The Fall

Monday 23, 2012
Blog # 6
                                           

                                   

                                         Wikipedia

        In class, professor Ximena Gallardo is teaching us how it was to be a slave in the old times. To get a better idea of the slavery, we are reading a book called Kindred by Octavia Butler. The assignment was to choose one question out of three. I chose to write about the ways Dana was dangerous to the way of life in the Weylin household.

        Dana is dangerous to Tom Weylin in many ways. She is a smart black women who can read and write. As a white man, Tom Weylin is less educated than Dana. So, he feels inferior to her and acts weird. The Weyland plantation in Maryland education for the slaves were prohibited. The white people did not want their slaves to know how to read and write. They were scared that if they learn how to read and write, they would be able to rebel against their owners. Weylin tried to convince Kevin that she is too smart and educated as a slave and told him to sell her before she ran away. Since she was an educated slave, she could teach the other slaves how to read and write. She could also teach them how to write freedom passes which would help the slaves to set free.

        She is also dangerous for his household because he thinks that not only slaves can be educated by her, but Dana can also educate Rufus as a different white man. Then he might see the slaves from a different view point. It was like a red signal to Tom Weylin.

Blog # 5

Monday April 16th 2012
Slavery in the United states

                                                   
                         Image from Weallbe.blogspot.com

        This week in class we are learning how it was to be a slave in the old times. To get a better idea of the way slavery worked, we are reading a book called Kindred by Octavia Buttler.

        Long ago, blacks and whites were treated differently. Blacks were slaves to the whites. The basic punishments of slaves for the usual crimes such as theft and absence from work were a ring around the ankle, imprisonment in the dungeon, an iron crook around the neck and sometimes the breaking of bones. Harriet Jacobs had a book called Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl. She explained how there was a planter in the country who had 600 slaves. He treated them like they were nothing. A favorite punishment was to tie a rope around the slaves body and suspend them from the floor. A fire used to set above slaves and it was cooking a piece of fat pork. As it cooked, the immensely hot drops of fat repeatedly fell on their flesh. Another house slave Lewis Clark in Kentucy described some punishing methods in his autobiography. Overseers would use anything to beat slaves, including brooms, tongs, shovels, and even the heel of the slippers.

        The law didn't protect the slaves and that way, the overseers were able to do as they wished to their slaves. The overseers even bullied the slaves into increasing productivity. If they thought they were lacking activity, they would use the whip as a way for punishing the slaves. The acts of the overseers scared the slaves to not rebel against their owners.