Ralph Trouillot's The Presence In The Past

America’s history will be scarred forever by the evils of slavery which once existed here. Slaves lived lives of pain and hardship. But some, like the slave and later abolitionist Frederick Douglass, rose up from the tribulations of slavery and led the way for progress and change in America. In his autobiography “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, Douglass tells his inspiring yet harrowing story of his life as a slave in Maryland and his escape to freedom in New York and later Massachusetts, where he eventually became an abolitionist. Douglass masterfully uses ethos, pathos, and logos to craft his powerful narrative that exposes to his audience, the American people, the horrors, absurdity, and hypocrisy of slavery.

This study would closely analyze various aspects related to “Thinking Through the Past” by John Hollitz. The author attempts to bring forth certain critical factors, which are closely knitted U.S. history. It can be stated that the major challenge is to identify actual facts embedded in the past. There is a need to reflect upon particular questions and determine probable explanations. When we become skilled at historical reasoning, we are able to better acquire knowledge about the world. History texts usually encompass a practical purpose. In this study, the main aim is to focus on historical evidences associated with U.S. history. Historians are often witnessed to contradict one another. This is simply due to source of motivation, which eventually drags a historian towards a standpoint. “Thinking Through the Past” is an approach undertaken by John Hollitz in order to make students aware about specific reasons that had triggered some well-known battles of U.S. This study shall revolve around the debate, which took place over Philippines, and significance of gender in such controversy. There shall be some views highlighted given by Kristin L. Hoganson on gender concerns.

Slavery was an embarrassing time in America’s history. In 2016, slavery has become a distant memory. It’s easy for us to admit that slavery is wrong but, in Frederick Douglass’s time no one thought that it was. Frederick Douglass went on to write books and give speeches in hope that one day all slaves would be free. In the book called “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”, he attempts to shine light on the American Slave system in the 1800’s.

Slavery is a disappointing example of inhuman behavior, a dark past in our history books. Two stories demonstrate the cruelty of slavery while living on a plantation. “Harriet Tubman” and “The People Could Fly” give two different encounters on the topic of slavery. “Harriet Tubman” is a biography and “The People Could Fly” is a historical fiction. Both would make one wonder, what is there to live for when freedom does not exist in your life? The two different genres of books are able to give readers an understanding of how heart-wrenching and depressing life of a slave was. Both show the family of slaves taking care of one another. They show the family bonds even though the slaves are going through harsh conditions

The research done on the African Burial Ground has strengthened the public’s knowledge of 17th and 18th-century black heritage in New York. The comprehensive research done integrates scientific approaches and the intellectual, educational and political insights of African American communities. Blakey and the Howard research team conduct research to publicize the lost narrative of Africans living in New York during the 17th and 18th-century. The research conducted adds to the history of the United States and is a reservoir of knowledge about the time period and the deceased. The research does not attempt to speak for the dead but rather allow their findings to speak for themselves. However, when presenting history on a systematically marginalized

Not so long ago few Americans spoke of slavery – which was swept under the rug until the civil rights movement in the 1950s. The shame of slavery gradually rose to public consciousness over the last five decades. Now the topic appears everywhere, in movies, television documentaries and academia. Nearly every major museum has mounted an exhibition on slavery. This issue has become an integral part of the foundation for understanding America’s past. With specific attributes, slavery is distinct from all other forms of oppression, giving it a unique place in human history. Many consider Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) as the best among anti-slavery propaganda that appeared with increasing frequency during the years preceding the Civil War. The primary reason of its appeal is the unsurpassed clarity of Douglass’ writing, which displays his superior sensitivity and intellectual capacity as he addresses the woeful irony of the existence of slavery in a Christian, democratic

In the book titled The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, author John Blassingame’s theme, focused on the history of African slave experience throughout the American South. After much research, the author said in the preface that most historians focused more on the planter instead of the slave. He also pointed out that most of the research on slaves by previous historians was based on stereotypes, and do not tell the real history of slave life and a slave’s inner self. Most of these historians, who focused on antebellum southern history, left out the African-American slave experience on purpose. Through much gathering of research, Blassingame hoped to correct this injustice to the history of African-American slaves, and show how slavery affected slaves, but also American life, culture, and thought.

“The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is often told with a harsh and unemotional tone; it is this euphemistic style that gives the reader a keen insight into the writer's epoch as a slave in Maryland during the early 1800’s. Douglass never let us forget that his narrative was true, he wanted the readers to understand the truth that was Douglass's life, in addition the symbols and allusions that populate this book showing the intelligence and sophistication of the writer, while the detached writing also gives the reader another look into that time’s attitude and into Douglass’s own perception.

