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While being a slave is dehumanizing enough, Harriet Jacob's brings up an insightful point, that while Douglass describes slavery as something that brings forth one's strongest masculinity, Jacob's refutes by stating as a woman, slavery is self deprecating and strips a woman of every single moral she is left to have, even as a slave.

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Were the lurid and shocking details from slave narratives, especially those of women like Harriet Jacobs, an incentive to read because they caused sympathy or because they were seen as entertainment?

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Frederick Douglass utilizes an established, American cultural value, the self-made man, as a strategy to gain the understanding and support of the white audience; he focuses more on his own role and struggles, on how slavery impacted him. Harriet Jacobs broadens the scale of perspective when she punctuates the family connections severed by slavery, focusing less on the individual level and opening it to the point of view of a community; her structure also differs when she uses an appeal to the experiences and pathos of Northern women instead of cultural values in order to show the cruelty of slavery.

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What influenced Douglass to create an emphasis on literacy? In what ways did he believe it would help African Americans gain more freedom? Why did he say that illiterate black people live "in the dark?"

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Douglas and other leaders of the black community championed and emphasized their abilities particularly as individuals.

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Instead of antagonizing a certain group, slave narratives more criticized the system of slavery as a whole. They took more of a Rogerian approach, which has the objective of finding a common ground.

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There is a difference between a male and females authors perspective on motivation to escape slavery which could change the writing style or message of the narrative

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Slave narratives were unique at the time in the sense that they were not scathing tales against the white man. Many of these narratives were intended to connect all men and women as fellow Americans opposed to creating disunity and an "us versus them" scenario.

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The meaning of showing that the book is "written by himself", is that it shows African Americans are not genetically inferior to whites and are capable of becoming equals to whites. It asserts African American intelligence; an idea that was not accepted widely back then.

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Frederick Douglass says "I was born" in the beginning of his slave narrative (common amongst many narratives) to reaffirm the idea that slaves are humans and they should be treated as such. He uses his background to explicitly demonstrate how slaves are shown a lack of humanity,  "by keeping him ignorant from his birthdate, by separating him from his mother and his family, by leaving him naked and assessing his worth alongside that of farm animals." This inclusion of these experiences is vital to show how slaves have been dehumanized while simultaneouslytrying to humanize them.

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The fact that "I was born" is present at the start of so many slave narratives shows the level of dehumanization experienced by slaves. They felt as if society had pushed them to such a low level that they had to explicitly state that they were, in fact, born, just like anybody else, and they were human.

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Even with "freedom," Douglass was still not free from racism and was always in danger

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Douglas and other leaders of the black community championed and emphasized their abilities particularly as individuals.

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I find it depressing that Harriet Jacob had to get pregnant from another man just to escape the advances of her owner. I then find it even sadder that when she wrote about it she had to apologize for her behavior and the her "sexual activity" in general.

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The slave narrative structure evolved to better suit the more current beliefs and opinions that came to light. As the time period changed, slave narrative writers realized that it was important to switch their central idea and structure to still receive the same attention.

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What makes a slave narrative so different than reading a textbook about slavery or learning the primary turning points is that a narrative does not just address the story, but the impact of it from a personal account. Slave narratives give you the human side of slavery, and tell you what was exactly was going through the mind of the victim, not of the observer.

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The narratives opened different avenues to bring about the topic of slavery and created greater evidence bringing more emotion and life to the stories than white stories could

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Frederick Douglass uses an established, American cultural theme or value, the self-made man, as a strategy to gain the understanding and support of the audience; he focuses on his efforts and struggles throughout his life, on how slavery impacted him. Harriet Jacob's broadens the scale of perspective when she punctuates the family connections and emotional ties severed

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What prompted Sophia Auld to begin to teach Douglass the alphabet? Was it his idea and if so, how did he convince her? How did he know her?

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Douglass' Narrative had prefatory introductions from two famous white abolitionists: William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Philips. By including this preface, the book was probably able to appeal to a wider audience, specifically whites. It may have also encouraged a bandwagon effect by presenting non-abolitionist whites to join the movement through Garrison's and Phillip's powerful writing style.

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Why was it necessary for writers of African narratives to take a more political viewpoint when presenting their experiences as former slaves?

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The article brought up a discrepancy in a common theme in slave narratives. They said that the slave narrative writers introduce a rhetorical problem since the author tries to demonstrate how slavery destroys humanity while contending for slaves' fundamental humanity. I disagree, I do not think that this is a rhetorical problem. For the slave narrative authors are trying to show how slavery is dehumanizing, but for something to be "dehumanized" there has to be an underlying humanity. Therefore the authors are showing us that the system is trying "dehumanize" slaves however slaves persevere and are not able to be stripped of their humanity through out all the challenges. --Mira