Oberstufe, Leistungskurse Testbericht

Vorwort:
In unserer Schule waren wir der erste Jahrgang der eine Facharbeit im Englisch LK schreiben musste, wovon keiner von uns wirklich begeistert war. Wir bekamen um die 20 Themen vorgegeben, von denen wir uns eins aussuchen konnten. Nach anfänglichem Gerangel, um die beliebtesten Themen hatten wir aber schließlich alle ein Thema mit dem wir uns anfreunden konnten. Die nächsten Wochen verbrachten wir dann unsere Freizeit zum größten Teil in der Bücherei oder zuhause an den PCs und brüteten über unseren Themen. Bei mir kam folgendes dabei raus:

Thema der Facharbeit:

FACT AND FICTION – SLAVE EXPERIENCES DESCRIBED IN A NOVEL AND AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. “THE NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS” AND MARK TWAIN: “THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN”. A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF EXEMPLARY PASSAGES.

Preface

One reason to choose this topic was a very personal one. I was interested to read an autobiography of a black slave like Frederick Douglass. Since I’m fascinated by black history anyway I thought this might be an interesting topic to work on. In both books I chose the passages were Frederick Douglass and Jim escape slavery. I chose those passages for an interpretation because they are the most thrilling parts in the books. Those passages tell a lot about the feelings, about the fears of an African-American being hold in slavery. They show us what different reasons one could have had to escape slavery. And how differently one prepared for an escape if one prepared at all. I started to approach both passages about the history of African-American slaves. But first of all I summarized both passages and also told the reader very briefly what have happened before and after those exemplary passages. I talked about the Civil War and gave examples for black protest other that told in both books. I also gave background information about the authors and the books. interpreted and compared both passages looking at the aspect of escape. I further on looked at the aspects of friendship and fear Frederick Douglass and Jim might have had. Looking at the aspect of fact and fiction was another part of my interpretation.

2) Summary of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

2.1) First part of the story

This book tells the story of Huckleberry Finn and Jim. Huck is an orphan, his mother died years ago and his dad is an alcoholic and also supposed to be dead. That’s why Huck lives with Miss Watson a widow and slaveholder. Jim is one of her slaves. One day, Huck’s father who everybody thinks is dead suddenly appears in town and takes Huck to live with him in a cabin down by the Mississippi. But since his dad is abusing him, Huck does a trick to escape from his father. He lets him think that some criminal killed him and flees with a boat down the river. He lands on a little island and that is where he crashes into Jim.

2.2) Exemplary passage

In this passage, Jim tells Huckleberry how he escaped from his slaveholder and Mistress Miss Watson. Before he starts telling Huckleberry how his escape went, he makes sure Huck won’t tell anybody anything about it. Jim escaped because his Mistress was about to sell him to another slaveholder in Orleans, even though she had promised him she never would. Jim escapes in the early morning but before he leaves town he has to hide in an old tumbledown copper shop because people are already stirring and he does not want to be seen. About nine ‘o clock he hears people talking about how Huck has been killed. When it is dark Jim goes down to the river and takes a raft to cross it because that way neither the slaveholders can find him nor can the dogs smell his odor. But when he is already half way there, he spots some people at the riverside, so he has to let go of the raft in order to hide, but he is able to get his raft back. He is planning to be about 25 miles further down the river by the next morning and get ashore on the Illinois side of the river, but the plan does not work. After a while Jim again spots somebody near, so he drops from the raft and swims to a little island that is right in front of him. When he gets ashore on the little island, Jim goes into the woods and tries to find a place where he can stay and watch the slavers look after him on the mainland. A few minutes before he and Huck run into each other, Jim hears a cannon being fired and knows that it is after Huck, so he has to be near.

