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Slavery In The Play 'The Whipping Man' By Matthew Lopez

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The Whipping Man is a play written by Matthew Lopez. It is set in the DeLeon home located in Richmond, Virginia in 1865. It tells the story of a confederate officer returning home from war and the start of two slaves journey of freedom. Even though the war is over, the aftermath of the war is still going on. The Whipping Man tells the story of slavery from a unique period in history. When I watched most slavery films or plays, it usually takes place during the worst times of slavery. However, in this play it took place during a more good point in the history of slavery. The moment when slaves finally get their freedom. I never saw a play or film involving slavery, that the story lines tells the struggles of slaves dealing with their
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Throughout the narrative, the author includes his personal stories about experiencing the violence of slavery first-hand. For example, on page 20, he writes about the first time he witnessed a slave, his own aunt, getting the whip. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest…I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition… It struck me with awful force. It was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery…” The author including his experience of his aunts whipping, in detail, appeals to the emotions of the reader.

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This reminder of Douglass’ slave pastone of the many way that Douglass tries to humanize the issue slavery. The personal connection allows the audience to see slaves as the humans rather than the property they shown as. In addition to trying to humanize slaves,Douglass also brings to light the way they are treated by their masters. He states, “There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man, (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death,” showcasing not only the difficulty of a slave’s life, but how their lives hang constantly in jeopardy. Douglass explains to the audience, abolitionist and others who wish for slavery to end, that they allow murder to take place as slavery

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During the American colonial period, slavery was legal and practiced in all the commercial nations of Europe. The practice of trading in and using African slaves was introduced to the United States by the colonial powers, and when the American colonies received their common law from the United Kingdom, the legality of slavery was part of that law.

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‘’ No words, No tears, No prayers, from his glory victim, seemed to move his iron heart fro his bloody purpose.’’ (page 5). Douglass appeals to the mournful emotions of the audience by expressing how the overseers gave no mercy or cared about the effect of whippings to the slaves. Douglass use of parallelism displayed how slavery was

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But sometimes he likes to take the whip and this time he whipped her until her back was all ripped and bleeding. We had to watch”(43-44). This represents pathos to create the subject of freedom by way of showing simply come cruel they may be treated. Mothers are used for breeding but, don't even get to keep their children in the end. It’s even worst to think that Sarny as a child doesn’t realize what she has lost and thinks it not only normal but okay from children to be taken away from their parent and passed on for someone to take come on till they themselves are old enough to work and to create the theme of freedom by showing how old hearted the ‘master’ is that it is clear he enjoys the pain he causes and that he makes the other slaves watch in a way of a silent threat or promise that this could and will happen to them if they too step out of line.

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The process of black slavery taking route in colonial Virginia was slow. Black slavery mostly became dominant in the 1680s. Slaves became the main labor system on plantations. The amount of white indentured servants declined so the demand for black slaves became necessary in the mid-1660s. The number of white indentured servants that Virginia had up until the mid 1660s, was enough to meet white peoples labor needs.

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Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs is a story about a young slave named Linda and her personal experience trying to escape alive. Linda is a brilliant black slave that is constantly tormented mentally and physically by her master, Dr. Flint. For the sake of Linda’s two young children she had with a white man out of wedlock, Linda decides to escape until she or her children are bought by close friends or family, so that they may never experience the tribulations of slavery. While the South tried to convince northerners that the master-slave relationship was a good one, Jacobs goes on to convincingly prove that is not the case.

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They would whip them until their backs were entirely covered in lacerations and were bloody. There wasn't a spot on their back without blood and lacerations from the whip. Frederick Douglas ran from Mr. Covey because he thought he was being treated unfairly. Douglas went to his master to complain about his treatment from Mr. Covey. Douglas’s master said, that he probably deserved it.(p. 86)

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The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.

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Did you know that the average cost of a slave in America about 1850s was about $400, which as of today it would be about $12,000 ? “Slaves” come from the slavonic population in Eastern Europe, which they were also enslaved in the Middle Ages. A slave is defined when (slave)owners basically just take control of others and force them to obey their commands. When i was reading the Equiano, I noticed that him and his sister had got captured when they were little children and were brought on the ship where they were then labeled as slaves. They had no way to escape, they were trapped, there was no other way to get back to their hometown so they basically had nothing else to do but work for the slave masters.

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Douglass’s Message to Women Frederick Douglass gives many examples of the treatment of women like the following passage: “this is done too obviously to administer to their own lusts, and made a gratification of their wicked desires profitable as well as pleasurable; for by this cunning arrangement, the slaveholder, in cases not a few, sustains to his slaves the double relation of master and father.” (Douglass 1183) Through this passage, Douglass brings to light that enslaved women are raped by their masters because of the master’s lust and the master’s desire to produce more slaves. By looking at the passage in the context of the rest of Narrative of Life, Douglass makes it clear that women who are raped by their masters and birth a child from the rape have it worse than others because of the excess brutality they receive from the master’s wife.

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Although slaves demonstrated some agency through rebellion, slaves were dehumanized through the labor they performed and the ways they were forced to work. Slaves spent most of their time working, and, as former slave Harry McMillan stated in an interview, the conditions under which they were forced to work were horrendous; “Q: ‘How many hours a day did you work?’ A: ‘Under the old secsh times every morning till night- beginning at daylight and continuing till 5 or 6 at night’ Q: ‘But you stopped for your meals?’ A: ‘You have to get you victuals standing at your hoe; you cooked it overnight yourself or else an old woman was assigned to cook for all the hands, and she or your children brought the food to the field.’ ‘Q: You never sat down and

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Slavery began long before the colonization of North America. This was an issue in ancient Egypt, as well as other times and places throughout history. In discussing the evolution of African slavery from its origins, the resistance and abolitionist efforts through the start of the Civil War, it is found to have resulted in many conflicts within our nation. In 1619, the first Africans in America arrived in Jamestown on a Dutch ship.

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The play takes place in the 1950s in New Orleans containing a diverse population. However, is race discriminated against, those who go against classifed gender roles are often discriminated and have trouble finding their way in society. Although gender equality has

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The famous play shows the audience the life it was like to live as a black female, and shows the struggles that the Young family faced being the first African American family to move into a white neighborhood. This play is considered a

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