300 words 2 references
Choose a theme prevalent in a work from this week’s reading and answer the following questions:
· What is the message the author is trying to convey as it relates to your chosen theme?
· What details and specific passages within the story speak to this theme?
· What motifs (a recurring image or detail) does the author use to develop the theme?
· What symbols (objects, characters, or settings that represent something else) does the author use to develop the theme?
· How does the theme in this work help us better understand the story?
· How does the theme and story help us better understand our own lives?
The theme is slavery. The work A Slave’s Life by Harriet Jacobs
A Slave’s Life
Although many cultures have practiced slavery throughout human history, no system of slavery was ever more brutal and dehumanizing than the race-based slavery of the transatlantic slave trade. Africans kidnapped from their homes faced a terrifying sea voyage to the Americas that often ended in disease or death. Upon arrival in America, they faced an existence foreign to any they had known, and they were stripped of all freedoms and human rights. Bought and sold, physically and mentally confined, and often starved or abused, slaves in America were forced to cope with ever more restrictive conditions.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, American slavery was tied to the tobacco and rice crops of Eastern Seaboard states. Because traditional methods of growing and harvesting these crops required knowledge and skill, most slaves during this time were skilled workers. But during the nineteenth century, America turned its attention to cotton, a crop experiencing explosive growth after the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. The cotton gin was a machine that quickly and easily separated cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. Unlike rice and tobacco processing, cotton production did not require skilled labor. Seizing an opportunity for unprecedented financial gain, many farm owners migrated to the lower South, taking their slaves with them. Life for Southern slaves, especially for those working in the cotton fields, became more isolated and restricted.