Harriet Jacobs, a black woman who escapes slavery, illustrates in her biography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) that death is preferable to life as a slave due to the unbearable degradation of being regarded as property, the inevitable destruction of slave children’s innocence, and the emotional and physical pain inflicted by slave masters. Through numerous rhetorical strategies such as allusion, comparison, tone, irony, and paradoxical expression, she recounts her personal tragedies with brutal honesty. Jacobs’s purpose is to combat the deceptive positive portrayals of slavery spread by southern slave holders through revealing the true magnitude of its horrors. Her intended audience is uninvolved northerners, especially women, and she develops a personal and emotionally charged relationship with them.

The works of Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass are both centered on the topic of slavery. Although both texts are similar in the sense that they focus directly on the theme of slavery, the functions of each work differ drastically. The differences in the works stem from both the style of the text, and the way that this style functions in accordance with the reader. Although Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno is drawn from an actual event, Melville embellishes and alters the event in the style of prose. The prose style used by Melville invites the reader to question the story while understanding that the majority of the work is fictional. The confusion of Captain Delano is brought onto the reader, and therefore engages the reader because of the limited point of view the story is told in. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass tells of actual events that occurred using twentieth and twenty-first century plain style. This style of writing does not ask the reader to question what he is saying, but feel his emotions as they read the narrative. Although readers may understand both works to be stories about slavery written differently in terms of style, I argue that the way the texts are written sets up the readers interpretation of them. Melville and Douglass differ because Melville’s work invites the reader to think, whereas Douglass’s work invites the reader to feel.

Hughes’s descriptive writing prompts the reader to visualize strong images of oppression in America. The speaker provides an image of an extremely suppressed group of people in the statement: “I am the red man driven from the land” (Hughes 21). This simple phrase creates a picture of the Native Americans being driven from their lands and forced to live on undesirable land, and, as a result, this invites the reader to acknowledge their severe oppression. Similarly, the speaker mentions the people who were “torn from Black Africa’s strand” (Hughes 50). This generates an image of boats packed with a depressing amount of broken people, waiting to be sold into slavery. These visual examples portray the severity of the situation that many Americans found themselves in. These

The film 12 Years a Slave, an adaptation of the 1853 autobiography by a slave named Solomon Northup, depicts his everyday life after his rights and freedoms are ripped away. Through the unpleasant slave auction scenes to the sickening slave punishments, 12 Years a Slave is a heartbreaking story that unfortunately conveys the harsh truth on the issues surrounding slavery. Consequently, during the film there are many themes and events that trigger different thoughts and reactions varying between viewers, and importantly a better understanding of Solomon Northup’s story and slavery itself.

Schiff’s article specifies on Butler’s use of fiction to expand the portrayal of slavery in order to give the audience a new perspective on colonialism from the oppressed view of Dana. Therefore, Schiff argues that Butler utilizes the expressive freedom of fictional ideas such as time travel to reveal the extent and harshness of slavery. Parallel to Schiff’s argument, Thelma Shinn Richard’s “Defining Kindred: Octavia Butler 's Postcolonial Perspective” underscores Butler’s ability to utilize the postcolonial perspective of an African-American woman to expose the reality of slavery. Richard argues that our current perspective is limited as we have not witnessed the extent of colonial racism, but have simply been educated from a historical standpoint. Richard’s article combines the focuses of both the other articles as she aims to educate her audience on the cruelty of slavery from the empowering perspective of a female slave in a society fueled by white patriarchy. Altogether, the articles aim to analyze Butler’s use of perspective and literary techniques in order to reveal the repressive extent of slavery in the past.

Frederick Douglass, a former american slave born in Maryland, begins his narrative with a reflective tone which forces the reader to think about the grim reality of the situation. “I have no accurate knowledge of my age,” such a common ability is usually not thought about as a great privilege. The “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” gives an insightful view on the dehumanization of slaves. Frederick Douglass makes an effective argument against the slavery through his use of various and descriptive anecdotes, expressive colorful imagery, and emotional appeals to pathos in order to connect with his readers by rhetorical appeals and devices.

Prior to the publication of any slave narrative, African Americans had been represented by early historians’ interpretations of their race, culture, and situation along with contemporary authors’ fictionalized depictions. Their persona was often “characterized as infantile, incompetent, and...incapable of achievement” (Hunter-Willis 11) while the actions of slaveholders were justified with the arguments that slavery would maintain a cheap labor force and a guarantee that their suffering did not differ to the toils of the rest of the “struggling world” (Hunter-Willis 12). The emergence of the slave narratives created a new voice that discredited all former allegations of inferiority and produced a new perception of resilience and ingenuity.