Patty’s Page

“Next morning I could not stand up I was so weak and exhausted from loss of blood. My eyes and head were completely swollen, and for a few days I had to remain a poor sufferer - the victim of a woman’s spite and hatred for a poor despised race. What I had done to deserve all this treatment I knew not. Here I was, no one to care for me, no one to console me. After awhile I got so that I could resume work. She never repeated that kind of treatment again, but consigned me to a worse fate for the future - I may say for a limited period. Whenever I did anything that was considered wrong after that I had to go to the cellar, where I was stripped naked, my hands tied to a beam over head, and my feet to a post, and then I was whipped by master till the blood ran down to my heels.”

This whole passage from Issac Mason’s from Issac Mason as a Slave is eye opening. I cannot understand how this must have been like. He was beaten senseless for the color of his skin. How could a human being beat up someone because of their skin color. This truly shows to me how slavery was disgusting. He was also a very young boy who did not know how to deal with this situation. He could not fight back or beat her because of course she was a woman and his mistress.

Reading this passage makes me so mad! If i was him i would have killed her. I have to admit that slaves are the most courageous people i have ever known about. How could they keep all that anger bottles up inside them and just stand by waiting for something to change; but that change taking so long and still no being completely fair. I would have gone mad and killed every single one of my owners because they totally deserved it.

This passage shows me how slaves were forced to contain every single emotion and feeling that a normal human being would have. It is ridiculous how their masters made them get rid of everything that was normal for a person.They only wanted to be working machines that did everything they wanted. After-all, they truly did believe that they were merely capital, never ever human beings. It is disgusting to believe that someone would make someone else do that.

I have no idea what i would do if someone took me away from my country, pressured me to get rid of my human qualities, and made my work from dawn to dust. That doesn’t even cover what slaves like Issac Mason went through. What saddens me the most is to think that some slaves really did not do anything about it since they were so used to the conditions that they thought nothing could change.

Looking at some of these slave narratives, especially this one, has helped me to feel a true compassion and respect for slaves. Their courage and strong personalities helped maintain their human effort to be recognized. I also like learning about slavery through the eyes of someone who has been through it better than just reading a secondary source. It is not rated and gives you everything and more.

This entry was posted on January 3, 2007 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.