Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

The excerpt we read from “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs was very thought provoking and disturbing. The story starts out with the slave girl, walking across town to her grandmother’s house where she is to be hidden in a small shed. The space where she lived was only nine feet long, seven feet wide, and the highest part was 3 feet high. I was astounded by her living conditions, she lived in a small space above a house with no light, very little air, and she could not even sit up. She was forced to sleep with rats and mice running over her body and deal with extreme heat as well as extreme cold. One thing that caused me to look deeper within the story was her dynamic with her master, Dr. Flint, because I found it very interesting and confusing. Dr. Flint and his family repeatedly tried to bribe the girl’s children by offering them “bright little silver pieces and gay handkerchiefs.” Dr. Flint offered a reward to a woman in New York for any information on her, and he even traveled to New York. Why was he trying so hard to find her? Why did he care that much about her? Was it because she “belonged” to him and he did not want to lose property, or was it because she was held some kind of value more than just being a slave to him?

One thing I wondered about was if the man who she passes at the beginning and described as “the father of my children.” I believe it is someone who does not know her well, because they are not able to recognize her dressed differently and with charcoal on her face, even when they touch her. She does not have any emotional attachment to this person when she is describing him. Is it another slave who she was forced to breed with, or is it a white man who took advantage of her? It seems like it is a white man, because he does not seem to care about his children because they are mixed, and he is not able to identify someone who he was intimate with. His ability to walk around town freely is also not something that many slaves would have the pleasure of doing.

Some things I was confused about, was why she was hiding in the attic instead of escaping to the North to be free. I wondered why she would leave her children, who she seems to care for deeply, behind. If Dr. Flint was so bad, why did she chose to leave her children with such a horrid man?  Was Dr. Flint’s treatment of her so much worse than the others? If so why? I was also confused about what her end goal was, where is she going to go after living in the tiny space above the roof, and how long does she end up staying in there for?  

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

We’ve learned about slavery almost every year since seventh grade, but the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” was nothing like I’ve read before. While reading this autobiographical account, I found myself having to take breaks to digest the information.

Frederick Douglass describes his life from birth, to working as a slave, to eventually freedom. He tells stories from his childhood and family, life living under his masters, his work, his education, and his journey to escape. Just within the first two pages of chapter one, I felt so much emotion when he described his mother—never being able to see her, and not even remembering her when she died. As I am writing this blog post, I cannot put into words how I felt while reading about his life and experience working as a slave: food and clothing allowance, being naked in the cold months of winter, witnessing whippings of fellow slaves, punishment, and planning to escape – these things are unimaginable to me.

Frederick Douglass was very smart. He started to learn how to read from Mrs. Auld, but was quickly shut down by Mr. Auld because “it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read” (20). After he successfully learned how to read and write from living in Master Hugh’s family, he started to push his knowledge. He heard of the word “abolitionists” and knew that he wanted to know what that meant, because it was associated with slavery. I thought it was funny when he kind of tricked boys into teaching him new words while he was at the ship-yard (pg 26).

One thing I was confused about was the different masters (Colonel Lloyd, Mr. and Mrs. Auld, Mr. Thomas Hamilton, Master Hugh, etc.) and how Frederick Douglass moved around.

I would like to talk more about his experience as a slave and his journey to freedom in our class discussion.

I found William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily," confusing, disturbing, but very thought-provoking. The bulk of the story was eerie,but in a strange way innocent, until the end. We get a glimpse into the strange life of Emily Grierson through a narrator who appears to be a member of the village, as he uses "we" when discussing the village people's actions. Through the thoughts of the narrator and other villagers, we find out quickly that Emily is a very high-class woman who is rich, from an important family, and, as a result, untouchable. Faulkner uses words like "impervious" as well as the description that her taxes are remitted to express the sense that Emily was above-human. In addition, the villagers describe Emily in nouns such as "a fallen monument," (58), an "idol" (60),  and resembling an angel (61) to further show that Emily was so untouchable that she was almost Godly. The villagers are so invested in her life and care about everything she does, as they are always gossiping and whispering about her, yet it is obvious that they don't care about her well being and just want to see her fall. This jealousy is seen when they say, "'She will kill herself'; and we said it would be the best thing" (Faulkner 61). The irrational way the villagers perceive Emily reminds me of how our culture views celebrities, and how we put them on a pedestal as almost God-like. We put so much of our energy into their lives, and subconsciously want them to fall so that we can feel better about ourselves. Through the story, we see that Emily does finally struggle, after her father dies. The people of the village are pleased, as "at last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less" (60). Struggles humanized Emily and brought her down from her high seat above everyone else. Now with her father gone and no husband, she finally was going through the pain that normal people go through, and the people of her village were happy that they could finally put themselves above Miss Emily by pitying her.
On a different note, I found Emily's relationship with her father very disturbing, as if he controlled her and guarded her from the rest of the world. I think that her father was to blame for her complete lack of friends. There are many other disturbing aspects of the story, as Emily acts very strange and scary at times, as if she could control and manipulate people, in addition to the fact that she never leaves her house for forty years. The rotten scent that comes from her house makes sense by the end of the story, with the eerie scene of the village finding the dead Homer Barron, with a "profound and fleshless grin" (64). I was confused with this scene, which describes in addition to the dead body of Homer, an "indentation of a head" (64) on the pillow next to him, and how they found her iron-gray hair in its nostril. This shows that Emily killed Homer, but was there another body as well?
I believe that Emily killed Homer because she wanted to create a perfect idea in her mind where she was finally married, and since Homer was gay, she could only accomplish this by killing him so that this fantasy could exist in her mind forever. Miss Emily was so lonely from a complete lack of friends, as well as a lack of love in her life, that she became a murderer.

