From what I can tell in both Fredrick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs’s novels of cruelty and enslavement, the slave almost will always suffer more than their slave owners.
In the case of Douglass his family and identity is somewhat obliterates thanks to the dispersal of those who are close to him. Jacobs suffers (in my opinion) even more for even though she is lucky enough to having known some members of family she is forced to deal with the sexual advances of her various slave owners. This alone some may think would be too much for one person to bear but once she becomes a mother to her children she must also deal with the helplessness that comes with not truly being able to care for them as since she is a slave her children too must fall under the same miserable distinction.
In terms of how the slave owners may suffer is perhaps a little more complex. From what I can tell, the cruelty and torment they inflict on their slaves destroys any humanity one may think a functional human being should have. With every unjust punishment they dole and with every innocence devouring action they partake they themselves eat away at the very thing they believe their slaves don’t own, their souls. Ultimately as in the Douglass’s tale they live in fear. Fear that if the slaves were ever to revolt (either through the means of literacy or otherwise) they will have to in turn pay for their sins.
This question of literacy is not something that one should believe is best left in America’s past. Even today, education is the key and those who are not privileged enough to receive a good one will ultimately be left to become the working slaves of those who do.
Good conclusion. Your point about education is valid. don't forget to do the Fuller Alcott post.
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