Slave Narrative Analysis

    Walter Calloway was born in this country and as a young kid was sold to a plantation owner by the name of "Marse John Calloway at Snodoun in Montgomery County, ten miles south of de town of Montgomery." Marse bought both Walter and his mother. Walter recalls that Marse "treated us purty good, but we hab to wuk hard." By the time Walter was 10 he was already performing the duties of full grown men. One of the strongest memories Walter has of his time on the plantation was the time that a girl no more than 13 years old was whipped nearly to death. Walter was set free soon after some soldiers ransacked the plantation, took everything and burned the rest. Even though he was told that he was "free" he still had to work on another plantation and work even harder.

     American slavery is unique in that slaves were treated on average much worse than slaves from other countries. Walter Calloway remembers a black slave who was in charge of the whippings, "whupped a nigger gal 'bout thirteen years old so hard she nearly die, an' allus atterwa'ds she hab spells of fits or somp'n." This did not happen all to often in other countries but in America things like this were not uncommon. 

     Another unique attribute of American slavery that does not apply to most other cases around the world is the time period that this took place. All most every country had seen that slavery was bad and ended it with zero questions or bloodshed. That is the scariest part of American slavery, southern plantation owners did not see anything wrong with their black "property" was treated. They had no problem whipping a little girl almost to death. 

     Accounts like Walter's show us first hand accounts that textbooks and teachers cannot tell us. They give us the story from the people it happened to. This fact really allows the reader to get the closest possible feeling of what the black people went through for years. Textbooks cannot do this and teachers also cannot come near to this effect. The only other effective way to make this connection is showing these stories through film.