When I hear the word property, the first things that come to my mind are material items such as those that have been created in a factory for the purpose of being sold to those willing to buy particular items. However at this point in the semester, I recognize property as a dirty word, a word that has a long and disturbing history. It only took a few power hungry and greedy men to enforce the sick proposition of human beings as property, even though those same men knew their success came at the cost of innocent human lives. Therefore, when I now ponder the word property, I can’t help but think of all of the African descended or African American characters that I have met throughout this semester, and how the manipulation of a simple word has …show more content…
The fact that Solomon’s text is closely based on his real-life maltreatments perhaps has an even more lasting effect on its readers as they endure the written abuse of Patsy. In Patsy’s case, she wasn’t whipped to almost death for plain entertainment, she was whipped because of her forced sexual relations with her master that irritated her master’s mistress. This intense scene not only exhibits the power and abuse that a master has over his “property,” but it also shows a lack of compassion from both male and female slave owners. This demonstrates that the master’s wife, who does not have the rights of the men in her country and whose status is certainly below her husband, finds pleasure and no remorse in taking her frustrations out on Patsy. She views Patsy as competition and since Patsy is her husband’s property, she is allowed to decide what to do with Patsy. There is simply an absence of respect of humanity from the perspective of slave owners. When a society brands an entire race of people as property, as something to be owned, then any salvation of humanity for these black people is rare. As disturbing as it is for modern readers to read about how these white abusers could be so terrible, these events happened more recently than we would have hoped. In slavery, the word and idea of property is used as a devious tool to gain power. The idea behind the word is a main part of the reason as to why black people were made to be slaves, so there is a very important connection between blackness and property and this connection cannot, and should not, be ignored or