2.3) Second part of the story

After a few days, Huck and Jim decide to take a raft and go further down the river, so that they won’t be found. After a few days on the river, Jim and Huck find a floating house with a dead man inside. Huck doesn’t dare to take a look, so Jim covers him in blankets and then they throw him overboard, in order to overtake the floating house. A little while later, they hear, that there are 300 Dollars offered for whoever finds Huck’s killer. There is also the murmur going around that Jim might be it. Huck and Jim continue their journey down the Mississippi, they hope that some day they’ll go ashore in Cairo. After days and days of sailing Huck and Jim meet two guys. A duke and a king who are also fleeing. They take them aboard and continue the journey with them. Unfortunately those two guys appear to be slaveholders also, and by the time they find out Jim is a slave they take him as their property. Huck and Jim are trying to get rid of them, but it does not work, they have to keep on travelling with them. Then Huck does a trick. He passes himself off as his friend Tom Sawyer, because Tom has relatives near who have not seen him before and in order to escape Jim from the king and the duke Huck passes himself off as Tom. On his way he meets Tom who promises to help Huck. After planning it for a long time, Huck and Tom manage to escape Jim, even though Tom gets shot in his calf. But in the end Jim gets back but as soon as Toms aunt gets to know how good he has been taking care of Tom, while being shot, Jim gets the privilege to spent time with Huck and Tom and is allowed good food and normal clothes. After a while, Jim is being told that his old Mistress Miss Watson died and that one of her last wills was to let Jim free from slavery.

3) Summary of “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”

3.1) First part of the biography

In his first years of life, Douglass gets to know the brutality of slavery pretty well. He hardly gets to see his mom and when he finally does it is just for a few hours at night. He is about 7 when his mom dies because of some illness. His first Master Mister Anthony also called Captain Anthony is a really bad Master he beats everybody who disobeys his prohibitions really badly. By the time Douglass is about 8 years old, he goes to live with another family. The Mistress starts to teach him how to read and write, but that does not last long, because his Master thinks that it is not right for a slave to be able to read or write. But by that time, Douglass is already so interested in learning to read and write, that he starts teaching himself. It takes a lot of time but by the time he is a grown up, he is finally able to read and write like any white man. Douglass lives through many pains of a slave before he finally escapes. He also falls in love with a girl called Anna.

3.2) Exemplary passage

In this part of the book Frederick Douglass tells us about his escape and how he prepared for it. It is the year of 1838, when Douglass applies to his Master, Mr. Hugh to hire his time. First of all Master Hugh is not very pleased with that request, because he has heard that Douglass has applied to Master Thomas before and that he has refused his request. But after he though about it for a while, Master Hugh gives Douglass the privilege of hiring his time. Douglass can now get employed by himself, but in return he has to give Master Hugh three Dollars at the end of every week and he also has to find himself calking tools, board and clothing. Douglass is working very hard to cover all of his expenses and still have a little money to save in order to escape slavery some day. But all of a sudden Master Hugh refuses Douglass to hire his time any longer. It is a failure on Douglass’ side that makes Master Hugh decide to do so. Douglass left town without Master Hugh’s permission, which is the reason to take away Douglass’ privilege. In retaliation Douglass refuses to seek any work for a whole week and he doesn’t pay any money to Master Hugh. Master Hugh gets very angry and tells Douglass that he will get a job for him. But Douglass gets up very early the next morning and gets a job by himself. The following week, he is able to pay Master Hugh about 9 Dollars and his Master is so satisfied with him that he gives Douglass 25 cents which is a lot for a Master to give his slave. Douglass only sought for a job by himself so that his Master would not get suspicious. But now that the time to escape gets closer Douglass becomes very sad, thinking of all the friends he has to leave behind. That is the reason why he almost can’t do the escape but in the end his strong will to become a free man wins out. On September 03, 1838 Douglass escapes slavery and finds himself in New York, finally being a free man. The escape goes without any interference. Being asked how he feels as a free man Douglass answers, he feels as “one who has escaped a den of hungry lions.” But after a little while fear and loneliness overcomes Douglass. He has nobody to go or talk to and he is afraid to be caught and brought back to slavery. But very soon an old man, Mr. Ruggles finds Douglass, takes him home and watches over him as he had with many slaves before.

3.3) Second part of the biography

Mr. Ruggles manages for Frederick Douglass and Anna to get married and finally be husband and wife. Anna was also freed from slavery at that point in time. Then they both move to New Bedford, where Douglass gets employed right away and even attends an anti-slavery convention, where he starts telling about his life as a slave and about his escape.

