Nightjohn Character Analysis

The book, Midnight Rising by Tony Horwitz, was about John Brown and the upcoming events that led him to the raid of Harpers Ferry. John Brown was an American who strongly believed in the abolishment of slavery in the United States. The author’s purpose of this book was to go into depth about John Brown and what he did that contributed to spark the Civil War. When Tony Horwitz wrote about the loss of Brown’s children and it made him depressed, I liked that Horwitz mentions earlier losses and his emotions that later contributed to the loss of his children that resulted him to a highly commitment of slavery abolishment.

John tried escaping slavery before so he got whipped a lot but John is a strong guy and lived through it. All though John has gotten hurt so many times he had still done reckless things such as teaching Sarny how to read and write because he knew that there was a punishment for that (page 54). Sarny was a young girl with an opened mind and she just wanted to learn but being slave it was hard for her to do that. Lastly, in the book NightJohn the quote “ School-we got to go to school.

As portrayed in Nightjohn, harsh restrictions were shown in depth when Sarny was caught writing in the dirt by Waller and beaten by him. THe harsh restriction put upon slave in each plantation can be shown in MIngo White’s narrative, when he states, “Old Master Crawford told us if they ask us if we are sick, to tell them that we have never been sick in our lives.” This quote shows the constant fear for punishments during all of the restrictions that the applied in the life of each slave. This paragraph shows that the harsh punishments had a big impact of slavery because the slaves were in constant fear of punishments of their

At the age of five, she witnessed the atrocity of a male slave being whipped to death. This monstrosity can be seen in the picture of a slave’s scarred back; seeing this, one can only imagine how it affected Sarah. Only three years later, the slave girl her father had assigned “constant companion,” suddenly died. Sarah was compelled to lobby for equal rights for women because of her lack of education as a young woman. She dreamed of continuing her education, but this was denied to her by her father because she was a woman.

Frederick Douglass, a slave of the deep south makes his escape into the free north, but even after his escape he can “trust no man”. No matter the color of one’s skin either black or white, Douglass has a deep sense of mistrust in any man, engraved into his person by the years of “the wretchedness of slavery”. Douglass’ diction in his narrative shows how slavery can shape a man into a self conscious and paranoid person. Throughout his life as a slave, Douglass was constantly exposed to conditions in which the only way to survive was to fight for his life. Like the sisters who were raised by wolves -Amala and Kamala- Douglass is not adapted to society and does not trust anyone but himself.

My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute” (55)! On the contrary, there were masters who treated their slaves fairly. For example, John Pinney was a

Most owners would do whatever they wanted to their slaves, causing the slaves to rebel and runaway. Filled with fear, endless hours of labor, ill-treatment, cruelty, and unfairness this cycle never really ended for a slave. Slaves were used as property, whose labor would only benefit their master’s profit. Instead, of houses and rest hours a slave’s day consisted of their work, then their own personal chores,and finally sleep. A slave’s life consisted of the unfair treatments from owners.

This demonstrates how their power had no limits on how far they could go on treating someone badly, especially their slaves. They both take advantage of their power to get what they want, and to make someone’s life

But first what is Power? When researching Power words such as authority, control, direct, command and influence all appear. These words all support the following statement “Power is the ability to influence and control the behaviour of others.” The problem with power is that it often leads to those in power abusing it. As Lord Acton famously quoted “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass shows the imbalance of power between slaves and their masters. In his book, Douglass proves that slavery is a destructive force not only to the slaves, but also for the slaveholders. “Poison of the irresponsible power” that masters have upon their slaves that are dehumanizing and shameless, have changed the masters themselves and their morality(Douglass 39). This amount of power and control in contact with one man breaks the kindest heart and the purest thoughts turning the person evil and corrupt. Douglass uses flashbacks that illustrate the emotions that declare the negative effects of slavery.

The idiosyncratic style Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass depicts the discriminatory actions of postcolonial slave owners in the southern United States, which reflects their greed for unpaid labor on their plantations. He employs the metaphor of the book that their masters prohibited them from owning by law throughout the memoir to demonstrate the avarice that drives white slave owners to turn a darker-skinned, intelligent being into a machine for personal benefit for centuries after the colonization of America. Also, the irony further displays the power of greed by expressing the slaveholder’s uncivilized method of forcing another human out of civilization. Furthermore, his use of a paradox of the use of pure religious beliefs to justify a slaveholder’s inhumane treatment reveals their rapacious actions that contradict the teachings of the church.

Frederick Douglass’s narrative provides a first hand experience into the imbalance of power between a slave and a slaveholder and the negative effects it has on them both. Douglass proves that slavery destroys not only the slave, but the slaveholder as well by saying that this “poison of irresponsible power” has a dehumanizing effect on the slaveholder’s morals and beliefs (Douglass 40). This intense amount of power breaks the  kindest heart and changes the slaveholder into a heartless demon (Douglass 40). Yet these are not the only ways that Douglass proves what ill effect slavery has on the slaveholder. Douglass also uses deep characterization, emotional appeal, and religion to present the negative effects of slavery.

Abuse of power is when people who have power use it to their unfair advantage. So in this essay there will be examples and ideas about this story and ways that these three things were used. The first category is abusive power. This category was shown not a lot in the story but had a lot of significant value to the play itself.

Power is the ability to actor do something in a particular way. People who have too much power and abuse it, and turn their power into a negative power. Fear and tyranny are abused by people with power creating a negative effect on society. Leaders with a huge rule of power will abuse their role as a leader by creating a fearful environment.

The misuse of power is how we see many leaders of the world behaving in the present