Sunday, November 6, 2011

Week 5 - De Crevecouer - The New American

I have chosen to post about a chapter called Charles - Town: Thoughts on Slavery and Physical Evil. pg 151-153

After reading just the first few pages, I have already discovered that this place is a very grand and rich town- built by slaves! De Crevecouer's description of the towns slaves is very sad and descriptive. He says such things as "Many of these West Indians I have seen, at thirty, loaded with infirmities of old age". This indicates that the slaves worked in big groups that consisted of older men.

De Crevecouer writes that in these rich countries slaves having a normal life taken away from them was nothing new at all. While Charles-town is known as a beautiful and wealthy country it is the slaves that do end up suffering. De Crevecouer says further on that the high temperatures and poor conditions are unbearable for slaves but they continue to work for very little, sometimes the conditions are so bad that some slaves do die.

Finally De Crevecouer says that certain races are picked out from the same group of people and treated better than others. he says "The chosen race eat, drink, and live happily while others grubs up the ground or husks the rice without the support of good food and drink".

On one side DeCrevecouer says "we have people who are treated like kings with a pleasurable life while other died working in unbearable conditions for literally nothing''.

DeCrevecouer has described what he has seen and said he was too afraid to say anything about in case it caused problems.

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