4) Background information

4.1) About Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass was born in February 1818 as a son of an African-American woman and a white slaveholder. Douglass once stood up to his Master and suffered severe injuries from the result, but unlike the famous Nat Turner, he came out of it alive. He was still a young man when he fled to the north where he was befriended by the abolitionists. Very helpful for his plan to escape was the lucky circumstance that he had learned how to read and write and that he got to read newspapers from the North, so that he could see how the people there were thinking about slavery. He learned, that slavery was not willed by God, but that it was an inhuman system of exploitation. That way all of his doubts about his escape vanished. His biography was first published in 1845. Later on Douglass became the secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia and United States Minister to Haiti. He died in the year of 1895.

4.2) About Mark Twain

Mark twain was an American writer whose real name was actually Samuel. He was born in Florida, on November 30, 1835. He grew up in Hannibal near the Mississippi. After the sudden death of his father, Mark Twain worked as a printer, a pilot, prospector and journalist. He became a writer in the year of 1867 and with that he became wealthy. Mark twain was the first American writer of world –famous from West of the Mississippi. His work is based on the tradition of the literary journalism, most of all in the sphere of Speech and landscape portrayal and of the humour. In most of his works he relates his stories to the journeys he undertook.

4.3) The biography “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”

Frederick Douglass wrote three biographies from which this one: “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is the first and the best known one. Douglass had two motives to write this autobiography. First of all he wanted to support the battle against slavery. Therefore he chose the form of an autobiography to provoke the white slaveholders. The book was published by the Boston anti-slavery society and became an important part of the African-American literature. Secondly the autobiography should dispel the doubts whether Douglass had really been a slave. A lot of people did not believe him that he had been a slave when they saw how educated he was. Blacks have not been listed in any birth register so you could not exactly tell their birthdays. Even here a part of their personality was being taken from black people.


4.4) Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”

The book “the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” belongs to those books of the World literature that are read and loved by everybody, no matter what class they are. That has been so since its first publication about a hundred years ago. It is less a book for younger people than “Tom Sawyer” but it stayed popular in that age group also. This book ha been burned in some school libraries shortly after it was published because some people though it contained too much immoral contents and indecent speech. The same thing is happening nowadays but this time because some blacks think it contains racist vocabulary. The word “nigger” seems to be more important than the anti-racist context of the book. Kind of ironic thinking about the aspect that one though one had found the solution for racism.

4.5) The Civil War

The Civil War took place in between the years of 1861 and 1865. It was also called the War Between the States. The reasons to start this war are still disputed. When Abraham Lincoln as a candidate of the Republican Party, which was against slavery, was elected President of the United States, eleven of the Southern States dropped from the Union. Those eleven States joined together to a confederation, drafted a constitution and elected J. Davis President. Lincoln was determined to fight for the maintenance of the union and against slavery. “No doubt, as one of his compassions has said, “Slavery ran the iron into him then and there”” That led to the Civil War. Even though the North had big superiority over the South, the South kept up embittered resistance. But in 1863 when the See blockade became more and more effective, the South began to give up their resistance. Later in the year of 1863, Lincoln proclaimed the liberation of all slaves. But only 2 years later, in the year of 1865 the South capitulated unconditionally. Just a little time later a man from the Southern States killed Lincoln. The Civil War demanded a lot of victims on both sides. The economy of the South was totally ruined. Formally slavery was gone now, but not in the society. There was still a lot of racism in the U.S. Racism still caused a lot of victims, years later. Just think of Martin Luther King, who was brutally murdered. Even today there are still people who are being discriminated because of their skin colour. There are also organisations that terrorize black people. One example is the Ku-Klux-Klan.

4.6) Slavery in the U.S.

Slavery in the U.S. was very important in the Plantation work in the southern part of the U.S. There were about 700 000 Negro slaves in the year 1790 and about 4 Million in the year 1860. Moral opposition after the Revolution lead to the removal of slavery in the North and North-West of the U.S. because there the slaves were less important to the economy. On January 01,1808 the moral opposition also led to the prohibition to bring any slaves to America.

5) Interpretation

5.1) Comparing both passages looking at the aspect of escape

5.1.1) Reasons for the escape

Both Douglass and Jim escaped slavery, but in a very different way and because of different reasons.

