Jacobs use of honesty

The passage I chose to show how Jacobs uses her honesty to establish credibility is a powerful one. Jacobs decides to tell us her reasoning for having children with another man besides her master (pg 49). To me this is a very powerful passage. For her to tell the reader such a personal decision that she made must have been difficult. I find this very effective. She’s audience are people that have never been slaves. She is trying to show the reader exactly how it was to be a slave. She would be willing to have children with another man not because she loved him but because she felt it was a way to be freed for sexual harassment of her owner, and quite possibly get away from him. She goes on the say, “you never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom,” because it qualifies her reasoning for what she did. Some readers may be disgusted in her decision, and they may look down on what she did but because of this statement she makes the reader think twice about what they may have thought. She also asks the reader to pity and pardon her for her actions. She comes out of the style in which she is writing to ask the reader specifically for them to forgive her for what she did. That to me is very powerful.

The passage I chose did a good job in establishing her credibility. She pulls on our emotional strings with this part of the story and begins to show us that we don’t have any idea of what you may have to do to escape that situation she was in. She does this so that the reader beliefs she was a slave who was in a very bad predicament. To me one of the most powerful ways to win a person over is through your own personal experience. In this book, Jacobs does that well. She convinced me through her personal accounts that slavery is indeed tortuous and I am even thankful now that I myself am not a slave.