Laboring Women Literary Elements

Laboring Women Literary Elements

Genre

Non-fiction

Setting and Context

The book is written in the context of slavery

Narrator and Point of View

Third-person narrative

Tone and Mood

Sad, melancholy, optimistic

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist are the slave men and women, while the antagonists are the slave owners and slave traders.

Major Conflict

The major conflict is that the children of the slave women were considered as the property of the slave owners.

Climax

The climax is when the typical West African brought as a slave to Europe stepped to champion for the rights of slaves and joined a support system that looked at the welfare of women.

Foreshadowing

The championing of women and slaves' rights was foreshadowed by kidnapping a West African woman who was sold to Europe to work in the plantations.

Understatement

The challenges that the slaves went through are undertreated. The women slaves suffered double tragedies because, despite hard labour, the babies were the property of the slave owners. Consequently, the increase in the slave population reflected the wealth of slave owners.

Allusions

The story alludes to the challenges that the slaves went through at the hands of slave traders and owners.

Imagery

Sight and smell imageries are used in the text to enhance the reader's comprehension. Sight imagery is used when describing the Indian woman, while smell imagery is used when describing the aroma of apples.

Paradox

The main paradox is that the Europeans admired the strength of a black woman in pregnancy because even after giving birth, she remained strong and beautiful, unlike the white women.

Parallelism

There is parallelism between the slave traders and the slave owners on how they treated black women.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

The phrase ‘admiration of black women in pregnancy’ shows the realization of the white that the Blacks are strong and resilient.

Personification

N/A

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