Harriet Jacobs

Words: 1698
Pages: 7

Many times in life, a person looks at the world and sees the world as a distorted clown mirror with all of its lies and twists. Through the reading of the document, The Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written by Harriet Jacobs in 1861, the reader is allowed to get a small glimpse into the culture in the United States of America from the perspective of a female African American. Some of these insights are more factual level, while others have a much deeper meaning. Some key thoughts that stick out to the reader are the racial shame, various practices by slaveholders, and the corruption of the society. But, the reader must know some information about the author before being able to analyze the culture. Even though the corruption in the world at this time was severe, we do have to take into account the specific perspective of Harriet Jacobs and criticize her writing. Harriet Jacobs is an amazing writer who went through a lot of horrible things during her lifetime as a slave; consequently, she chose to tell her story. The reader can infer that Harriet is Linda, the main character throughout the book since this is a primary document …show more content…
One can observe and analyze many of the themes including, but not limited to racial shame, distinct and individualized practices by slave owners, and the overall corruption of the behavior of the society. These all shed light on the darkness that swept over the nation based on the pain and suffering that was enforced on the African Americans. Consequently, the reader must ask themselves what the point of reading this sob story of a dark time in history. We, as a generation, must use this to not let our culture come to this contorted point again. We need to use this as evidence to treat people with equality, and as human beings no matter how much or how little they may differ from