Jacobs and Douglass' Narratives Regarding the True Escape from Slavery Research Paper

Jacobs and Douglass' Narratives Regarding the True Escape from Slavery - Research Paper Example \Writers such as Harriet Jacobs and Frederick Douglass provide examples of the dehumanizing elements of slavery, hinted when Jacobs comments â€Å"Slavery is terrible for men, but is more terrible for women†, while also providing clues as to how slavery might be escaped through education as in Douglass’ statement, â€Å"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall now see how a slave was made a man.† These examples and clues can be found in Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Both books bring into sharp relief the miserable conditions of a slave’s life and the ways in which it dehumanized the black people. Douglass sadly informs the reader that he is uncertain of his age or the day he was born and, although his mother died when he was seven years old, he was relatively unaffected by the news as he had been separated from her since infancy. â€Å"Never having enjoyed, to any considerable extent, her soothing presence, her tender and watchful care, I received the tidings of [my mother’s] death with much the same emotions I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger† (Douglass Ch. 1). By the time Douglass was seven, he had learned of the death of his mother, watched his aunt brutally whipped and had taken his own place at work in the fields. He describes the life of the slave, illustrating its bestial level of survival existence and the types of behaviors they were expected to exhibit when they were in the presence of their mas ters. Jacobs also focuses on the brutality of slavery in her description of early life as a slave girl actively pursued by a lascivious slave owner. The only way she can avoid becoming her master’s black mistress at the age of 15 is to give herself up to another white man of her own choosing. â€Å"I shed bitter tears that I was no longer worthy of being respected by the good and pure