Pantaloon in Black

While reading Faulkner’s short story Pantaloon in Black I was both shocked and horrified as I read the story of Rider and how the death of his wife lead to such tragic events for him. After the death of his beloved Mannie, Rider seems to have gone insane even seeing a ghost of his dead wife in his home. Crazed by grief, Rider is led to kill a white man in a drunken rage. Because he is a black man he is lynched for his crimes without ever seeing a court room. While this story was disturbing, I found the reaction of the sheriff’s deputy and especially his wife much more disturbing. While the deputy is telling his wife the story of a man who lost his love and ultimately lost his life, she doesn’t seem to care. This is very telling of the time period they are in where a black man is seen as more an animal than a human. This also seen in their blatant lack of respect for the law when it comes to punishing Rider for his crimes first throwing both him and his Aunt in jail and then turning the other way as he is killed without trial. Because they are white, this couple couldn’t care about the fate of someone they see as lesser than them. This can be seen the very most at the end of the story where the deputy’s wife tells her husband doesn't care a bit about this story, and tells him to shut up and eat. In this instance you can see the clear disdain and callous of the wife against the black man as she goes about her day regardless of his horrible fate. I found this to be more disturbing than the story of Rider himself because it is hard to imagine people being so cold-hearted than a man’s life means nothing to them. It’s also hard to comprehend than there was a time in which people were seen as equivalent to animals just because of their race and as a society we are still dealing with the effects of this belief even today. One thing I would also like to talk about in class would be what the title means because I had a hard time understanding how it tied into the story.

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Similar to "Revelation", Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is another religious allegory. We have an older woman who undergoes a self-realization because of an external force. Mary Grace causes Mrs. Turpin to become aware of her hypocrisy and the Misfit exposes the grandmother for her true nature. Throughout the story, the grandmother was opinionated and self-righteous, continually using Christianity and the ''good old days'' as basis for her superiority and it was not until her encounter with the Misfit that she was no longer able to hide behind her excuses. The grandmother, in her attempted reasoning with the Misfit, comes to a strange, dreamlike resolution right before he shoots her. Once his henchmen come back from the woods, they discuss her blubbering nature and the Misfit says "She would have been a good woman,...If it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life". In this statement, he is talking about how the grandmother only wanted to atone for her sins when she knew that she would be near the end of her life. Before, she would attempt to manipulate others around her to get her own way and in the end, it was this that ultimately led to her and her family's demise. Had she been honest rather than hiding the fact that their destination was in a different state, Bailey would not have continued and the family would not have been murdered. Unlike "Revelation", the magnitude of the consequences that the central character faces is much greater, teaching us that we cannot atone for our mistakes only when we know we do not have much time left.

Revelation

Throughout Flannery O'Connor's, "Revelation", the definition of grotesque became increasingly fitting for the story as it twisted from a normal day at the doctor's office to an eye-opening coming to God experience. The main character, Ruby Turpin, has a complete 360 of how she perceives people, as she was originally a very pretentious class obsessed woman who then realized that her own vanity and feeling of superiority would be her demise. This short story made me realize that our class or status in society or in any situation is ultimately irrelevant when our life is over and is insignificant to God. Ruby Turpin spent so much time worrying about her public image and her prominence around her peers that it consumed her life in every aspect. I feel this could be related to anyone who cares deeply about their public image, which is most people out there whether it be their financial situations or their outward appearance. People will always care about how they are perceived, but to waste one's life on something that will not matter is useless in the end. "Revelation" makes this message clear as Ruby sees herself in the back of the line on the way to Heaven as she has a vision of the after-life and realizes her faults.

"Revelation" as earlier stated, has many grotesque characters and situations featured throughout the story. Many of the people in this story are grotesque as they seem to be dirty or ugly people in funny situations. The young daughter in this story has horrible acne and a scarred face, yet her mother is a beautiful, pleasant woman much unlike her. She eventually strangles Mrs. Turpin, which is kind of funny and dark, and sets Mrs. Turpin off on her "Revelation" as she ponders the event. Mrs. Turpin is very fat, which could be frowned upon back then, but she tends to think the world of herself no matter what. We think of her as an ugly person, yet she makes the story very comical as we laugh at how she lives her life and her view on the world. The family in the office is also very dirty and almost freaky, but also offers comic relief throughout the story. Claude is also a very strange character who seems to be under the complete control of Mrs. Turpin, and almost acts strangely childish in their relationship, he also has a gross ulcer on his leg, but his major injury is rather pushed aside by Mrs. Turpin's frivolous conversation with the pleasant woman.

Something I would really like to discuss is Biblical references in "Revelation" and how they connect to the characters and their behavior throughout the story. I would also like to discuss any other grotesque situations seen throughout the story.