggers. Yet he still owns these men, and it 's almost seems like he 's bragging about his ability to manage his "niggers" like "men" in order to show how masculine and tough he is. So practically he 's using his slaves to showcase his identity, in showing how masculine her is when really there is no comparison between him and the slaves. I also think the meaning behind this is that they wouldn’t have a nigger around there men because there is a strong possibility that they could end up sleeping together.

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In his speech to his fellow African Americans, Alfred M. Green implores the group to join the ranks of the Union Army during the Civil War, despite their ability to do so. Hopeful, Green attempts to persuade a group of unmotivated men to fight with their oppressors. In order to convince his fellow men, Green appeals to the pain they received, to their pride, and to their sense of community. To show that he empathizes with the pain his comrades felt, he appeals to their pain by reminding them of the hardships that they all had to face. For example, he explains that he knows that the citizens of the United States “have failed to bring [the African Americans] into recognition as citizens.”

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Frederick Douglass Rhetorical Analysis A famous slave and abolitionist in the struggle for liberty on behalf of American slaves, Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography published in 1845, portrayed the horrors of captivity in the South. Douglass’s purpose in the narrative was to show how slaves lived, what they experienced, and how they were unquestionably less comfortable in captivity than they would have been in a liberated world. He implemented a didactic tone to portray the viciousness of slave-owners and the severe living conditions for the slaves. Employing his experience as a slave, Douglass accurately expressed the terrors that he and the other slaves endured. In chapter six, Douglass described his involvement with his mistress,

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