Douglas Narrative The Slave Songs example essay topic

Essay #1 (A) The lyrics of songs inspire people to think and do many things. Today, songs expressing the quality of being beautiful and important in society can be found. Songs encouraging love and taking chances within oneself and others are listened to. None the less, there exists songs expressing hatred, anger, sorrow, and feelings of desolation.

Lyrics are limitless, they simply express that of the person's internal emotions. Songs can convey a misunderstanding or an unclear interpretation. Much like the lyrics of today, slave songs conveyed a deep and heart-wrenching message, that to many listeners, were never quite understood. Songs are simply an expression of truth.

In an environment which otherwise punished truth, slave songs were a subversive way to communicate the truthfulness of both sorrow and refusal to abandon hope. In Douglas' narrative the slave songs express the hatred of slavery, dehumanization of the victims, and were often misinterpreted by Northerners. Douglas expresses his concern that listeners interpreted the slaves as happy and singing because of delight. If only the Northerners caught a glimpse of the lives the slaves led and melted their obdurate hearts, they would freeze in agony at the pain and cries for help which are expressed in the songs". I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the North, to find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness.

It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart, and is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears". (Douglass, Chapter II, p. 281). Slaves were never allowed to come together to discuss the cruel and unjust treatment their masters gave them. They could never speak of the truths of the evil society they lived in.

In engulfing in spirituals and songs they were able to convey facts through, "tones loud, long and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish". (Douglas, Chapter II, p. 280). Many songs were pleas for freedom. Freedom in the sense of the land to the North, and freedom meaning death, the ultimate release from servitude. In the song, "Before I'd be a Slave (Oh Freedom) " the chorus is as follows: "Before I'd be a slave I'd be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord -- and be saved" (Call and Response, pg 240). Without even needing explanation, these lines burn with the fact that if given the choice of dying or to continue living in enslavement, the outcome would be death.

This has no happy tune. It in no way should be misunderstood as gratitude for the life which they had been brought into. This is a testimony against slavery, "a prayer to God for deliverance from chains". (Douglas, Chapter II, pg. 280). Slaves were auctioned like property, like animals, like brutes in front of all of the other slaves.

They watched their families being sold to other masters, other plantations, even other states. They sang for their desolation and sorrows for their families. They groaned utterances and low tones for their scars on their bodies, sores on their hands and feet, and holes in their souls where slavery had destroyed their inner freedom. They were dehumanized in its true definition: deprived of all human qualities, personalities and spirit. Slaves were fed using troughs, sold with pigs, whipped, expected to adhere to any sexual advances made at them by their masters and treated like soul-less, heart-less chattels. It's these dehumanizing characteristics of slavery that filled Douglas's pir it " with an ineffable sadness when hearing these songs".

(Douglas, Chapter II, pg. 281). Recalling these tones, absorbing the words, and remembering the blood and screams from the cowhides, chilled his soul with a cold hatred that deepened with each thought of those sounds in the forest. He challenged any contenders of his experience to place themselves in the trees and take in the soul-killing effects of slavery by listening to the pain. The glimmering conception Douglas expresses can be heard in "Swing Low Sweet Chariot".

As faint as the hope they could hold onto, their belief in Jesus Christ and his ability to wash away these evils and hatred experienced on the plantations is evident in the final verse. A longing for the Lord to save them and carry them to a home free of whippings, the "brightest day", their death, is cried for in these lines. "The brightest day that I can say Coming for to carry me home When Jesus washed my sins away Coming for to carry me home" (Call and Response, 237). The songs I provided from our text, Call and Response help to justify what Douglas feels and says about the dehumanization of slaves and the hatred they felt towards the life which they were living.

In song, they attempted to relieve the anguish and bitterness they felt from being victims of the evil institution. Slaves sang of the truth on the plantations, and though listeners could confuse their tunes as happy and content, the songs I provided and Douglas' conception show a comprehension of sorrow and most unhappiness.