If a slave is unwilling to go with his new master, he is whipped, or locked up in jail, until he consents to go, and promises not to run away during the year.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
If you want to be fully convinced of the abominations of slavery, go on a southern plantation, and call yourself a negro trader. Then there will be no concealment; and you will see and hear things that will seem to you impossible among human beings with immortal souls.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the inhumanity of slavery by encouraging firsthand experience to understand its horrors.
Harriet Ann Jacobs invites the reader to confront the brutal reality of slavery by immersing themselves in the experience of a southern plantation, specifically in the role of a negro trader. This perspective aims to dismantle any illusions that may exist about the morality of slavery, forcing an acknowledgment of the dehumanization and suffering endured by enslaved individuals, thereby highlighting the deep moral implications of such an institution.
Themes
SlaveryHumanityMoralityExperienceAbomination
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in discussions about the historical impact of slavery at educational events.
More from Harriet Ann Jacobs
All quotes →The war of my life had begun; and though one of God's most powerless creatures, I resolved never to be conquered.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
No pen can give an adequate description of the all-pervading corruption produced by slavery.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
I would rather drudge out my life on a cotton plantation, till the grave opened to give me rest, than to live with an unprincipled master and a jealous mistress.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it.
Harriet Ann JacobsRead
Similar quotes
Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. 'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.’ ...from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.
Markus ZusakRead
Although there has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity, the hermeneutic question today seems to us a new one.
Paul RicoeurRead
You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.
John FowlesRead
One is forever throwing away substance for shadows.
Lady Randolph ChurchillRead
And I'm not a student of religion, but I don't find anything in what the principal teachings of Islam that put us in contradiction at all. In fact, the principles are the same as what-we have a diverse religious culture. But it's kindness, it's be good to your neighbor, it's love, and it's take care of children. It's all these things that-so there's no anti-Islam.
George H. W. BushRead
I can only guess that it made the world he went back to...strangely without meaning. Though he lived in it, though he even enjoyed it, it remained utterly remote. I think it had lost sense for him. In his heart was the reflection of a lovely dream that he could never quite recall.
W. Somerset MaughamRead