Jim had a pretty good life for a slave at that time. He escaped because his Mistress was about to sell him to another slaveholder in Orleans and he was afraid of being treated worse than he had been before. Jim told Huck: “ Well, one night I creeps to de do’ pooty late, en de do’ warn’t quite shet, en I hear old missus tell de wider she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn’ want to, but she could git eight hund’d dollars for me and it ‘uz sich a big stack o’ money she couldn’ resis’.”

Douglass escaped slavery because he had the strong will to be a free man. He wanted to have a wife and children and be able to earn his own money without giving the most of it away. He wanted to make his own decisions without anyone always telling him what to do and what is right or wrong. He wanted to become self confident.

You can see two very different reasons for the escape here. Jim does not escape because he wanted to become a free man like Douglass but because he wanted to stay with Miss Watson, and by the time he notices that that is impossible he decides to flee because he thinks that that is a lot better then being sold to another slaveholder. Jim felt quite well in the situation he was living in with Miss Watson, in contrast Douglass who felt very uncomfortable in the situation he was in as a slave. Douglass once said:” I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have been killed.” Jim would not have made an attempt to escape if Miss Watson would not thought about selling Jim to another slaver. He felt betrayed by that thought because Miss Watson had promised Jim never to sell him. Douglass wouldn’t ever have stayed with his slaver no matter what might have happened. His urge of wanting to be a free man was stronger then anything else and he was treated much worse then Jim ever had been.

5.2.) The course of both escapes

5.2.1.) Preparation for the escape

Douglass had a very long preparation time for his escape. He prepared weeks and months to be able to escape slavery. First of all he tried to save money to be able to escape and still have money to live on in his “new” life. In order to be able to save some money he had to ask his Master for the privilege of hiring his time so he could get employed by himself and be able to hold some money back. Douglass also had a turning point during his preparation. He became very sad because he had to leave all his friends behind.

Jim on the other hand did not prepare for his escape at all, he heard Miss Watson talking about the sale and decided to run away the same day, which he did the following night. He did not have time to safe any money or prepare to take something with him. He escaped in a rush. He did not think about friends he might leave behind or Miss Watson who would actually be very sad about him gone. He really didn’t think about anything, he just ran and ran and ran.

5.2.2) The escape

Jim as I already said escaped in a rush. He could not get out of town right away, he had to wait until the next night, because there were too many people around, and of course he did not wan to be seen. On his way, he had to be very careful so that nobody would see him, because everywhere he went, there seemed to be people that were looking for him.

Douglass Does not tell much about how he escaped. He actually tells nothing, because he thinks that it won’t be too good to let too many people know how he did it. It was maybe illegal and if someone gets to know that he would be in deep trouble. Fear plays a main part in this. The escape is enough for Douglass he does not want to have to deal with the consequences that might follow if he tells us the way of escape he chose.

5.2.3) After the escape

After the escape, Douglass finds himself in New York, being very alone and with that very sad. He is a free man now, but he has no friends, no family and no place to sleep, which he takes very hard and even thinks about the “old times” in slavery. But then he meets an old man. Mr. Ruggles and that man takes him home, wants to be his friend and gives him a home and some kind of family. Which Douglass enjoys a lot. He is happy now. He can go on with his live as a free man. He has the live he has ever wished for.

Jim instead crashes into Huckleberry Finn on a little island and they both continue their journey together. So Jim does not have the feeling of being lonely at any time. He has got Huck to talk to. Because Jim escaped in such a rush, he did not have time to think about all his friends and family, so he did not get as sad as Douglass, who had the time to think about his friends. Jim just looks forward to the journey with Huck, even though they have to watch out for the slavers who are looking after Jim.

5.3) Comparing both passages looking at the aspect of friendships

A lot of people think that slaves at that time could only be friends with other slaves or other black people, but these two passages show pretty good, that it can also be the other way around.

In “the adventures of Huckleberry Finn” it is obvious that Huck and Jim are very good and close friends, even though Huck is white and Jim is black. “I was ever so glad to see Jim. I wanrn’t lonesome now.” Huck does not care what skin colour Jim has he is just happy to have a friend who he can talk to and share his secrets with and who helps him to hide so that his dad won’t find him.

