Marcus Rediker's story The Slave Ship takes you on the journey of slaves and slave owners and you get a bunch of different perspectives of the people who were actually part of this horrible historical time of our country and the slave trade. My passage was on the unknown slave.
Slave Unknown was the slave story I read about. He is a normal man with a normal family. Unfortunately at the time none of this matters because he is black skinned. He and his family were accused like many others at the time of witch craft. They were guilty and sent on a boat to Jamaica. The Unknown Slave who was the main character in my passage was found one day in the bottom of the boat bloody and near death. He slit his own throat. Trying to kill himself instead of slavery, but was unsuccessful. It is such a sad story because he wanted death over slavery and not even that went his way. He tried to cut his throat again and once again he failed to kill himself. He finally died after starving himself to death about a week after the second attempt.
He decided he would be a happier and man with more pride by killing himself rather than living with the burden of having to be owned by someone else and be used for free labor. He never showed the slightest bit of happiness to the people who kidnapped him and refused to speak even though he spoke English. He was persistent and it paid off because he got what he wanted.
He showed extreme pride by not letting other people own him. He literally ended his life before he let them take him.
No comments:
Post a Comment