My group presented about English, German, and Irish folktales, which told us about the how the narrator’s, stated the culture, tradition and types of fairy tales stories of each country. The German, and English folktales we kind of similar traditions and culture. The tales were about women’s who couldn’t spin a flax, were offered to marry the king. Spinning a flax was a tradition especially to women should know to spin flax. These stories was about these woman’s overcome the fear and how they were being helped for the marriage. The Irish Folktales was about brewery egg shells to save her son, Brewery is really famous in Irish, where I have seen and been to many Irish pubs.
I believe that The U.S. Slave stories and Poem were also about tradition and torture of slavery In the USA. During the French revolution 8 million slaves were being transported to America alone. In that time have slaves is like a culturally passed on tradition and slaves were accounted as an asset, so the more slaves the farm owners has the rich they are. The similarities between these narrators from the folktales and the slave history is that they both express tradition and there theme is fear. Language is a big difference between these two stories. The song “All God’s children had wings” the Narrator states that the slaves has spoken different language among themselves to keep them safe. Slave’s language which is called slang in the present day, also used by most African Americans. Slaves spoke different languages because they could help each other during the period of slavery from not getting wiped by the master. In the German, English and Irish folk tales the language was direct but the pronunciation by the poor people were different because the lack of education, but the king from German and English folktales were educated and spoke proper English.
Freedom was a big difference between the U.S slavery and the English and German folktales. German and English folktales, stated that the women’s were from really poor family and were given and opportunity to marry the king and get a great life, where they don’t have to work, have good food and even get to where expensive clothing. Whereas in the Song “All God’s children had wings” stated about if the slaves were in their own continent (Africa) what types freedom would they have and the opportunity to live a better life than working and getting tortures as a slave. Therefore there were different comparison between the German, English, and Irish Folk tales and the US slave story, but the Narrators tried to point out their traditional and the culture that has been passing on to generations.
Your highlighting of fear as a theme is interesting, though it might help to be more specific as to what you have in mind when you speak of fear. Yes, absolutely, one could see how the experience of slavery would induce fear in that person, but fear of what or about what? Are you speaking of a specific fear (like I am afraid of that snake over there) or of a more generalized, existential fear (as in, the very idea of being alive and potentially facing nothingness makes me fearful)? Fear is a rather big concept that takes on different content depending on what discourse it appears in. All that to say, be specific when using such large concepts.You remember from our debates about the Enlightenment that some of these big concepts (Freedom, Right, Man) mean many different things depending on who is invoking them. Furthermore, as you work on your first paper, I would suggest on tightening up your writing. Cut out the extra fat that doesn’t add anything to your paper (about how many slaves were transported — also, no need to talk about the French Revolution there, the slave trade was going on for a long time before that) and make sure you focus your reading around the one theme/argument that you highlight. Everything should be in service of supporting your point. Finally, as you prepare your final draft, make sure the punctuation is taken care of. 4/5