1) Shocking descriptions
a) of beatings
b) of forced eating
c) hints at sexual abuse of females
2) Who’s the Savage?
a) repeated references to savagery of whites
b) description of slavers and slave-traders as cruel and barbaric
c) encounters some kindness (like Daniel Queen) but is frequently betrayed
3) Not just slavery, but racism
a) even freed slaves encounter troubles
4) Gains freedom
a) powerful description of moment (168)
b) curious inability to let go of former master (169)
1) Pathetic descriptions
a) owners hearts harder than stones (169)
b) savage beatings (Hetty 170)
c) mothers separated from children (173)
2) Madness of slavery
a) effect of beatings on instigators
b) sadism?
3) Brutal work
a) Hetty’s labors (170)
b) the salt ponds (173)
1) Slaves “rescued”
a) Africa bad (174)
i) war torn, Oran torn from Selima (176)
b) paternalistic owners
i) unity of human race used as argument for “protecting” slaves (175)
c) Providence
i) slavery part of master plan—makes reunion with Selima possible (179)
2) Benevolence of slavers, traders, owners
a) kind masters (175)
b) only expect “reasonable obedience” (176)
c) taught slaves (177)
d) allow marriage of slaves (178)
1) Custom the enemy
a) when family, church, etc. support slavery, something must be wrong with customs
b) paradox of Christian slave—really a paradox?
2) Nature
a) would a slave-trader sell his own son or daughter?
3) Pathetic pictures
a) mother trying to glimpse Luco as he is led away
b) father accuses gods
c) maid commits suicide
d) people will “melt” when they really see the suffering
4) Slaves humanized
a) Luco leaves traces—connections, history, etc.
b) Luco recalls his past life and family (244-252)
c) attacks
5) Slave-traders demonized
a) overseer called “A Christian renegade” and “rude Christian” (226-233)
b) sadism of beatings (233-237)
c) torture and murder of Luco (273ff)
6) Power
a) fear alone maintains obedience (269-272)
b)
real villains—avarice, trade and commerce
I scorn
The cry of Av’rice, or the trade that drains
A fellow-creature’s blood: bid Commerce plead
Her publick good, her nation’s many wants,
Her sons thrown idly on the beach, forbade
To seize the image of their God and sell it:--
I’ll hear her voice, and Virtue’s hundred tongues
Shall sound against her. (356-363)
1) “Sweet Meat Has Sour Sauce”--Slave-trader’s lament
a) sardonic
b) description of horrors in comic tone
2) “The Negro’s Complaint”
a) pathetic
b) accusatory (“Men of England” a patriotic phrase)
c) “Minds are never to be sold”
d) “Slaves of gold”—reverses relationship, singles out avarice, trade, etc. again
1) Pathetic and sentimental
2) attacks British power
3) invokes Rule Britannia
1) Sonnet 3
a) Sentimental appeal
b) adjectives
c) sweet-sugar and its political implications
2) Sonnet 4
a) ironic opening
b) slave’s lament humanizes by creating past memory, history, identity
3) Sonnet 5
a) “past delight” refers to sonnet 4?
b) memory now akin to madness (because of oppression)
4) Sonnet 6
a) punishment for slave
b) accusatory: “gain is worth the guilt”
5) The Sailor Who had Served in the Slave-Trade
a) haunting and dreams
b) Miltonic sailor—like Satan
c) crime
1) Sentimental appeals
a) description of mothers and children
b) horrible conditions on board
c) deserted villages
d) treated like cattle (and chattel)
i) use of present tense “we are to see them” to make them present
ii) “so much misery condense in so little room was more than the human imagination had ever before conceived”
2) Moral appeals
a) effect on whites
i) degrades their souls
ii) pressing of sailors for slave-trade a kind of slavery
iii) treatment of sailors
3) Rational appeals
a) refutes arguments of horrid African customs
b) refutes claim that end of slavery would mean end of colonies
c)
“Commerce itself shall have its moral boundaries” (206)