Wednesday, 21 August 2013

What are the similarities between Flight to Canada and Josiah Henson's narrative on slavery?

Josiah Henson was an escaped slave who wrote The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849). Harriet Beecher Stowe is said to have based Uncle Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin on Henson. One of the points that Henson makes is that slavery corrupts the masters. The slave owners' racism makes them oblivious to any value of the slave save their monetary value and what labor they can offer. Henson writes of slavery, "The natural tendency of slavery is, to convert the master into a tyrant, and the slave into the cringing, treacherous, false, and thieving victim of tyranny." Slavery corrupts the master so that he can no longer see the humanity of his slaves. After working for many years as a devoted and reliable slave, Henson is only valued for his labor. His master attempts to sell him, and Henson writes about his slave owner's family, "My merits, whatever they were, instead of exciting sympathy, or any feeling of attachment to me, seemed only to enhance my money value to them." In other words, his years of hard work are only valued for the financial worth they provide. His owner's family does not value his worth as a human.

In Flight to Canada, Reed satirizes the self-interested and racist perspective of slave owners. For example, Uncle Robin, a parody of a devoted slave, says to Swille, his owner, about Canada, "Canada. I do admit I have heard about the place from time to time, Mr. Swille, but I loves it here so much that...I would never think of leaving here" (page 19). Uncle Robin illustrates the racist way in which slave owners saw slaves merely as objects and dehumanized them as mere property while relying intensely on slaves for their survival. 

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