With Douglass it is very similar. When he arrives in New York and thinks he has nobody to talk to or go to, Mr. Ruggles appears and takes him home to be his friend. And you have to know that Mr. Ruggles is also a white man. It is true that Jim had black people as friends when he was still a slave, and would probably never even have thought about having a white man for a friend.

These passages show, that there were some of the white people that did not agree to slavery at all. And in order to not be punished, by standing up against the laws going into the streets and demonstrate, they at least helped the slaves hide, gave them food, clothing and a place where they could stay.


5.4) Comparing both passages looking at the aspect of fear

I think fear played a major role in both escapes. Jim feared to be sold to another slaveholder, where he might not have been treated as well as with Miss Watson. Frederick Douglass instead feared the slavery itself, which was his reason to escape. He feared to be hold in slavery his whole life and he could not stand the humiliation he had to live through every day any longer. He feared that maybe some day he would die of the hard work or the beatings or whatever there may come.

Then I guess both Douglass and Jim feared to be found after and while the escape. Jim told Huck: “I tuck out en shin down de hill, en ‘spec to steal a skift ‘long de sho’ som’ers ‘bove de town, but dey wuz people astirring yit, so I hid in de ole tumbledown copper shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go ‘way.” Douglass probably feared more to be found than Jim, because I think Douglass would have to deal with harder consequences if he would have been found then Douglass. They might even have killed Douglass for running away. But I don’t think they would have been so harsh to Jim. At least Miss Watson would not. She kind of liked Jim so she wouldn’t ever have thought about killing Jim, when getting him back she would have probably put him to work harder or have another punishment for him but she wouldn’t have beaten him up or done any harder things to him.

Maybe both Jim and Frederick Douglass also feared of living a life in freedom, because they have never been free before and they did not know what freedom really meant, instead of not just being a slave any more. They did not know what they had to expect. Maybe the fear of not knowing if escape was the right thing to do was also in their heads. They even had to leave their friends and family behind.

5.5) Comparing both passages looking at the aspect of love

Both Douglass and Jim knew what love is. Jim had a wife and two children who he loved and probably felt very miserable of leaving behind by escaping, but he did not a chance to take them with him. They wouldn’t have made it as a family, because the risk to get caught is much higher the more people there are and it would not have been easy with too little children to not be seen. Of course, Jim missed his wife and children, but he couldn’t do anything about it as long as he did not want to be caught.

Douglass also had a wife but he married his Anna after the escape, when Anna was also free. So at that point of time he was luckier as Jim because he had his wife with him. They were not parted like Jim and his family. Douglass did not have children yet though. But both Douglass and Jim had loved ones who they had to leave behind in order to escape.

6) Comparing both texts looking at the aspect of fact and fiction

6.1) Fact and fiction in both books

The book “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is a biography, which means that the book tells Douglass’ real life. He writes the autobiography by himself. and that makes it even more precisely. I don’t think Frederick Douglass used any kind of fiction in his book. He just simply tells the reader about his life. Which was of course not very easy, and not always nice and beautiful. The most of what Douglass experienced as a slave is “hard stuff”. You have to think it over and over to get it and really understand it. It is a very different kind of book then “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. Most of this book is obviously fiction, but I have to admit that there is some fact in it also. Everywhere where the author Mark Twain describes how Jim is being treated, he tells facts. He tells us how slaves at that time really were treated and what they might have thought and felt while being treated so badly. And that is where you have a comparison between Douglass and Jim. Both know the feeling of being treated as second – rate. They know how it feels to not be accepted as a real human, but more seen as an animal. Douglass knows that even better then Jim, because Jim has not been down that low like Douglass has been. Jim has been treated pretty well for a slave while living with Miss Watson. Douglass on the contrary has always been treated very badly; it did not matter how much he got around and how often he changed his Masters. Of course there were better ones and ones that were worse, but there was not as big a difference as with Jim.

