Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Antonia Sanders
October 5, 2009
AP English III
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs
In this story a slave girl by the name of Linda tells us about all the things she has been through with being a slave. She uses different writing styles like pathos, ethos, diction, and tone to show how and what she felt about certain things. As you can see even though she actually wrote this story, the authors name says Harriet Jacobs. This is significant because you see how African Americans had no voice.
While reading this story I saw that these slave owners had different personalities. They all showed that they were in control by words or actions. A lot of slave owners made the slaves feel bad and uncomfortable from the cold looks, cold words, and cold treatment they gave. “Dr. Flint was an epicure. The cook never sent a dinner to his table without fear and trembling; for if there happened to be a dish not to his liking, he would either order her to be whipped, or compel her to eat every mouthful of it in his presence”. In these I look at Dr. Flint as an abusive monster from the diction the writer uses. The words fear, trembling, whipped, and compel gives me this impression. Only someone who is cruel forces people to eat things and would whip them for something dumb. “This poor woman endured many cruelties from her master and mistress; sometimes she was locked up, away from her nursing baby, for a whole day and night”. These lines show that these slave owners had no heart and were selfish. They imprisoned someone and kept them from her baby with no problem. “I saw the cowhide still wet with blood, and the boards all covered with gore”. This quote shows how badly beaten slaves were. They were beaten until blood came out of their bodies. “The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage”. What the writer is basically trying to say is that since the men have sex with the slave girls this makes the mistresses angry which makes them act violent. They get jealous knowing that there husband is having sex with another girl (a slave at that), but why is it the slaves fault?
The treatment that Linda has received makes her as well as others feel like they are nothing. They are the property of others which means they can’t hold any property. The parents who had children basically were not in charge anymore because their children had to listen to their master before their parent. “They thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human being. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him and dangerous to the masters”. This quote is full of cramp in my opinion because basically what is being told is that parents weren’t allowed to teach their child that they were human. Masters found this disrespectful, for what reason though? “He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust and hatred”. Linda uses pathos to express her feeling about her master by using the word hatred and disgust. At the end of the story Linda states “O, what days and nights of fear and sorrow that man caused me”. Without saying exactly what her master did to her readers should get a good understanding that she has been raped plenty of times because in the quote above she calls him a vile monster. In this quote she doesn’t say his name she refers to him as “that man” which I see that she has no respect for him. He has beat her, raped her, said file things to her, lowered her self-esteem, degraded her, and just messed up her whole life so yea she should feel that way about him.