The Overall Message Of Marcus Rediker

Marcus Rediker captured the stories and events of past-time common day slaves; he transformed their words into the common language to which most American people understood. Although his book unveiled the terrifying, tragic every day life of slavery, the overall message of the book was powerful and eye opening. Captives of the African continent withstood an extraneous amount of suffering through the process of becoming a slave, through the magnitudes they overcame from many forms of resistance, and real life accounts, which influenced many to join the abolishment movement. The insight that Rediker gave to many people that were skeptical about slavery and gave them a way to choose a side. Marcus Rediker’s emphasis of slaves, sailors, and slave

For many, death was the only option to end their misery. Likewise, the repercussions of resistance were bearable, but so brutal. “The rising was suppressed, bloody punishments dispensed,” Rediker stated (Rediker, 19). The moment they were caught jumping overboard or trying to rebel against the ship’s company was the moment the punishment began. Whippings lasted until some slaves were dead, or captives were flogged for punishment. Even though the captive’s rebellions failed, their hope and desire to keep fighting pursued, ensuring that they would not give up their fight to survive. They needed something to keep them going on the long journey, the desire to retaliate and do something rather than suffer in such misery. Resistance gave relief to slaves on their journey from their home to a land they knew nothing about. These slaves needed such a way to relieve such build up and remorse and they sometimes took it to extreme measures when realizing what their life was going to become. It seemed to be a common occurrence that many slaves would refuse to eat, Rediker makes it clear when he stated, “The Atlantic slave trade was, in many sense, a four-hundred-year hunger strike” (Rediker, 285). It was of most importance that the enslaved arrive at their destination healthy and strong to bring a high revenue to the captains of the ships. The entire movement of resistance against eating food, for some, was

“The image would thus agitate and move the viewer to join the debate about the slave trade, as Thomas Cooper hoped, and to do so with a new, more human understanding of what was at stake,” Rediker made clear (Rediker, 335). Such picture or diagram told a story in itself, so it gave people an idea of what took place aboard the huge slave ships. It allowed many outsiders to find a little understanding in what was happening on the ocean. Brooks conveyed a message, which held a different interpretation for many, but in actuality, its interpretation was to guide non-abolitionists to see the human suffering that slavery was to European slaveholders. Abolitionists worked hard to put such works out into the public to persuade more people to join the abolishment movement. Works like Brooks and Newton’s private letters helped influence more people, which led to a higher success rate in the abolishment of