Frederick Douglas's slave narrative is of detrimental importance to what we know about the violence that existed in the U.S. slave system. His narrative, as well as Emerson's Nature, uses a metaphor referring to the eyes of slaves to describe how the enslaved African Americans felt about witnessing the grave crimes and being barred from voicing them. Emerson is quoted saying "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all". His physical body felt like nothing, and what he witnessed was not existent without vocalization. The theme of Emerson's Nature was the separation of "soul" and "nature". Many slaves felt as if they were not in control of their body, but could still retain ownership of their souls. The bodies of African Americans were thought of to be property of their owner's, making them the subjects of extreme violence. Douglas refers to receiving a "powerful kick in the left eye" from a White male. This is symbolic to the violence of everyday slave life, and being forced to appear blind to what is happening around them. Douglas first learned of the silence that is expected of slaves from watching the beating of his Aunt Hester. This signaled the distant relationship between what is seen and what is said in slavery. The physical stress and embodied pain that witnessing such cruelties took overwhelmed young slaves, who were not able to vent their experiences without being at risk for the same treatment. As the North remained ignorant to the actual happenings of the violence toward slaves because of the silence being forced upon the numerous witnesses, the few freed northern African Americans took up the opportunity to speak about the cruelties. Many of them turned to literature to get their stories out.  Douglas's details create a powerful image of a suffering black body lying scared and naked. Emerson and Douglas's texts took away many white northerners’ ignorance to the true lives of the enslaved African Americans because they were finally given the oppurtunity to voice their experiences.

In today’s day and age, many of us cannot fathom the mindset that pre-civil war slave owner’s had when justifying their ownership of another human being.  Not only owning, but physically torturing and beating a fellow man. This article looks into the world of Christian slave owners, who somehow found it glorifying to god to maintain control over their slaves with physical harm.  Many authors of slave narratives agree that Christian slave owners were in fact the cruelest of all masters, including Jacobs, Douglas and Equiano.  Douglas refers to these men as the “meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others”. This article enlightened me on many of the justifications that the slave owners believed in this time period. Extreme priests and slaveholders seek out Jesus-like sufferers to use in the crucifixion for their sins.  For the Christian slave owner, this comes in the form of the enslaved African American whom they can beat to a pulp as a sign of devotion to the Lord. This is in metaphor to the crucifixion that God put his son through to forgive humans for their slaves. The irony of this argument, beating a fellow human out of a need for forgiveness for other sins, is appalling. These White men were wrongly using another human’s body in the name of God, contradicting the fellowship and missionary elements of Christianity. No slave that has been cruelly beaten because of the Christian faith will ever pursue salvation himself.  In the narratives of Equiano and Douglass, many slave owners are depicted quoting the bible as they impale blows onto the African American’s back. They only say these divine quotes at the end of the torture, when salvation is ensured through the sacrifice.  

On the other hand some of the White Christian masters are not seeking to devote these beatings to God, but to attain a more divine state for themselves.  They view the slaves who they own as their followers, as Christians are to Christ, and that they should be eternally grateful for all that the master gives to them. This is a disgrace to God, who is the only divine being that should be recognized. Christian slave owners are not the “makers” of humankind, and their bondsmen do not have any incentive to follow their orders other than to avoid physical harm.  To say that these men were ignorant to their actions is a pathetic attempt to excuse their offensive behavior. In any true evaluation of the Bible, no man can honestly believe that is in God’s plan that they physically harm another human’s body out of devotion to him. This extreme violence against African Americans in the name of God is one of the most appalling traits of the American slave system.