6.2) The difference between an autobiography and a novel

Of course there are big differences between those two types of books. The language and style is an important one. The language of both books differs in many ways. One of them is the slang uses which Jim in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. Douglass does not use any kind of slang in his biography, he just tells his story in his own words. Jim does this also but “his language” is a language that most people would call slang. Mark Twain also uses a fairytale like language that is very nice and easy to read, not to mention Jim’s slang. Douglass does not do anything like that he tells his biography, right the way it happened and does not try to tell it in words that are easier to read because that would put mistakes in the biography. In the biography Douglass does a very good job telling the history so precisely, so exactly on the point of the truth. The novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain has the needed structure of any novel. It has a syntax and climax, and just everything that makes a novel nice and easy to read. Douglass biography does not have this structure; otherwise it would not be a biography but a novel. In contrary to Mark Twain, who describes Jim’s escape very detailed, Frederick Douglass avoids details about how the escape went and about any names of other slaves. He does that because he does not want to endanger former helpers of himself. He also does not want to close any ways of escape for other slaves, by telling exactly how he did it. A very profound difference is also, that “ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is written by a white man: Mark Twain and “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” is written by a black man: Frederick Douglass. Mark Twain does not describe slavery as hard as it was. He makes slavery look much easier than it really was. Douglass who has lived through slavery by himself is able tell how slavery really has been. At least for him and he has a pretty good view on how slavery has been for all the other slaves. Mark twain in contrary has his knowledge from books or other people who told him what slavery was like. He has a very different view on slavery than Douglass has because he experienced the hardest slavery himself.


7.1) Protest in both books

Both books show pretty clear the protest against slavery. “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” shows it even more precisely than “The adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. The obvious protest in both books is the escape. By escaping slavery, Douglass and Jim both show that they really don’t approve of slavery. They show everybody that they are against slavery and that they are breaking free because slavery is an awful thing that hardly anybody can stand his whole life. The escape is a big exclamation mark, for everybody who wants to see it, and everybody who does not. Jim and Douglass both set a big sign for all the other slaves that have not been able to escape slavery by that time. Even if Jim is not the best example for a slave that escape because he would not have run away if Miss Watson would’ve kept him. Jim’s escape is not really a direct protest against slavery because the book mostly deals with Huck’s problems and just a bit with the problem of slavery. The book first shows the good treatment by Miss Watson, but in the end it shows also the other side of slavery, when Jim is with Tom’s aunt, where he is treated very well at first. Douglass has always been treated very badly, no matter what. He had a short little turning point when he came to Miss Auld who tried to teach him how to read and write. But afterwards he had been treated, as badly as before if not worse, it did not really matter with whom of the Masters he was. So his liberation was a very big protest against anything that had been done to him while he was being held as a slave. Douglass does not only want to show one single fate in his biography, but he wants to show the religious and humanitarian hypocrisy which slavery made possible. WM. Lloyd Garrison once said about one of Douglass speeches: “I shall never forget his first speech at the convention – the extraordinary emotion it excited in my own mind – the powerful impression it created upon a crowded auditory, completely taken by surprise – the applause which followed from the beginning to the end of his felicitous remarks.”

7.2) Different forms of Protest

The protest shown in the books of Frederick Douglass and Mark Twain are what we would call silent protest. Even if you could say that by publishing his biography Douglass protest against slavery was not as silent as Jims in “The adventures of Huckleberry Finn”. But some different forms of showing protest against racism are for example “The Littlerock nine” . “The Littlerock nine” were nine students who refused to go to an all black school many miles away from Littlerock instead of attending the all white school right in the town of Littlerock. It did not make sense to them to travel many hours per day only to get to their school, as long as there was a school in Littlerock. So those nine students met before school every day and were brought in a car with lots of bodyguards to the all white school where they attended the normal lessons even though did have a very hard time there. One of them even graduated as the only black student two years later.

Another example for Protest of blacks was Rosa Parks who caused the bus boycott in the year of 1956. One day she refused to stand up for a white man in the bus. That caused the Montgomery bus boycott. The blacks were told to stand up for whites in the bus or at least move to the very back of the bus; otherwise they were not allowed to ride the bus any longer. Rosa Parks reason to refuse to give her seat to a white man was “The section of the bus where I was sitting was what we called the coloured section especially in this neighbourhood because the bus was filled with more than two-thirds with Negro passengers and a number of them were standing. And just as soon as enough white passengers got on the bus to take what we consider their seats and then a few more, that meant that we had to move back for them even though there was no room to move back. It was an imposition as far as I was concerned.” So all the blacks in Montgomery, Alabama did not see a reason to ride the bus any longer. From that point on they walked everywhere they wanted to go. Some even had their driving pools.

