Midterm Exam ENGL 447 Spring 2015

M I D T E R M E X A M ENGL 447 SPRING 2015 This midterm is designed to gage your skills at textual analysis and argumentation, as well as your familiarity with the cultural and literary history of slavery we have explored in class thus far.

This exam comprises two parts: a close reading analysis and an essay responding to prompts about slave narratives. The close reading portion requires selecting one of three passages for a detailed, 1½–2 page analysis, focusing on how the passage functions within the larger text, its significance related to slavery, and the literary devices used. Support your claims with specific analysis of language, rhetorical strategies, imagery, symbolism, tone, or irony, and relate them to the broader themes of abolition and slavery.

The essay section involves writing a 3–4 page argument responding to one of two prompts about a slave narrative. Your thesis should include clear central claims, and your body paragraphs must use concrete textual evidence with proper analysis. Focus your essay sharply on your chosen prompt and text, ensuring depth rather than breadth, and cite all sources appropriately. The essay should demonstrate an understanding of how the narrative exposes mechanisms or contradictions of slavery or how it engages with gendered analyses of race and slavery.

This exam is due at the start of class on Thursday, March 5, and should be typed, double-spaced, clearly labeled, and stapled.

Paper For Above instruction

Slavery has been one of the most profound and morally troubling institutions in American history, and its representation through slave narratives serves as a critical tool for understanding both the mechanics of slavery and the resistance against it. The two parts of this exam—close reading and analytical essay—are designed to develop and assess students' ability to critically analyze texts that document and critique slavery’s systemic brutalities while contextualizing their significance in the broader fight for abolition and racial justice.

In the close reading component, selecting one passage for detailed analysis requires students to engage deeply with specific textual features. For instance, a passage from Frederick Douglass’s autobiography or Harriet Jacobs’s narrative may employ vivid imagery, irony, or rhetoric that exposes the contradictions of the slavery system. For example, Douglass’s recounting of his experience of literacy as a form of liberation critically undermines the purported “naturalness” of slavery, revealing literacy as a threat to the oppressive order. Analyzing such features involves exploring how language choices and stylistic devices serve to highlight resistance, expose contradictions, or evoke emotional responses that foster abolitionist sympathies. This close reading demonstrates understanding of the text’s immediate function and its larger message about slavery as a dehumanizing and unjust system.

The second component, the analytical essay, calls for a nuanced argument about either the mechanisms and contradictions within slavery or its gendered dimensions. A common strategy in slave narratives is the use of personal testimony to deconstruct the purported naturalness of slavery. For instance, narratives often detail the brutality of physical punishments, the psychological torment, or the deception used to justify slavery—devices that reveal contradictions between the ideals of liberty and the reality of systemic violence. These strategies aim to dismantle narratives of paternalism or benevolence used to mask exploitation. For example, in Douglass’s narrative, the depiction of the slave owner’s brutality directly counters the image of slavery as a paternal institution, aligning with abolitionist goals of exposing the cruelty inherent to slavery's contradictions.

Moreover, many narratives engage in gendered critiques, highlighting how race and gender intersect to produce specific forms of oppression. Female narratives, such as those by Harriet Jacobs or Sojourner Truth, emphasize the sexual exploitation and domestic violence faced by enslaved women, challenging social constructions of gender and race that justified their subjugation. These narratives argue for recognition of the particularities of female suffering within slavery, intersecting with broader abolitionist appeals for justice.

Both the close reading and the essay emphasize the importance of textual features—such as symbolism (chains, the escape route, or clothing), tone (anger, despair, hope), and irony—which serve to undermine pro-slavery narratives and foster abolitionist sentiments. The emotional and persuasive power of slave narratives relies heavily on these devices to evoke empathy, challenge moral complacency, and mobilize public opinion against slavery.

Overall, the scholarship on slave narratives shows that these texts function both as personal testimony and as strategic political documents. They expose the contradictions embedded in the system of slavery—highlighting its brutality, inhumanity, and the deeply ingrained social and racial hierarchies it sustains. Concomitantly, the narratives challenge social constructions of race and gender, asserting the humanity and agency of enslaved individuals and calling for social and political change. As historical documents, they remain powerful tools for understanding the systemic violence of slavery and the enduring struggle for racial and gender equality in America.

References

• Douglass, Frederick. (1845). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Bedford/st. Martin's.
• Jacobs, Harriet. (1861). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Thayer & Eldridge.
• Berlin, Ira. (2003). Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. Harvard University Press.
• Franklin, Vanessa R. (2013). Creating the Black Women’s Club Movement: An Emancipatory History. Journal of African American History.
• Gates Jr., Henry Louis. (2011). The Self-Designing Mind: The Path of the Black Intellectual. Harvard University Press.
• McClintock, Michael. (1995). The American Slave Narrative and the Politics of Recognition. American Literary History.
• Stepto, Robert B. (1979). The African American Odyssey: A Cultural History. University of Chicago Press.
• Williams, Heather Andrea. (2010). Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery. Penguin Books.
• Wall, Cheryl A. (1999). Women and Slavery: The Politics of Enslaved Women's Resistance. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
• Gordon-Reed, Annette. (2009). The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. W.W. Norton & Company.