Question Bank

 African American Studies

  Font: Times New Roman Size: 14 Five questions need to be answered and each question needs to be 400 words. 1. What does the literary term metaphor mean? Provide and explain one example of metaphor in Chapter V of Incidents (33-37). Set up in quotation marks the example of metaphor you have selected; analyze why the example you have selected is a metaphor; and finally, what does it reveal about Harriet Jacobs in particular and her relationships in Incidents? 2. What is the function of the Christian religion in Jacobs’ account of its use in the slave culture of her world (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl)? 3. Using Chapter XII (81—87) as your main point of reference, define and analyze the nature of race relations between African American slaves on the plantations and their non-slave owning white neighbors. What reasons account for the content of the race relations depicted in Chapter XII? (Remember the emphasis in the question is non-slave owning whites, not the white slave owners/masters). 4. At the conclusion of Chapter XV (15), Jacobs asserts that: “My master had power and law on his side; I had determined will. There is might in each” (Incidents 110). What for you is an important theme in Jacobs’ assertion? What does the theme reveal about the relationship between the slave master and the slave? In the particular experience of Harriet Jacobs, how is this theme in the master-slave relationship ultimately resolved by the end of her narrative. 5. Referring to specific evidence in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and A True Tale of Slavery by John S. Jacobs, analyze three well defined reasons why you think both texts develop a common theme in the American institution of slavery. (What is this common theme? It must be clearly stated and defined. Also, you must introduce documented quotes/evidence from both texts to explain your choice of theme and why it is significant in your reading of both texts).