Harriet Jacob’s experiences as a slave, mother, and literary slave narrative producer changed many of the outlooks that people had on the American slave system. The way families were ripped apart, humans were being beaten to a cripple, and slaves in every plantation were being harassed in every manner was exposed through slave narratives like Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  Jacob’s says herself that “it would have been more pleasant to me to have been silent about my bondage”. The act of speaking against the slave system brought more troubles than successes for the voice of the enslaved people. This article refers to this as the unbroken rule; “Masters abuse, slaves are silent” It was an extensive process for Jacobs to figure out how to manipulate the language that kept her in bondage for twenty-one years to work for her in the act of expressing the experiences she had as a slave. Her owner, Mr. Flint, was a master at using language as a mechanism for power. He put many of these powerful, persuasive words towards Jacobs to sexually harass, attack, and abuse her. This gave Jacobs the incentive to figure out how to use the language that was keeping her oppressed to free her.  This article expresses the views of Jacob’s and Douglass on how their literacy gave them the power to escape from the oppression and voice their experiences to the ignorant north of America.  However, literacy is also viewed as a double edged sword to the slaves that are not in the position to gain freedom through the obtainment of written language. Douglass is quoted saying that “literacy may be the pathway to freedom… but it is also the pathway to a fuller understanding of enslavement.”  Many of the slaves that learned to read behind barns, hiding from their masters, became aware of the severity of the violence and restrictions that their life entailed.  Not only did the African American literary movement unfold the blinds to ignorant White people, but it did the same to many of the literate slaves. The phrase ‘Ignorance is bliss’ only applies to half of the population that was affected by this movement.  The White Northern population of America needed to be awakened to the cruelty of the American slave system, but to make a person aware of the severity of their situation, who has no hope from escaping it, is cruel within itself.

The severe torture against the black body did not only reap pain and suffering at the individual level. This article breaks down the experience of a slave mother, who through enduring such physical pain experiences the breaking down of her family unit. The enslaved African American women and their children were never securely together for extended periods of time, always at risk for separation. Even if on the same plantation, strict regulations on slave behavior did not allow a development of this parental relationship. To experience pain on your own body is in one way tolerable, but for a slave mother to witness her children taking numerous whippings putting them in crippling pain has to wring their heart. Many times the mother herself had to commit to experiencing an extra amount of physical violence to secure their children’s security. The expected female role of being a  “mother” are never held by enslaved women because the American slave system did not allow it. Jacob’s describes the destruction of family bonds as “the fundamental evil of slavery” in her text Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Her depictions of slave "motherhood" call attention across the nation to the sufferings the African American women are experiencing. The tale of the enslaved mother that loses her children in Incidents was not aimed to affect the mainly illiterate slave community, but to break the ignorance of the White women that could sympathize with these mothers. It calls for the bringing together of all women, no matter what race, to ensure the motherhood experience not be ripped out of the hands of another African American woman. The American slave system tore Black families apart, showed no mercy in causing slaves to watch their kin experience the cruel brutalities, and taking the very essence of being a woman and mother out of the enslaved women’s hands. Jacob’s text broke the enslaved silence code and put the experiences of these women on the front burner of American issues at that time.

This article is a general overview of the ideas that teachers could use to teach the numerous slave narratives in U.S. literature by highlighting the similarities and differences that the authors used to depict the audacities of slavery. One of the main ideas is that the author does not have to go into grave detail of the violence that slaves experience to get the point across that it is morally unacceptable. This is another way of framing the experiences of slaves to where the expected silence is not broken, but they story is still heard.  Dunham's A Journey to Brazil cannot be a decided anti-slavery text, but the examples of the brutality inside slave systems has an abolitionist undertone. The contemporary readers of Dunham will take his humanitarian ideas and apply them to the relevant issue of slavery, breaking the ignorance cycle that is occurring all over America at this time. This is contradictory to American literature pieces like Uncle Tom's Cabin and Incident's of a Slave Girl, which are obvious anti-slavery pieces that depict every detail of the cruel violence that slaves encountered in everyday life. 
Even though A Journey to Brazil is a tale of slavery in the Americas outside of the U.S., it is related to how the stories of the United States slaves impacted the views of foreigners on various slave systems. The slave narratives of the American slaves give light to the inside cruelty, and it is impossible for this system to continue without the dependence of the "transitional exchange of people, ideas and technologies.” The slavery inside the U.S. is often compared to slavery in other countries as being more degrading and cruel than the foreign slave systems. This voiced to the American public that the ignorant ideas of African Americans being complacent with their state in life.