No cutlery for slave-children
The narrator ironically compares the life of a slave boy with the one of a free child: “The slave-boy escapes many troubles which befall and vex his white brother. He seldom has to listen to lectures on propriety of behavior, or on anything else. He is never chided for handling his little knife and fork improperly or awkwardly, for he uses none.” Slave children are never supposed to be acting good as they are presumed to be only little rude creatures. Through the irony, the bitterness of the situation is traced.
Valued and divided
When the slave’s master dies, the slave becomes the property of his sons or daughters. The procedure of a slave becoming a property of another person takes a while, and before the slave must be “valued” and then divided among supposing owners. There were a son and a daughter of Capt. Anthony who were dividing the slaves after the death of their father. But it is not so important whom the slaves come to, since the narrator indicates the details of the very procedure and the main thing he emphasizes is that there is nothing a slave can do! As he said “our destiny was now to be fixed for life, and we had no more voice in the decision of the question, than the oxen and cows that stood chewing at the haymow.” The irony of the valuation and division is a bitter one, as shows that slaves were in some cases lined with animals.
Pious cruelty
The narrator new master’s wife Rowena treated the slaves rather badly, and the biggest issue was that she starved them; they simply had little food. And this mistress “with saintly air, would kneel with her husband, and pray each morning that a merciful God would bless them in basket and in store, and save them, at last, in his kingdom”. Feelings of contempt and disdain are unmistakably present in this irony.