The most profound example of black protest was of course Martin Luther King Junior, who fought for the liberation of blacks. He was the leader of Black protest in the years of 1929 - 1968 until he was brutally murdered in Memphis, Tennessee. His most profound sentence in history was “I have a dream”.

8) Comparing Nat Turner with Frederick Douglass

Nat Turner was a black rebel. On August 21, 1831, Turner and some of his friends did what they had planned for month. In the middle of the night when everybody was already asleep, they went out and killed almost every white family in their town. They did not care how old or young they were. They killed everybody from infants to seniors.

Frederick Douglass was more an agitator than a terrorist like Turner. Douglass wanted to change or better stop slavery politically. He wanted to become friends with all the white people. He wanted to be able to live with them together instead of fighting with them. He wanted to be on the same level with the whites. He did not want to be better or worse just equal.

The profound difference between those two was that Turner did not want to share anything with the white people he wanted to carry out revenge on all the whites, for what had been done to all the blacks before. He though, okay you killed some of our men so we’re going to kill some of yours now. It is just fair. He was so angry with all the white people, which is understandable that he did not see a reason to try to change the situation in another way then starting to kill them. He wanted to give a sign by killing all the white people in his town, just like Douglass wanted by writing his novel and speaking to the people. Turner just had a much more brutal way of giving a sign and showing everybody that slavery was not the right thing to do and that black people have the same right to live as whites.

9) Racism in America today

For most of the Americans slavery is obviously over. It is a dark chapter in the American history and so is the bloody oppression of the Indians. Nevertheless you can still feel racism between blacks and whites in America. White people have the preference in almost all areas. One example is education. A lot of the whites let their children go to good and expensive private schools. A lot of the blacks don’t have the money to let their children go to private schools. And that is exactly how their lives go on. You hardly see a black man or women in a head position.

But the time seems to change at least a very little. A good example here for is Toni Morrison, who is a professor for English literature at American Universities. She also wrote a few books, which deal with the problem of black history in America. She got the Nobel Prize in 1993 for her books.

I myself experienced an episode in America, I won’t forget. I was riding the Alaska – Rail – Road from Anchorage to Denali and while having lunch in the dining car I saw the following. The door opens and a black man in a very noble suit enters the dining car. His outer look shows that he is probably a pretty much wealthy American. He sits down to order his meal. It takes a while until the waiter appears but when he finally does he tells the black man in a very unfriendly tone to move his legs out of the aisle. We all thought, that there was a fight about to start, but nothing happened, the black man simply moved his legs without saying a word. This episode shows, that there is still a long way to go to get equal with everybody.

Epilogue

I have to admit, that working on this topic was not very easy. First of all I had some troubles finding the right literature to start interpreting both passages but that problem did not last long. After a while I started to see some differences between Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and Douglass biography I thought were worth to interpret. Questions like “Where do the differences between both books come from?” arose. Slowly a frame of thoughts was building up in my mind. I started to write and suddenly I saw, hey the paper is not blank anymore. The pages began to fill up slowly. I didn’t even dare to think about how much work a comparative analysis could be before I started to do so. Besides working on slavery and the American history let my experiences I had while my stay in the U.S. stand in a different light. For example I drove with my parents through a suburb of Detroit and noticed that all the houses were pretty much disintegrated. The people that were living there were all black. It was a little different in Alaska though. The best friend of one of my host brothers was black and my host family did not go to church because they though the priest was a racist. All in all was the seminar paper alright, at some point I even had fun working on it even though I was not being able to write 15 pages.


P.S. Diese Facharbeit ist von meinem Englischlehrer mit 9 Punkten bewertet wurden, was hauptsächlich daran lag, das ich viel zu spät angefangen habe intensiv an meiner Facharbeit zu arbeiten. TIPP: Fangt rechtzeitig an Euch mit Euren Facharbeitsthemen zu beschäftigen, so schwer es auch fällt, sonst geht es Euch mit der Note wie mir.