Slave Narrative Blog 2
The narrative, Life of Isaac Mason As a Slave, enhanced my vision of slavery in America by reading about how sometimes Isaac Mason was punished for no reason when he was a slave. The conditions he worked under were not that nice but I can imagine how much worse the conditions were for slaves in the deeper south, as Isaac was in Maryland. I realize that slaves’ escape attempts were not extemporaneously done but carefully planned out, at least Isaac Mason’s escape attempt was. I learned a lot about how hard life after slavery was for Isaac, without any resources or education and trying to find a job. It was also very difficult because many people took too much advantage of him, like when he paid money for first class ferry tickets and the man who Isaac paid for the tickets took some of the money for himself and gave Isaac and his wife second class tickets.
Isaac Mason’s life stoy relates to Huck Finn because, like some of the people helping Isaac escape, Huck took advantage of Jim sometimes by running off on his own and then Huck lied to Jim about where he was. For example, when the steamboat separated the raft that Huck and Jim were on when Jim found Huck, Huck lied to Jim that he was just dreaming that they were separated. One theme of Huck Finn was that a slave who ran away was constantly being hunted down by someone. Isaac Mason’s narrative shows that a slave who ran away was constantly hunted down even when the run away slave was up north. The narrative by Isaac relates to Mark Twain because Mark Twains life was full of risk taking, as was Isaac Mason’s life after he ran away. I now realize that if people were racist up north where there was no slavry, it is, unfortunately, no wonder that people were racist down south when slavery was abolished.
