The Theme Of Slavery In 'The Red Badge Of Courage'

To Be a Slave, Like The Red Badge of Courage is refreshing: it shows a period of history in a new light, one that we don’t see in our history textbooks. This book shows slavery for what it really was: a disgusting time full of pain and injustice. Because To Be a Slave is written through first person stories, we as readers get a more accurate portrayal of what slavery was like, rather than the watered down version written in our history books. Slavery was so much more than the “It began, it was bad, it ended with the Civil War” narrative that we are taught. Slaves were real people living real lives, they deserve to have their stories get told, and that’s exactly what Julius Lester did.
Julius Lester writes about many of the difficult aspects
A life full of backbreaking work and constant fear: fear of being whipped, fear of being sold, and fear of being killed by their owners. Plantation owners could be very cruel, and because of that slaves faced a lot of uncertainty while working. Slaves were constantly weary that they would be whipped for no good reason, because it happened a lot. Former slave Roberta Manson writes on page 33: “ They whipped my father ‘cause he looked at a slave they killed and cried ”. Slave owners also made slaves do a number of unlawful things, and whip them if they did not oblige. “ Our master would make us slaves steal from each of the slave owners. Our master would make us surround a herd of his neighbor’s cattle, round them up at night, and make us slaves stay up all night long and kill and skin ever one of them critters, salt the skins down in layers in the master’s cellar, and put the cattle piled ceiling high in the smokehouse so nobody could identify the skinned cattle.” (Henry Johnson, page
Without a doubt, he knew that every Saturday night there would be a party and every Sunday night there would be a church service. Christianity was a ray of light for the slaves through their hard times, they turned to God for guidance and peace. “Religion also presented the slaves with the idea that they would receive their reward after they died. This appealed to their minds… Religion became one of them. It became a purifying force in the life of the slaves, a release from the everyday misery.” (Page 80- 83) The Bible allowed slaves to do their daily work with the idea that after death, all their hard work and suffering would be rewarded. Slaves rejoiced during the weekend, attending their church service and singing songs of praise. However, once plantation owners noticed their slaves’ fondness of religion, things started to turn. Plantation owners hired personal priests to lead the weekly church services. Reason being, the owners did not want their slaves to be preached ideas of revolting or rioting. The only way to do this was to make sure everything said at the service was said through a “filter”. Filtered sermons preached of white superiority and how slave owners were doing their slaves a favor by letting them work. Naturally, these false preaching angered slaves. Slaves soon began having religious gatherings/ parties on Saturday nights, the only night of the week they didn’t have to worry about waking up