Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

This story is about the life of a slave girl and her family growing up in slavery. I feel this is symbolic to racism because here they talk about slaves and how people lived with that being known in there everyday lives. This story talks about the life of the girl and her family after her mother died, when her mistress died, and how she felt with her grandmother still around. Even though there is allot of death going on in this story, there is still allot of information that is told to help explain everything.

The life before her mother died was great. She had people around her who cared about her so, to the point where they would do anything to keep her and her brother alive. When her mother died she told her foster sister to watch over her children as if they were her own. Even though her foster sister was white and they were brought up by the same mom, she said yes and promised that her children would never have to live the life of a true slave.

As the children grew older they soon began to think of their mistress as their mom. Even thought they know that their real mom is dead they think that since the mistress is taking care of them then that's their mom. The mistress made sure that they were properly taken care of. She made sure that they were well fed, healthy, and educated. She took the liberty of educating them even though there weren't many blacks with a decent education. She kept to her word and never forgot it. When she died the kids probably felt stressed out because they were thinking about where they might go, and that the one person they called mom was gone.

With her grandmother around she probably felt that was good because she could always have someone to lean on or to talk to. She was really close to her grandmother because she listened to her tell stories about her going into slavery as a child and how she dealt with certain things. That seemed like a very positive thing because after her mistress died, there was really no one left. Aside from her dad, but he ended up dying too so the children's lives where really devastating.

I think this is related to pathos because these two children ended up loosing very important people in their lives especially if many parents aren't around for many other children's lives. This is related also to romanticism because this seemed all negativity. Nothing good except for the children still having their grandmother, but that doesn't mean the children are happy. This story also used diction to help craft the the words and phrases into a quote that explained what happened in the story.