My attention was particularly drawn to the following quote, “Stephen’s horror was all the greater because he knew that he himself had benefited from slavery.” It’s slightly comforting to know that Stephen was disturbed by the conditions he saw slaves encountering. It was also shocking to see him acknowledging that he was one of the many whites benefiting from the work done by slaves and feeling sorry for them. Unfortunately, this slight recognition was still not enough to motivate him to make a change or take a stance against slavery right away. This quote reminded me of
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Comments on Chapter 2 and 4-BTC
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I agree with your comment on Stephens. I commented about this also, and I mentioned how he may have been horrified because he know what it's like to be in bondage, being that his whole family was in prison due to his fathers debt. With that I believe he should have been alittle more remorseful for them, and should have tried to do something about it, but then again with him being in a new location, he may have been scared to say something about it.
Alana
Hochschild also writes at the end of the chapter that slavery was not a battle against one person, or even a small group of people. It was a battle against the Church of England - an authority that held a colossal amount of power in those days. By no means am I justifying the fact that neither Stephen nor Newton did something right away, but I am reminding us of the fact that to rise against the Church of England would require efforts of more than one or two individuals. They needed to unite. Nonetheless, they both could have taken a bigger stand in the way they treated the slaves in their own lives.
Post a Comment