Coulisse

One theme of the book is getting through tough times.

Such as, when Frederick Douglas sees a woman getting whipped and being called foul names on page 24. It says, “He then said to her, ‘Now, you d——d b—h, I’ll learn you how to disobey my orders!” and after rolling up his sleeves, he commenced to lay on the heavy cowskin, and soon the warm, red blood (amid heart-rending shrieks from her, and horrid oaths from her) came dripping to the floor.”
This shows how terrified that young Freddie D. must’ve been when he saw that poor woman when she was being called foul names, and enduring foul treatment.

Then, on page 38 and 39, it explains how Dembry was getting beat, then he fled to the water, Mr. Gore said he’d count to three to give Dembry a chance to get out of the water, or he’d blow his brains out. Gore only got to “two” when he shot poor Dembry. I would’ve written it all, but really, let’s be real. That’s a freakishly long passage for one to type up in such a short amount of time.

Appartently, now we’re supposed to add a picture.

On page 44, “Even the Great House itself, with all its pictures, was far inferior to many buildings in Baltimore.”
This shows how great Baltimore is, compared to Frederick’s old plantation.

Page 45, “And here I saw what I had never seen before; it was a white face beaming with the most kindly emotions; it was the face of my new mistress, Sophia Auld.”
This shows how sweet Mrs. Auld was, as if she were the breaking point savior for Fred’s humanity.

That’s all I really collected.

The most important events from Frederick Douglas as follows:

1. On page 20, he meets with this mother at night. Between then and page 42 his mother dies.
2. On page 42 Freddie D. goes to Baltimore.
3. Page 47… he meets Mrs. Auld, who really resembles Lucifer, the fallen angel, when put with power…
4. On 57, he learns to read and write.
5. Page 58, Captain Anthony dies.
6. Page 75, he got whipped.

So, there you have it.

Basically, the article called, With Power Comes a Selfish Point of View, much explains exactly what happens to the best of people when blessed with overwhelming power. Like in a test, volunteers were told to draw an E on their foreheads. People who felt they had power drew the E backwards, as if drawing and looking at the E internally. Ones who felt powerless drew the E so anyone could read it correctly. This was meant to show that when placed with power, one may lose insight of what it may be like to see things from anothers’ view.

This article showed a connection to Frederick Douglas because one of his mistresses, Mrs. Auld, had been so nice when Frederick arrived, but as she was given power over him, her heart slowly turned cold. On the top of page 52, it clearly says, and I quote, “Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness.”Douglas claims that when given power one may go mad (or something close to that) with it. Which, leads back to the article and the similarities.

My reflection:

This all has been very monumental and all, but I’m glad we’re done with it. It’s been a waste of my education. Yes, we’re probably making a huge difference, but we come to school to learn and such. This is English class.The class that I’d most expect this to come from might be something like History class. If I wanted to take part in this, I would’ve volunteered. Did anybody ask though? I don’t think so. We were unexpectedly forced into this project. This could’ve been done after school, and we could’ve actually built up our writing skill, through proper procedure. We’ve done this for over a month, and read the same thing repetitively for a month, or more. It’s quite irritating. Now, I’m hoping that we can do real English class assignments, such as that book report that we keep on hearing about, yet no rubric has been given to us.  Counting both weekends and school days, we have only 10 days to do this, and still no rubric. That’s my reflection.

Is it right for the US to be in Darfur right now? This question has gone through my head for quite time now, and it needs some answering, pronto. We have some troubles of our own right now, but the genocide is too dreadful to just stand by and watch. Something needs to be done, whether it’s helping or not.

First off, we have problems of our own, one of the biggest being Iraq. There hasn’t been much news on improvement or a decrease in hopes, so where does that leave us? We have our hands tied with so many things right now; Iraq, the presidential election, and terrible crimes. If the US were to go into Darfur, it would be like an in-dept man giving money to someone with financial problems as well. One is benefited, while the other’s situation just gets worse. Global responsibility is indeed a big part of this, but we are simply not ready to be mixed up in another mess. Iraq was a mistake, to a point, and though Darfur is not, we still need to finish what we started.
 
Therefore, we do need to step in, just not yet. If we do, that would be a clear death wish. No, we need to clean up the mess in the Middle East and even clean up ourselves before we go into anything serious. I support Bush’s decision to let other countries step in, so they can participate in this entire global responsibility soiree we have going. In fact, our friends Canada and India can step in; those who we haven’t heard much from in a while. This is going to be a huge turning point, whether it turns out good or bad. Everything we do will count; let’s not mess this one up.

We need help for our Many Voices for Darfur Projecy. We are doing this project because it’s part of our “Global Responsibility”. After I think about it, I do think that somewhere in the Consitution of Independance it states that people who have the power to do something should do it, if it indeed benefits the common good. Now, we have power to make that change. The small problem we have here, is the much-talked about relationshiip with China and us, but also the fact that Bush has not passed the movement to go into Darfur. He thinks we should stand aside and let other countries take care of it.

Now, here I have two opinions to this. First, is that we should be there, and we should be helping those people. But, the truth being, we’re already in trouble in Iraq, so let’s make sure we’re still safe before we barge in somewhere else.