The North

The North is a huge letdown for Linda. Especially on the train ride she is shocked to find a case where she wishes she could have had the conditions that a slave was given. The slaves were allowed to ride for free behind the white people but when she gets to the north she has to pay for her ticket which she ca not afford. Another thing that was upsetting about the North was that she did not immediately feel free and she did not find her daughter Ellen in the situation that she was promised. She is still waiting on Benjamin to be freed from the South and overall finds the North to fall far short of her expectations.

William

William is related to Linda and is a servant of Mr Sands. When Mr Sands get elected a congressman and moves to Washington William decides to run away. I do not think that his actions were rude or unjustified because of the fact that even thought Mr Sands was nice, William was still a slave.

Mr Sands

Mr sands comes to own the kids by buying them indirectly from Mr Flint. He hires a slaveowner to buy the two chirldren and Dr Flint sells them to the man and then Mr Sands Buys them from him. Linda trusts Mr. Sands because he is their father but she knows that it is a risky thing to do because slavery corrupts minds. She worries about the children and especially about Ellen who she thinks might have been given as an object. However in the end of the chapter Mr Sands has not done anything to disprove her trust.

Gold Necklace

The gold necklace that Linda's new baby is given on her baptism day is very upsetting to Linda. For Linda it is troubling because it represents were she has come from and what she lives in every day, slavery. For Linda, the idea of her children growing up like she has and living in slavery is upsetting and it makes her think of the weight of slavery being around her babies neck in the form of the gold necklace. I do not think that it is fair that she make this comparison because it seemed to me that it was just an honest gift and that she lashed out like none other. She treated it like her child was being inducted into slavery with that necklace when it was just a gift.

Interesting Passage

For me the most interesting passage is at the top of page 89. The passage is first talking about prices for slaves, which for me is still shocking. It is just weird for me to think about quantifying a human life. The most interesting part of the passage for me however is ", the doctor would have sold any boy of Benny's age for two hundred dollars; but he could not bear to give up the power of revenge." I think that is interesting because it puts together two qualifying factors, the life of a slave and revenge for the doctor, and shows how Dr. Flint clearly values his own dealings more than the life of a slave and in some cases even money.

SLAVE LOVE

For a slave love is an even more complicated emotion than for free men. For slaves it is hard because at every corner there is a chance that you will never see your love again. i thought that the way that Linda handled her love with the free man completely well. It showed that even though the life for a slave or even a free black man was tough. In the case in the book though i thought that love prevailed and she was able to put the mans safety over her own need for him which is the ultimate sacrifice for love i guess.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl 1-4

In the first four chapters of the novel it was intriguing to me how much deception there was by the slave owners. We are told all the time about the brutality and suffering of the slaves but i had no idea of how much the slave owners flatly went against their word. I thought that even when they were in a slave to master relationship that it would be necessary to keep their word. I thought another interesting part of the story was the entire tale of her grandmother, in that it always took different turns. I was completely surprised that her mistresses sister saved her and finally granted her her freedom after so many years.

Class Discussion

Our last class discussion was about the three types of reading and what each type yielded in the Great Gatsby. Even though I do not think that the second two types of reading are good because I find it hard to believe that Fitzgerald meant to put all of these hidden meanings into the book, I still thought thtat the discussion was good. The second and third levels of reading were about symbols and connections in the book and i thought the second level was the most interesting. I think that all of the symbols in the Great Gatsby can closely correlate with real life. This is because in a lot of cases symbols are there whether they are meant to be or not. I found the argument that the symbols in the book were on purpose because there were only four of them, instead of trying to find symbols throughout the book. This book is one of the strongest cases of purposefull symbolism that I have seen.