Element of the American Literature
Freedom
Language
Suffering
Religion (belief)
Perspective
Narrative
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Mental
Physical
In God
To be yourself
Have rights
In themselves
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Equal
Stereotype
Unrealized
Intended
Self experience
Historial event
He then told her to cross her hands, calling her at the same time a d––––d b––––h (Douglass 4).
The man at the cash register wants to know if you think your card will work (Rankine 54)
... because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description (104)
The good Irishman seemed to be deeply affected by the statement (25)
This good spirit was from God, and to him I offer thanksgiving and praise (19).
And as if from in side ... you'll tell them we are traveling as a family (133).
They haring ... of the concrete floor leveled without give? (100)
To those songs ... of the dehumanizing character of slavery (9)
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I should have probably felt at the death of a stranger (2).
"I'm very angry and bitter right now. I felt cheated. Shall I go on? I just feel robbed (27).
Instantaneously your attachment seems fragile, tenuous, subject to any transgression of you historical self (14)
I suppose .... which I was planning my escape (63).
"But what about freedom?" "Leave me alone, boy; my head aches!" (Ellison 11)
He sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the fair face ... whose family rights he was enjoying
“Oh, de good Lord God have mercy on po’ sinful me—I’s sole down de river!”
I would get the gold and the bills ... I would throw my body against the boys nearest me to black them from the gold (Ellison 451)
“One of the twins!” soliloquized Tom; “how lucky! It is the knife that has done him this grace.
"What?" they yelled. "...equality" (Ellison 454)
But they are strangers making their way in a new community. Is it nothing to them to appear as pets of an Oriental prince—at no expense?
I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves (Ellison 442)
In one corner I glimpsed a boy violently punching the air and heard him scream in pain (Ellison 448)
“I will sell you here though you don’t deserve it. You ought to be sold down the river.”
... stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into the wall when he let on to be watching them build Giotto’s campaniles
I am an invisible man (Ellison 3).
You said they stole your milk. I never knew what it was that messed him up. That was it, I guess. All I knew was that something broke him
Anything dead coming back to life hurts
Freeing yourself was one thing;
claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
... the one who took Baby Suggs’ place after Halle bought her with five years of Sundays.
That child she could not love
and the rest she would not. “God take what He would,” she said.
If Paul D could do it my daddy could too. Angel man.
We should all be together. Me, him and Beloved
“It’s not! It’s not the house. It’s us! And it’s you!”
“I want you pregnant, Sethe. Would you do that for me?”
“Halle and me want to be married, Mrs. Garner.”
“Halle’s nice, Sethe. He’ll be good to you.”
Who decided that,
because slave life had “busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue,”
“I was pregnant with Denver but I had milk for my baby girl. I hadn’t stopped nursing her when I sent her on ahead with Howard and Buglar.”
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