Harriet Tubman Speech Analysis

Wind your clock back a century or two, and wallow yourself in a situation where you are a runaway in “the land of the free.” You look up at a poster, a mere image of yourself. Not knowing a single word on the placard, you assume that it is nothing but a misused image. In reality, you are entirely wrong. You have been reported as a fugitive, trekking on the land that once was free, but now ruled by the Fugitive Slave Law. See how terrifying it is to assume something wrong? It’s may look inevitable that anyone can pander your weakness of being illiterate, but during that time, Harriet Tubman was a paragon of strength and dignity although she can neither read or write. Because Harriet is illiterate, she compensates for her disability by having

As her years of conducting the railroad culminates, Harriet starts her career of concocting superb speeches on top of her head. Not only was the audience moved, but they were also surprised of how inspiring her tone of voice is (207). In addition, as she tells her own synopses of her life, Harriet speaks her story with dramatic interpretation and excellent eloquence in a speech so well that the audience was thrilled upon scheduling another speech with Harriet. In one of her speeches, Harriet ferociously convinces a little boy to holler ‘Fire, fire’, which is a feat that only parents can normally do, let alone a stranger. (126) Also, Harriet persuaded, not always by cajoling, with a deep-tone husky voice and a gun in her hand, a despaired slave to continue on the journey instead of wavering on the decision to either turn back and risk punishment, or to go to freedom. This did, in fact, happen throughout her journey as conductor of the underground railroad; she has never lost a single passenger aboard her train. Nevertheless, her trained voice paid away her disability to read or

She said that she would rely on the fact that Saturday would be an ideal day to escape because the masters would notice it on Sunday, but they would have to wait until Monday to have officials investigate the problem. Harriet disguised herself so that nobody would know that “Moses” was in town due to the Fugitive Slave Law. Then, she sang the forbidden spiritual song “Go down Moses” to announce her arrival. When she was traveling to the South on the train, no one caught her even though she was a worthy fugitive because she relied on the fact that slaves would not go in the opposite direction from the North to the South. When Harriet comes to help her parents escape from slavery, Harriet disguised herself so well that her old master, Doc Thompson, couldn’t recognize Harriet.(187) In one of many of her trips down to “Egypt-land”, she would drug the babies that came with the fugitives with opium just so that the babies won’t make a sound when they were traveling at night.(204) Her dexterity evinces the fact that although she was illiterate, she still had the competence to take advantage of her opponent’s