My Great-Grandfather's Slaves By Wendell Berry

After hundreds of years later the negro people still aren’t free. In this part of the story it talks about how over a long period of time that his people still continue to have no freedom what so ever. He developed his plans to change this by peace not using violence. In this part of the story he is using metaphor and and allusion. “100 years later negro still are not free.” (King pg.1) “Negro’s live on the lonely island of poverty.” (King pg.1) “We’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.” (King pg.1)

The Short Story “My Father’s Life,” by Raymond Carver illustrates the difficult task of a son trying to find his own sense of identity and individualism while watching his father’s life unravel. Carver explores the relationships of his parents and his own struggle with sharing the same name with his father and the similarities and differences between them.

Throughout Alain Locke’s works “Values and Imperatives,” “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace,” “The New Negro,” and “Harlem,” I found there to be a number of reoccurring themes, such as absolutes, imperatives, values, and relativism and their place in pluralism. I am going to be focusing on all the aforementioned themes and showing how they are all intertwined into the principles of pluralism.

Throughout The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass slavery was used in a way to make the lives of slaves miserable and for the masters to benefit from the free labor. According to Frederick Douglass there were awful situations that he encountered while being a slave. The slave owners knew that if the slaves were literate, their attitudes towards slavery would change. Frederick Douglass was an example of how literacy changed the mindset of a slave and in this story he gives examples of how he displayed the change. He did not know who his father was and had only seen his mother a few times. Literacy was the driving factor of slavery, which kept the slaves ignorant.

In relation to the novel, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass’s disobedience ultimately sparked his freedom. Being introduced to the “heart rending shrieks” from his aunt at such a young age, slavery has implanted a long-lasting effect on his life. Often times, when one experiences a painful memory in the manner such as, watching a family member hit until they are covered with blood, sparks a fire to stand up for what is right in the back of their mind. Douglass carried those visions of his aunt along with him his whole life, as well as his own repulsive images and memories. These memories brought him to his jurisdiction of fighting back

Slavery resistance dates back to the earliest days of slavery. Although there were many forms, varying in degree, including: working slowly, faking illness, burning down buildings, the most powerful form was slave rebellions. Slave rebellions, put simply, are the armed uprising of slaves. Dating back as far as the 1700s, there have been many slave rebellions, however only a few of these have been considered successful. One of the most significant slave rebellions happened in 1831, and was called “Nat Turner’s Rebellion.”

Symbolism is defined as the artistic use of imagery and indirect suggestion to portray mystical or non-literal meaning. An object representing something else is given an entirely different meaning that is much deeper can be considered a symbol. Allegory can be used as a device to aid in character development if used correctly by the author. In two works of literature Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin and in Zora Neale Hurston’s, Sweat, this can be appreciated and seen by the reader.

Concepts, techniques, and ways of thinking can last much longer than their creators. The philosophy of Plato is an example of that. Its ideas can be found in a speech written thousands of years later. In “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass, a former slave, addresses an audience of white abolitionists on July 5th of 1852. He focuses on the disparity between the American values celebrated on the Independence Day and the issue of slavery. To do so, Douglass raises the question of to whom those values apply and explains why and how it should be different. Analyzing Douglass’ effort, we see that he is using arguments that trace back to the ancient Platonic ideas to support his stance on the equally ancient question of citizenship.

“Slavery is the great test question of our age and nation. It, above all others, enables us to draw the line between the precious and the vile, whether in individuals, creeds, sects, or parties”, as stated by Fredrick Douglas in the mid 1850s. Slavery can be stated as a civil relationship in which one person has absolute power over the life, fortune, and liberty of another. The term slavery emerged during the early 1620s when the first known Africans were dropped off by a Dutch ship (38). The role of slavery played a key role in the political, economical, social, and cultural aspect of the United States, especially the South.

slavery and the enslaved to achieve cotton’s global domination and earn the South’s economic title as the “Cotton Kingdom.”

As a child, Douglass would have had no education in reading or writing just as all of the other slaves would not have had any education. The songs these slaves would have been singing throughout their journey would have been easy for a young boy to comprehend. Without the education of a free white man, hearing these songs from other slaves would have been his first real experience of the ghastly effects slavery has on a person. Despite not understanding these songs as a slave, they stuck with Douglass throughout his life and had an impact on how he views the world. Connecting this paragraph to the next reveals the negativity of slavery. These slaves were allowed to go out and travel, however, they were still bound to the land of their masters.

Double consciousness is a term coined by W.E.B. DuBois in his 1903 book, entitled The Souls of Black Folk, that describes the cognitive dissonance that arises from being both black and American. DuBois describes the duality felt by African-Americans as always “measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” and that the black man “simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.” Ralph Ellison demonstrates the narrator’s struggle with his identity through double consciousness that becomes apparent in many situations and results in Invisible Man developing a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others,” which is what ultimately leads him to become invisible. Throughout Invisible Man, Ellison uses double-consciousness to illustrate Invisible Man’s descent into invisibility by creating instances where he is placed in a new situation, such as the Brotherhood, where he has to reconcile two warring ideas: one of his past and one of his new reality.

This poem is a tribute to the well-known abolitionist Frederick Douglass, and gives a cause and effect analysis of the allowance of freedom to African Americans. For this reason, this poem can be interpreted very specifically to the African American struggle for civil rights and search for the true understanding of attaining freedom. The sense of exclusivity in this poem can come from lines such as, “…this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro….” (1067) The words presented in this line such as “Negro” immediately strike the reader as specific to the African American race, and, therefore, transforming the entire poem into a poem directed toward a specific audience. The struggle for freedom post-emancipation was uniquely highlighted in this poem. African Americans still felt extremely subservient in relation to the white population, and Hayden clearly noted that feeling in this strong piece. The piece can solely be seen as a tribute that offers relatability for those African Americans of the time period. It can also be interpreted as a relatable piece for African Americans of any time as related to the historical essence of their lives. This piece may seem exclusive, but it can also offer much

Douglas, Fredrick “What to the slave is the 4th of July?” myPerspectives, edited by Ernest Morrell, Ph.D. Pearson Education Inc, 2017,289-293.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Du Bois, is an article on a African-American living in the United States. In this piece of literature Du Bois harshly portrays the personal and third person accounts African – American struggles during a period of slavery. The author uses many songs to depict the cruel life in four essays. In this piece Du Bois coins two main terms, “double consciousness” and “the Veil.” Overall the author provides the reader how the twentieth century is the problem of the color line and with stories and situations that the black man experiences throughout the period of reform.